Business as usual on Sept. 11 this year? Maybe. Then again, maybe not.
For many people, scenes from this day a year ago will be as vivid as ever. Volcanic towers. Posters marked with names of husbands, wives, sons and daughters who didn’t come home from work. The Pentagon a pale target in foliage.
It’s likely that some member of your staff—or even you –will feel what’s known as the anniversary effect. Don’t be surprised if you or those around you experience a watered down version of exactly how you felt the day of the attacks.
“Anniversaries are a time when people tend to have a rise in emotions,” says Bruce Blythe, chief executive of Crisis Management International, a global crisis management firm based in Atlanta. “For everyone in America, Sept. 11 will be a difficult day.”
One way to reduce the pain and make the date meaningful is to think about how Sept. 11 has made you better as a person and manager. Here are a few things to consider:
- Sept. 11 taught us to value people. People mattered before Sept. 11, but after that day, we tended to value the people we were serving and working with a little more. At Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana, chief executive Kathryn Cullivan asked employees to think about their co-workers with a simple exercise. She gathered her entire staff in the companies common area and asked them to turn and look at the people who were standing around them. “What if that person were gone?” she said. “Let’s try and make sure we’re grateful for the things (people) that are here.” Before Sept. 11, Sullivan admits that her words might have been met with eye rolls and shoulder shrugs. But after the attacks, that wasn’t the case. “It really did bring us together as an organization,” she says.
- It taught us to use resources wisely. Take travel, for instance. Sept. 11 made companies pause and think about what made sense with cross-country face time. Before Sept. 11, corporate globetrotters zoomed this way and that, often with little return on investment of their time or money. “I had someone going to Rio for a meeting that lasted four hours,” says Laurie Anderson, a Chicago executive coach and psychologist who works with Fortune 100 companies. These days, “people are resisting stupid travel. They have been given permission to define what is strategic,” she says.
- It taught us to get work done in the face of distractions –even terrible ones. “Sept. 11 really heightened how real, both psychologically and emotionally, our reactions are to situations,” says Jan Yager, a time management coach in Stamford, CT. Some things shouldn’t be ignored, of course. But in any give week, our emotions often keep us from doing our best. “It could be something as seemingly innocent as an upcoming birthday party…that could people to be unproductive,” Yager says. People learned to strike a balance between feeling, feeding their souls and focusing on what needed to get done for life – and business—to go on.
- It taught us that people can do great things if they work together. High above the states, the passengers of hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 had just over half an hour to prevent what they believed would be a direct hit to either the U.S. Capitol or the White House. The missile? The very airplane they were sitting in. A terrifying situation. But with teamwork, the passengers are believed to have wrestled the plane from the hijackers and brought it down in a Pennsylvania field. No one on the plane survived, but many on the ground were likely spared.
Each contributed in a unique way. Flight attendant Cee Cee Lyle, for example, boiled water to be used as a weapon against the hijackers. Passengers who had known each other for only a matter of minutes put their heads together, gathered information, strategize and did what non of them could have done alone.
Lisa Beamer, whose husband, Todd, rallied the passengers by shouting, “Let’s roll!” put it this way to Dateline NBC: “Todd was an ordinary guy. He was extraordinary to me and his family, but to the world, he was ordinary. And, like any ordinary guy getting on the plane that day in a business suite, he was able to do extraordinary things.”
The valuable lessons of Sept. 11 for workplaces