When people are short of time, why do they do unnecessary things? Three observations from a crisis simulation that apply everywhere.

Recently, I was teaching a crisis management course at the University of Lucerne. In contrast to a normal lecture, the course consisted of a five-day crisis simulation, during which participants had to address multiple problems simultaneously: flooding, migration, energy shortages, and a pandemic. They did so as a crisis staff that was constantly bombarded with new situations, an overwhelming amount of information, and a plethora of conflicts and dilemmas.

It’s normal to be constantly short of time in such a crisis scenario, both during a simulation exercise and in a real-world crisis.

However, there is an interesting observation: when people are short of time, why do they do unnecessary things?

Let’s look at a few things I observed during the crisis simulation exercise.

The Checklist Drawback

Checklists are helpful in hectic situations. They are designed to make sure you don’t forget anything important. As a consequence, many checklists come in the form of forms.

And what’s the problem with forms?

They look incomplete when you haven’t filled in all the available forms. You know this from all the online forms that cannot be submitted unless you fill in all the fields first. So, what do you do to submit the online form? You will fill in any nonsense into those fields where you don’t know the answer. Just to give the appearance that your form is complete, and you can submit it.

During a crisis, it’s the same thing. There are many checklists and form templates, yet not all the fields are relevant in every situation.

Implicitly, participants in the crisis simulation thought they always had to present complete checklists or forms. Who said so? If information is not relevant in a crisis, dare to leave the fields on those checklists and forms blank. The motto is “substance over form”, not “form over substance.”

PowerPoint or Flipchart?

In a crisis, decision makers must be briefed regularly by the crisis staff. This usually occurs through situation briefings. In a complex situation, visualization is essential: Where exactly is the flooding? How many migrants need sheltering in which town? How many critical pandemic patients do we have in which hospital? What’s the exact area that is affected by a power outage?

When people think of decision makers and presentations, they reduce their options to just one: PowerPoint.

Wrong.

In a crisis, you often don’t have the time to prepare fancy PowerPoint presentations. Plus, in the crisis scenario we used in the simulation exercise, who said you always have electricity to run your laptop during a blackout?

Have the courage to use flipcharts and post-its for your situation briefings. Stick up a map on the wall, write the relevant information on a flipchart, and use post-its to visualize important information that has recently changed. It’s that simple. Again, the motto is “substance over form”, not “form over substance.”

The Logo Syndrome

At the beginning of the crisis exercise, I gave the participants three tasks: I needed their staff organization, briefing rhythm, and rotation plan.

At the due time, I got only part of the products. But one of the products had a logo on it — the participants didn’t have the time to prepare all the products I asked for, but they found the time to create a logo for their exercise crisis staff.

That’s the ultimate form of “form over substance,” isn’t it?

Conclusion

Irrespective of whether you are in a crisis or just soldiering along the daily entrepreneurial grind, you will never have enough resources to do it all.

Train your senses to spot instances of “form over substance” and try to change them into “substance over form.” Yes, it requires courage to present to executives on a flipchart when they are used to shiny PowerPoint presentations. Yes, a blank white Word template without logo and corporate colors might look odd at first.

Courage is one thing, but there is another, much more practical aspect to “form over substance.” Have you ever thought about how much of your mental bandwidth you assign to form instead of substance? Just as you’re constantly out of time in a crisis, your mental bandwidth is constantly strained in a crisis.

And if you want to get out of a crisis quickly, you need to focus fully on finding the best solution rather than the most beautiful form to present it.