When Crisis Calls for Change Management

Richard Price, Chairman of Mesirow Financial, gave an impassioned talk this week to members of the Executives’ Club about the inherent challenges in managing the firm after the untimely death of their beloved CEO, Jim Tyree. And while the story unfolded from the perspective of how he applied his particular leadership style during a time of great transition, his speech revealed several best practices of leading change under circumstances that more closely resemble crisis management.

Richard instantly charmed the room with his opening remarks by describing himself as an emotional, highly collaborative, hug-happy executive—warning us that his voice was sure to break often during this story’s retelling. His prediction was accurate as he characterized the late Chairman and CEO Jim Tyree as a friend to everyone, the firm’s primary care-giver, chief visionary and multi-cause champion.

A force of nature like that can leave an enormous black hole in an organization, but Price had a plan. He followed his intuition to fill the void in the organization with light and hope. He noted that he instinctively knew that their culture was at risk, not the business. Here are a few of the steps he took that we can all learn from:

He sought personal counseling as Jim’s health declined to emotionally prepare
Lines of communication both internally and with clients operated 24/7
A process to ensure that the voices of all 325 stakeholders were listened to was established
Collaboration became the new watchword as the organization undertook formal strategic planning
He insisted his division leaders bring ideas to the table that would resonate enterprise-wide, not just with their business units

As a result, Price announced that profitability is at an all time high, leadership within the ranks is flourishing and the firm is even more committed to supporting individual passions and charitable works.

Price concluded that through this unified, collaborative effort (and his emotionally fueled leadership) that Mesirow Financial will no doubt make the next 75 years better than their first. And his actions, even more than his words, clearly give every leader something to live by.