by Jean Case
* * *
Seize the moment
Be a first responder
Don’t overthink or overanalyze. Do.
Now go, be the one
TWENTY-ONE
SEIZE THE MOMENT
We can choose to act with urgency, or have urgency thrust upon us. But there’s a reason someone coined the phrase “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” When your back is against the wall, when options are limited, when time is not on your side, a certain clarity can set in, bringing with it a boldness you might not have known you had in you. Soldiers find extraordinary bravery in the heat of battle, everyday citizens perform acts of heroism during disasters, and people accomplish unimaginable feats when they’re running out of time. They might not be wholly aware of the risks, or be able to calculate their impact. They just act.
Many of the stories highlighted in earlier chapters had an element of urgency. Barbara Van Dahlen knew our veterans need better mental health care; Ernest Shackleton, abandoned to the most ferocious of conditions in Antarctica, knew he and his crew faced death if he didn’t act. But crises are not always so extreme. Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia felt the urgency of a looming rent payment, with no money in the bank. The founders of Warby Parker needed to quickly and inexpensively replace a pair of glasses.
How individuals and companies act in times of crisis can be a true measure of their fearlessness. Nearly every large company has a “crisis management” strategy, but when a corporate crisis becomes a real emergency, it is courage, not management, that is remembered.
One of the iconic stories of corporate courage began in September 1982, when four people in Chicago died after taking Tylenol capsules that had been laced with potassium cyanide. Without hesitation, Johnson & Johnson CEO James E. Burke pulled all Tylenol off the shelves and launched a public campaign warning people not to buy the product. (No one at Johnson & Johnson knew who had poisoned the pills, and the perpetrator was never found.) Pulling Tylenol out of circulation cost millions of dollars, and Tylenol’s market share plummeted from 38 percent to 8 percent. Yet the company’s only consideration was saving lives. And there’s little doubt that its fast action did just that. In the long run, Burke also saved the product. There was some pressure within the company to discontinue Tylenol and relaunch the product under a new name. But Burke refused. Instead, he reintroduced Tylenol encased in new tamper-resistant packaging in a corporate commitment to safety that eased public fears. The industry followed his lead, making products tamper-resistant and safer for consumers. Within a year, market share was restored, and Johnson & Johnson became a model of crisis management.
“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.”
—NELSON MANDELA
My own lessons in corporate courage and the value of a crisis came relatively early in my career. In the early days at the start-up that would become America Online, before we introduced the AOL service, the company spent more than a year developing an online service with Apple, known as AppleLink, that bore the Apple logo. Our young start-up burned considerable time and resources in creating the software and back-end technologies. However, from the start of the relationship, there was trouble. Apple had never grown comfortable with the idea of another company operating a product/service under its name, much less a fledgling start-up. Then one morning, the dreaded call came—Apple was canceling our deal.
In his book The Third Wave, my husband recalls receiving that call. “It was like going through the five stages of grief all in the same afternoon,” he wrote. We considered our limited options to save the company. In the end, we decided to take the technology we’d built and use it to launch our own online service. “We need to create our own brand, propelled by our own marketing, paid for by us,” Steve said at the time. But where would the money to do this come from now that the Apple deal was dead? After a series of conversations with Apple executives, we arrived at a termination settlement of $3 million. Today that wouldn’t be enough to keep many young companies alive, but it worked then.
I recall the lightness of that moment. Yes, there was some fear as we stepped out on our own. But freed from our troubled relationship with Apple, we saw a new sense of energy and enthusiasm set in. I found myself actually looking forward to the possibilities each day might bring. By that time it was my job to lead the communications, marketing, and branding efforts to build scale for this new service. Once we landed on a name—America Online—our mantra became to “get America online.” We knew the clock was ticking—we had limited funds, and a product to get out the door. So we coalesced around this mission, seizing the moment and letting urgency conquer any remaining fear.
“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”
—HELEN KELLER
While corporate crises can teach us about the power of letting urgency conquer fear, so too can stories of brave men and women who lived through trying times—rare moments that set apart those who face down their fears and do something extraordinary.
Earlier in the book, I mentioned my German grandparents, for whom I have enormous respect. When they left their homeland in the 1920s, an ugly movement was beginning to take shape there. The Nazi Party would soon come to power, exploiting the fears of those living in an economy that was left in ruins after World War I. As a child, when I began to learn the history of Germany, I would often pepper my grandparents with questions: Could they help me understand the rise of the Nazi Party? Could they explain the inaction of citizens who saw the threat but did not find a way to stop it? How was it possible that so many remained mute while their fellow citizens were carted off to camps or shot in the streets? My grandparents had no answers. They too struggled with the same questions about what had become of their former homeland.
Perhaps because of my family ties to Germany, I became fascinated with the stories of ordinary people who stepped in to shelter those in need, or to do their part in the resistance movement. I was especially drawn to stories of those who risked their lives to harbor and protect Jews during the war. I began reading many accounts of bravery and sacrifice from that period. In one of these books, The Hiding Place, I was inspired by the story of the author, Corrie ten Boom.
Corrie ten Boom was an unmarried woman in her early fifties living with her father and sister at the start of the war. (Perhaps because I was a young teen when I first heard her story, I could not believe that so unlikely a character could emerge to play such a historic and heroic role.) Corrie’s fearless role in the resistance began without forethought in an instant of daring; she seized the moment. One morning, working in the family’s watchmaking shop (she was Holland’s first female watchmaker), Corrie heard a commotion across the street. Looking out her window, she saw a Jewish neighbor being held at gunpoint by Nazi officials, who were pushing him out into the street. The soldiers then ran back into his shop and began destroying its contents. Corrie rushed from her workbench out to her neighbor, who had been left unguarded and in a daze. Corrie grabbed his arm and hastily led him through her shop and upstairs to her apartment.
This instinctive gesture began Corrie’s dual life. She appeared to be a kindly spinster, but behind the scenes she was a soldier of the resistance. Corrie arranged for a sophisticated hiding place to be built behind one of the walls of her bedroom, large enough to hold half a dozen refugees. And she built a network that helped the people she hid find a way out of Amsterdam. Through her efforts, hundreds of Jews were saved.
Corrie’s secret activities continued throughout the war, until one day in February 1944. She was sick in bed with the flu when the house was raided. Miraculously, soldiers did not discover the hiding place. But Corrie, her father, and her sister, Betsie, were arrested. They were first sent to a nearby prison that housed political prisoners. Frail and elderly, Corrie’s father did not survive the harsh conditions. After his death, Corrie and Betsie were sent to the notorious Ravensbrück concentration camp, where disease, starvation, and exhaustion from heavy m
anual labor were routine. But Corrie and her weakening sister did what they could to serve those even worse off than themselves. At night, fellow prisoners would gather around as Betsie read words of hope from a smuggled Bible that Corrie had carried with her throughout their ordeal. Betsie did not survive, dying in December 1944. Days after her death, Corrie was unexpectedly released. She returned home to Amsterdam and reestablished a connection with the resistance network, continuing her work until the Allied army retook Holland in May 1945.
I was fifteen when I read Corrie’s story, and I devoured the book. Soon after, I learned that The Hiding Place had been made into a film, and that Corrie was coming in person to a local theater to speak at the film’s opening. I couldn’t believe it—and of course I went. I was near tears as Corrie, then in her eighties, with silver hair swept up in a bun, came to the podium. The audience sat enraptured as she spoke. Even in writing this, I recall very clearly how moving and inspiring her words were. At the close of the film, I was able to meet Corrie—something I will never forget. She had an inner beauty that shone through like a beacon of love. But her kind and gentle manner belied a strength and fearlessness that helped make her the hero she was to so many.
• • •
As for those questions I asked my grandparents back in the day, I think we all knew the answer, even if it went unspoken. And we know the answer now. Fear created the silence. Fear created the inaction. Fear created the appearance of complacency.
Like Corrie, and like so many of the fearless changemakers we have highlighted, we often face a choice in moments when urgency beckons. We can look away and let complacency take hold, or we can use these moments and let urgency conquer fear to make a difference.
In 1963, standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of the “fierce urgency of now” in the struggle to end segregation. “This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism,” he said, important words we should all embrace.
TWENTY-TWO
BE A FIRST RESPONDER
As a nation, we’ve come to rely on trained first responders in times of crisis. But what if those we rely on to act fail to do so? Sometimes an unlikely first responder rushes in to fill the void.
Walmart has often been criticized for the ways its empire has overwhelmed mom-and-pop stores on America’s Main Streets. As one of the nation’s largest corporations, with annual revenue of hundreds of billions of dollars, Walmart and its power had attracted some resentment. Then a devastating hurricane showed what Walmart was really made of.
Hurricane Katrina struck southern Louisiana and Mississippi on August 29, 2005, leaving large portions of New Orleans underwater. Nearly two thousand people died, and thousands more were stranded on rooftops and in makeshift shelters. Those who made it to the Superdome sports arena, where emergency shelter was offered, found deplorable conditions and inadequate food and water.
FEMA—the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the official first responder for natural disasters—downplayed the crisis and imperiously rejected offers of help from across the nation. Days ticked by, and Americans watched with disbelief as the desperate scene played out on national news.
Walmart CEO H. Lee Scott Jr. knew that his company, which had hundreds of stores throughout the region, could help. Not only did Walmart put enormous resources into relief efforts—including 2,500 truckloads of merchandise—but Scott also deputized Walmart workers in the region to make decisions about what would best help their communities. Scott sent out this instruction to store managers: “A lot of you are going to have to make decisions above your level. Make the best decision that you can with the information that’s available to you at the time, and, above all, do the right thing.”
In one story of initiative and daring, Jessica Lewis, the assistant manager of a store in Waveland, Mississippi, drove a bulldozer through the ruins of the store, collecting dry food, clothing, water, and other resources to give to neighbors. “She didn’t call the home office and ask for permission,” Scott said admiringly. “She just did the right thing. Just like thousands of our associates who also did the right thing, a trait I am proud to say is bred in our culture.”
After the storm, Scott challenged his board and top executives to reflect on Walmart’s ability to achieve social good. “What if,” he asked, “we used our size and resources to make this country and this earth an even better place for all of us: customers, associates, our children, and generations unborn? What would that mean? Could we do it? Is this consistent with our business model? What if the very things that many people criticize us for—our size and reach—became a trusted friend and ally to all, just as it did in Katrina?”
“I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough. We must apply. Being willing is not enough. We must do.”
—LEONARDO DA VINCI
Any company—or any person—is capable of stepping into the center of a crisis and making a difference. That’s certainly what a celebrity chef from Washington, DC, believes.
José Andrés calls himself a product of the “new American dream.” He arrived in the United States from Spain at age twenty, eager to develop his talents as a chef and to use his craft to make a difference beyond the kitchen. In the early 1990s he was offered the position of chef at Jaleo, a new tapas restaurant in DC that quickly became a favorite spot for Washingtonians. As his reputation spread, he and his business partner, Rob Wilder, opened several other restaurants around the city.
I first met José about fifteen years ago when he hosted a fund-raising event for DC Central Kitchen, an organization that works to combat hunger in Washington. (José served on the board.) I took note of his drive and his frenetic style—seamlessly going from a conversation about the power of food to change the world to refilling empty wineglasses he spotted in guests’ hands.
José’s commitment to making a difference has led him to become a somewhat unlikely first responder. In 2010, he founded the World Central Kitchen after traveling to Haiti following the devastating earthquake. “We cooked meals for people and showed them what could be done with the power of the sun,” he said. In the years since, he has continued to provide disaster relief, most recently in the aftermath of natural disasters, such as those that befell Houston, Puerto Rico, and Guatemala. He views food as both important nourishment and as an agent for change. Upon arriving, José sets up a makeshift kitchen and, oftentimes in sweltering heat, begins a daily pattern of cooking and preparing food, which he videotapes for social media to raise awareness and funds. (He’s careful to provide public thanks to the corporate and nonprofit partners who help him mobilize.) The Washington Post has called José “the face of American disaster relief.”
José’s work in Puerto Rico was extraordinary. After Hurricane Maria hit, wiping out power and causing massive food and water shortages, José arrived on the island and immediately mobilized an army of chefs, companies, and citizens from all walks of life to feed the population. The goal was to get on the ground quickly and provide meals to as many people as possible. Scaling rapidly, from one kitchen serving 1,000 meals on the first day to twenty-three kitchens serving 175,000 meals in one day, José and his teams became the lifeline for many on the island. In the end, they served more than 3.5 million meals. The New York Times called World Central Kitchen “the largest emergency feeding program ever set up by a group of chefs.”
The same year that José founded World Central Kitchen, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also named him a Culinary Ambassador of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves. It’s estimated that as many as 3 billion people around the world cook their food or heat their homes with wood fires that are not properly contained. The smoke from these fires can lead to health problems ranging from infections to heart and lung disease, and even death. The fires’ toll on the planet is also significant, leading to deforestation and significant carbon release into the atmosphere.
José also p
layed an active role in Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign, which emphasizes the need for fruits and vegetables in a healthy diet, opening a new fast-casual vegetarian restaurant, ironically called Beefsteak, with the tagline “Vegetables Unleashed.” Throughout this period, he has used his platform (he was named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2012 and again in 2018) to push against calls to further restrict the flow of immigrants into the United States.
With all his success, José remains humble. “My name is José Andrés, and I am a cook,” he said as he stood in the shadow of the Washington Monument in 2014 to deliver a commencement address to graduates of George Washington University. “When President Knapp asked me to speak at your commencement, I thought, why a chef? Even my daughters said, ‘They asked you to speak or to cook lunch for graduates?’ ” The students laughed, charmed by this man who was anything but a simple cook.
José spoke to the graduates about the new American dream, advising, “It’s not about having high-paying jobs, big houses, fast cars. There is nothing wrong with that, but the new American dream is bigger. It’s about how to achieve your success while also making an impact in the world. What you create for yourselves you must also create for others.”
José embodies the kind of fearless spirit we regularly witness when our nation experiences a crisis. Think of the volunteers who mobilized in 2017 as California’s fires raged, including two young women, Emily Putt and Hilary Hansen, who rescued 150 horses left behind when their owners were forced to flee. Think of small-business owners like Houston’s Jim McIngvale, known as Mattress Mack, who opened his mattress stores to provide shelter to hundreds of people forced out of their homes when Hurricane Harvey hit in 2017. Think of concertgoer Jonathan Smith, who helped others escape America’s deadliest mass shooting in modern history, at a country music festival in Las Vegas, before he was shot twice himself. (Doctors left one of the bullets in his neck, fearful that removing it would do more damage.) Day by day, across our nation and around the world, the fearless, selfless acts of those among us can inspire hope—and perhaps the courage to act—in us as well.
