Flexible and Adaptive: Yes, in ordinary usage the words may be similar. In this case, I am making the distinction between Flexible as KNOWING several ways – prior knowledge, perhaps able to be deployed in response to change, and Adaptable as CHANGE CAPACITY – the ability to synthesize information in response to change, and craft new ideas to survive and thrive.

In regards to your sailing experience, I would say it actually supports my notion of F.A.R. In the moment of your incapacity, and in the midst of sudden unforeseen and even unknown forms of conditions, you had to make some assessment, and take some action. Your very lives may have depended on your capacities to make sense of the information at hand, analyze it in the context of what you knew, and act in response to the immediate crisis. Did you know more than one way to respond to this sudden situation? Yes. But you also knew you’d been hurt. Were you able to adapt your thinking and behavior to the conditions at hand? Even though by your own admission, the emergent conditions were of a sort not previously known to you? Were you able to accept a measure of this adversity and stay focused on your objectives (survive and arrive)? I would say that yes, you did. Your decision, made in the midst of this seeming chaos, was one that took the rapidly changing situation into consideration as best you could. You met the challenge of dealing with unknown and perhaps unknowable circumstances with a decision that you hoped would work (though you do not say what might have happened had a new onset of raging weather occurred during your rest). You persevered and prevailed.

As to restoring one’s “equilibrium and equanimity” in the midst of a crisis, or proceeding “logically and carefully” to solve the situation, I would say this is ideal but not always possible. One consequence of crisis is the lack of time to fully explore possibility and options. The first responders in the World Trade Center on 9/11 did not have the luxury of time to “do nothing” until they could solve their many challenges with logic and care. Moreover, even as they attempted to use what knowledge and logic they had, conditions and information were both rapidly changing, and incomplete at best. In fact, the effect of the crashed airplane on the tower’s infrastructure was unknown and unknowable even to the experts. From my personal discussions with 9/11 responders, and with other emergency first responders, one particular challenge in chaos is the lack of time to think and plan. These phases of response may be severely hurried because of the nature of the emergency. I would suggest that anyone in such a situation should ideally take the one deep breath, seek their best mental clarity and presence, then think, decide, and act as quickly as the situation seems to demand. We know we will not always get the right answer in the moment. Hopefully, we find an answer that works, as you did when you were struck at sea.

Bruce

Sorry, but F.A.R. doesn’t begin to do it for me: flexible and adaptable are practically synonyms, and resilience means much the same thing. Furthermore, there are important things to say about leadership in a crisis that are not captured in these words at all.

My wife taught me these things. She is a cautious sailor by nature… but excellent in a crisis. There were just the two of us on board when our forty-foot yacht was knocked down mid-Atlantic by a micro-burst (something we’d never heard of at the time). I was injured. Lightening destroyed both autopilots (so much for back-up systems) and high seas snapped the paddle on our wind vane self-steering device. She insisted we do nothing until we’d both rested. So we heaved-to and went to bed! Four hours later and much refreshed I quickly fixed the self-steering and we continued our passage uneventfully. But, if I had attempted the repair while still in shock, I might well have compounded our problems by dropping vital tools or parts overboard.

So the first thing to do in a crisis is recognize that you have been taken by surprise. If you know this can “throw you off-balance”, then the second thing to do is nothing… until you have taken the time out to restore your equilibrium and equanimity. Only then should you proceed logically and carefully to solve the problems.

This is an important lesson because unscrupulous people create surprise to catch us off guard. It was the central theme of Naomi Klein’s book “The Shock Doctrine”.

Saddam Hussein was never an Al Qaeda supporter. Many believe America’s pre-emptive invasion of Iraq post 9/11 was hasty and ill-conceived. Obama claims it has cost over $1 trillion. How much better that money and those lives might have been spent if the nation had taken time out to ask “What can we learn from this?” rather than “How can we get even?”

Geoffrey
http://www.yalaworld.net