Season one comes to a close with perhaps the most timely question we have explored this series: what actually happens to organisations when the pressure is on?

In this episode, Kate Nicholroy and Maddie Fox look at the research behind threat rigidity, a well-documented pattern where individuals and systems under stress narrow their thinking, restrict communication, and default to familiar behaviour at precisely the moment when more expansive responses are needed. It is predictable, it is biological, and it is entirely possible to prepare for.

Drawing on real examples from the COVID era and beyond, including the better.com mass layoffs, the Marriott response, the Wells Fargo accounts scandal, and the LEGO turnaround, Kate and Maddy explore the difference between organisations that come through sustained and acute pressure with their culture intact and those that don't.

The answer is rarely strategy alone. It is almost always the quality of the humanity that leaders choose to maintain under pressure, and the degree to which open, curious, above-the-line practices have been built into organisational life before the crisis arrives.

In this episode:

Threat rigidity: what it is, where it comes from, and how it shows up in individuals and organisations

Why pressure narrows thinking at the neurological level, and what that means for leadership teams

The contrast between the better.com Zoom layoffs and Arne Sorenson's Marriott response

Wells Fargo, rule beating, and why removing people from a broken system does not fix the system

Lego's early 2000s turnaround and the practice of leading at eye level

Practical tools: naming what is happening in the room, somatic awareness, above-the-line practice, and the seventh generation question

Resources mentioned:

Staw, Sandelands and Dutton on threat rigidity

Arne Sorenson's March 2020 video to Marriott staff (available publicly online)

better.com CEO Zoom call, December 2021 (available publicly online)

Donella Meadows on rule beating and systems traps

"If You Aspire to Be a Great Leader, Be Present," Harvard Business Review

Richard Strozzi-Heckler, Embodied Leadership (available on Audible via Sounds True)

Connect with us:

We would love to know what has landed for you across season one, and what you would like us to explore in season two. Email us at hello@acuriousspacepodcast.com or find us at www.acuriousspacepodcast.com

Many thanks to Tim Fox for producing the show, and to Richard Flindell for the music throughout.