You Didn't Mention the Piranhas: A Crisis Survival Guide

by Sarah Nelson Smith

Overview

How to live more bravely and successfully navigate through any disaster

In 2018, award-winning lawyer and business leader Sarah Nelson Smith found herself at the heart of a corporate crisis that made headlines around the world. A distribution failure led to hundreds of KFC restaurants being unable to open, threatening the livelihoods of franchise owners and exposing the company to huge financial loss and public ridicule. Why didn’t the chicken cross the road? Well, where to start…

With grace and good humour, Sarah Nelson Smith shares the lessons learned from the KFC #chickencrisis and many other experiences, offering an insightful and eminently practical guide to preparing for, working through and emerging stronger and wiser from any crisis. Clear, relatable and refreshingly honest, You Didn’t Mention the Piranhas is packed with insights on how to battle highs and lows, develop greater self-awareness, and decide how you want your story to continue – whether in business or in any other area of life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781789650587
Publisher:	Unbound Digital
Publication date:	10/17/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Sarah is the Regional General Counsel for global unicorn, WeWork. Whilst in her previous role as Chief Legal Officer of Kentucky Fried Chicken, she helped to steer the company successfully through the #chickencrisis of 2018, when a distribution failure led to the closure of the majority of the KFC restaurants in the UK.

Sarah has been listed on The Lawyer Hot 100 List 2019, the General Counsel Powerlist 2019 and 2016, and was the winner of the UK In-House Lawyer of the Year award in 2014. Sarah is a sought-after speaker at legal conferences around the world, and is recognised for her authenticity and courageous leadership. 

Sarah serves as a trustee of the social justice charity, NACRO, of the start-up charity, Sal’s Shoes, and is the Executive Sponsor of the ‘Women of WeWork’ group. She lives in Surrey with her husband, two incredibly chatty daughters, and her enormous dog, Otto.

Sarah is the Regional General Counsel for global unicorn, WeWork. Whilst in her previous role as Chief Legal Officer of Kentucky Fried Chicken, she helped to steer the company successfully through the #chickencrisis of 2018, when a distribution failure led to the closure of the majority of the KFC restaurants in the UK. Sarah has been listed on The Lawyer Hot 100 List 2019, the General Counsel Powerlist 2019 and 2016, and was the winner of the UK In-House Lawyer of the Year award in 2014. Sarah is a sought-after speaker at legal conferences around the world, and is recognised for her authenticity and courageous leadership. Sarah serves as a trustee of the social justice charity, NACRO, of the start-up charity, Sal’s Shoes, and is the Executive Sponsor of the ‘Women of WeWork’ group. She lives in Surrey with her husband, two incredibly chatty daughters, and her enormous dog, Otto.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Figuring It Out

My head of sixth form anchored herself at the front of the lecture theatre, her woollen-stockinged legs planted wide enough apart to ensure that the tide of teenage stares had no destabilising effect on her confident, be-tweeded frame. 'You,' she proclaimed, looking each of the eighty teenage girls squarely in the eye, 'entered this school an unholy rabble of ugly ducklings.'

A rousing speech followed. We had developed and grown; learned and flourished; made mistakes and picked ourselves up and recovered from them, emerging stronger young women as a result. In the back of my mind, the inspiring words from John Irving's novel The Cider House Rules spooled: '... you princes of Maine, you kings of New England.'

We waited eagerly for the inevitable close to Mrs Casebourne's words: 'And now, here sits before me a beautiful bevy of swans ...' Only, they didn't come. Instead, she implored us to ensure that our lockers were emptied carefully, as it was the last day of term, and the very last thing that next year's sixth formers needed was potent three-month-old sandwiches festering in their newly allocated lockers. The lecture theatre disgorged itself of girls, heady with hope and possibility and the first delicious taste of freedom. And suddenly, my school life was behind me, leaving me with what I knew would be a lifelong love of learning, deep-rooted friendships, experiences that forever shaped my character, and a lingering doubt: was I in fact still an unreformed ugly duckling?

PIECING TOGETHER THE PUZZLE OF WHO WE ARE

The saying 'feedback is a gift' has always made me laugh: to English speakers, it has one meaning; to Germans, for whom the word 'gift' translates as 'poison', it has quite another. Perhaps both are true. This chapter looks at the various sources of, and motivations for, giving feedback. It suggests how to identify and absorb the gift, whilst eschewing the poison.

My journey always seemed to be a bit of a jigsaw puzzle to me. Right back in 1984, my mother had managed to find the pieces that slotted together to depict a future legal career. But there were still a great number of pieces yet to pick up, examine, and place carefully in a position that made sense. Finding the corner pieces was relatively easy: to function at my best, I have always needed the comfort and joy of strong friendships, the stretch that creative and intellectual challenge affords me, a good level of physical fitness that I can maintain and enjoy day to day, and also time on my own to recalibrate and make sense of my jumbled thoughts and feelings. As corner-pieces to my own jigsaw, these were pretty easy to make out.

But as to the edges – those long stretches that set the boundaries of who and what I truly understand myself to be, which contain the promise that the full picture is held within them ... Could I really be sure what my boundaries were?

Having an opinion on an untested objective set of principles is easy. I remember being entirely certain that if a boyfriend cheated on me, I would obviously leave him. I had self-respect and I deserved better than that, and, if I were entirely frank, I thought people who put up with that sort of disrespectful behaviour had only themselves to blame for the repeat offences that would inevitably occur. Then my boyfriend returned from a ski holiday with friends. And, for some reason, he couldn't bring himself to look me in the eye. And when all of the sordid facts of the trip came out, I was furious and devastated and all-consumed with the hideousness of the situation, until I realised one day, a few weeks later, that, no matter how much we discussed it and how angry I was and how repentant he was, the simple facts could not change: the only thing that could change was my attitude to the situation. I could choose to accept it as a small and messy part of one chapter of our relationship, or I could walk away.

Both options were entirely possible, but I could only choose one, and choosing one but complaining about it would be emotionally exhausting for both of us. So I accepted what had happened, forgave him, and moved on. And life went on, and the world quietly tipped back onto its proper axis, and neither of us was thwacked between the eyes by a vengeful moral compass. Instead, we married. We built a life and a family together.

Looking back now, it's striking quite how incredibly unimportant that episode was. With the benefit of experience and perspective, there are many things that truly do not matter, and a cluster of things that really do. The challenge is knowing how to separate one from the other.

DOES YOUR OPINION MATTER TO ME?

So how to make sense of the jumble of jigsaw pieces that somehow make up the full picture of you: a riot of different shapes and colours and images? At first, there might seem to be little more than a promise that they will somehow sit harmoniously together. And, piece by piece, they do. Over time, order can eventually be born from chaos, and calm clarity from doubt and confusion. And as more of the picture is completed, so the gaps become easier and easier to fill. The true home for the missing pieces suddenly seems an easy find, when, only a few moments ago, it was impossible even to guess at what should sit where. This process of understanding yourself can, however, also be a long one (I wrote 'an arduous one' initially, but changed it: the effort is a large part of the fun). There are a number of pointers to help along the way.

Our first understanding of who we are, is of who others tell us we are. The opinion of well-meaning bystanders is at once a gift and a burden. Now that I have my own daughters, I realise more than ever the importance of carefully considering how I share with them my perceptions of them. Do I want to tell them that I think they are beautiful (and of course I believe that they are), or would that give them the impression that superficial beauty is an important benchmark by which I, and therefore the world, will judge them? And will this in turn encourage them to seek friendship with people who excel in the area I've signalled to them is important: superficial beauty? Whilst I don't want them to feel ugly, I'd rather they draw their feelings of self-worth from more fundamental and less transient characteristics. I tell them how much I love their kindness and their thoughtfulness, the fact that they seek out children at school who seem lonely and invite them to join in with their games. I praise their strong bodies, and say how grateful I feel that they're able to use them to run fast, climb high and, with courage, seek out new adventures. Of course, I also regularly point out (often fairly loudly ...) how much their bickering over nothing drives me crazy, and how I wish they'd seek out a good book for entertainment more frequently than they seek out a good film, but there is work still to be done here.

As children, it's hard for them to separate out the opinions that are altruistically given, and that they should care about and take seriously, from those that they should brush aside and largely ignore. As adults, it's still difficult.

I remember standing at a cashpoint a few years ago. I was meeting up with friends for an evening out, and was dressed up, albeit with no make-up on: I never really wear any. Next to the cashpoint, a drunk man sat on the pavement, jacket slung across his knees, an open can of lager in his hand, and a suspicious pool of liquid encircling him. He heaved his head upwards and performed a slow and silent up and down appraisal of my appearance. 'You look all right, darlin',' he concluded, taking another swig, 'but you'd look a lot better with some slap on.' At the time, I remember thinking, how astute! Notwithstanding the obvious impediment of prolonged intoxication, this gentleman has accurately identified a key and fundamental flaw in the way that I look. I must ... Then, thankfully, I quickly progressed to realising that here was a man, sitting in a pool of his own urine, casting judgement on whether I wore mascara and lipstick. Whilst he may well have been right, his was not an opinion that I'd lose any sleep over. He did not know me, and it truly did not matter to me what he thought.

There are numerous less stark examples. The colleague with whose opinions and morals you fundamentally disagree criticises you. Do you respect their judgement? Do you care what they think? Do you have any interest in winning their approval? Whenever somebody offers their unsolicited opinion, I always think of a scene in the play As You Like It. Jaques and Orlando are discussing Orlando's new love, Rosalind, when Jaques comments that he does not like her name. Orlando replies: 'There was no thought of pleasing you when she was christened.' An excellent Shakespearean example of consciously not caring!

LISTENING TO OTHERS WHEN IT COUNTS

At the same time, it would be a mistake to overlook the insights that those closest to you can offer. Your family and close colleagues probably see your face more often than you do yourself, and may be more adept at reading it than you are.

When it comes to it, even complete strangers can sometimes offer a more truthful and sympathetic portrait of us than we would ourselves. I found it fascinating to watch a 'Real Beauty Sketches' exercise conducted on behalf of Dove (the toiletries and personal care brand owned by Unilever). An FBI-trained forensic artist was asked to interview women hidden behind a curtain, and draw a portrait of each of them based on her description of herself. A stranger who had just met each woman was then asked to describe the same woman to the artist, to see how their description would differ. Each pair of portraits differed enormously. The one based on the stranger's portrayal was kinder, more beautiful, happier. It was also more accurate.

According to Dove, more than half of women globally agree that when it comes to how they look, they're their own worst critic. Our perception of ourselves is often far less positive than it should be, possibly because of all the unconstructive thoughts and nagging doubts that flourish in our own minds but which are thankfully filtered out (in large part) before they make it through to our mouths. Others hear only the sanitised version of our consciousness, which is generally a lot more palatable than the unedited version. But some close friends and family get the full draft text, with scribbles in the margins and plenty of crossing out and underlining. And despite our numerous imperfections, we are still loved. Perhaps seeing the flaws and scars in others can serve to reassure each of us that, actually, we're not so bad either, and that we're all only human at the end of the day.

CONSIDERING ALL THE PIECES OF THE PUZZLE

I work in an open-plan office. I have a lot of pretty fantastic colleagues whom I love to see and spend time with, yet at the end of the working day, it can feel as though I've had a sensory overload: the questions and conversations, whether I've been asking or answering or not involved at all, can fill my head and leave me longing for a moment of quiet. I sometimes stagger out of the office building, exhausted, feeling as though I've used up all but the energy required to somehow get myself home and to my front door.

But behind that front door is a family who haven't seen me all day, and who are excited to tell me and show me what they've been doing, and who want my full, enthusiastic and undivided attention. A perfect person would probably dig into their reserves of resilience and, with genuine gusto, leap into the home and play with the dog and assess the cartwheels and the paintings and suggest baking shortbread, then read stories at bedtime and possibly do a spot of light dusting before seductively suggesting an early night. For me, this is rare (indeed 'rare' slightly overstates it).

So on the days when I make it home, and have no patience with the children and go through the motions, wishing that I could fast forward and run a hot bath and switch off completely, should I feel like I've failed?

When this happened not so long ago, I sat with my eldest daughter and told her about my day. We talked about the good things and the challenging things, and the fact that I felt so tired that I didn't have the patience that I should have had, and that me getting cross with her was not fair, and was not her fault at all. And perhaps surprisingly, rather than agreeing that yes, I'm a hopeless mother and that juggling career and family is a losing battle, Mattie felt proud to be having a grown-up conversation with me about it. She appreciated the insights into adults' weaknesses, and became more open to talking about the things that she found tough to handle.

I don't know whether my pedestal has been quietly dismantled, but I rather hope it has: I want her to see me as an imperfect mother, who makes mistakes but who is open to discussing them and apologising for them and learning from them. And I want her to know that I fully expect her to make mistakes, and to have weaknesses, and that they are all simply a part of what makes her wonderfully, uniquely her.

WHAT IS THE LENS THROUGH WHICH ADVICE IS GIVEN?

I used to work with an incredible lady: Kim (not her real name) was bright and good at her job, but her emotional intelligence was off the bottom of the scale. She had absolutely no consideration for the impact that her words and behaviour might have on others. I loved working with her. Not because she was pleasant to work with – quite the contrary – but I considered myself fortunate to be able to have the opportunity to try to understand and establish a functioning relationship with somebody so closed-minded and negative and so very unlike anybody I'd met before.

In fairness, it was easy to view the situation as a personal challenge and not as an impediment, because Kim had no impact at all on me or my role. For those who worked under her management, however, it was a tougher gig. One junior man in her team, Louis, came in one day, brimming with excitement, and announced that his girlfriend had just accepted his marriage proposal! There was a big family gathering planned for the end of the year in California, and they'd decided to marry then so that everyone they cared about could be there. Through the buzz of congratulations and happy hubbub, came Kim's commanding voice: 'Don't even think of asking for time off for this! You're given too much holiday as it is. And a honeymoon is out of the question.'

Did this comment matter to Louis? Possibly, if he thought that he genuinely wouldn't be permitted annual leave for the occasion. Thinking rationally, though, he would have known that his boss's view was not the company's view, so could easily be overruled if necessary. The most glaringly obvious point to me, however, was that Kim's comment had nothing at all to do with Louis. Certainly, it was directed at him, and it sought to impact him, but in his four minutes of being in the office that day, Louis couldn't possibly have done anything to incite such a negative response. Kim was simply an angry, bitter woman. There were personal reasons for this, of course, and she no doubt had many redeeming features, but the way that she unleashed bitterness and cruelty on anyone she had some power or control over was a personal character flaw, and was no reflection on her victim.

Recognising the lens through which advice, criticism or opinion is given is key to assessing how to process it appropriately. The person who shouts that you're a ****ing **** when you take the last parking space that you were both heading towards: do they know you well enough to be able to make that call? Or are they simply angry and disappointed at the situation? Undoubtedly the latter. Whether people are speaking through their own fear and defensiveness, or jealousy, or avarice, this destructive lens distorts their comments, making their remarks at best worthless and, at worst, harmful. But it's our own choice what we do with that advice. Whether to pick through the shards looking for the grains of truth that might be amongst them, or simply to dispose of the whole lot and think no more about it. There's no 'correct' answer. The only incorrect answer, though, would be to accept the poisoned apple of distorted advice and hungrily devour it as an accurate personal judgement, inviting the resultant negative impact that it will have on you. Don't allow this.

DO YOU SHARE MY VALUES?

For various obscure reasons, during my long university holidays in the summer of 2001, I booked a one-way ticket to Phoenix, Arizona. I had plans to travel through Mexico, Belize and Guatemala with a couple of friends, and pick up a flight from Guatemala City back to London, via Detroit, leaving on 11 September (although, for obvious reasons, the return did not go as planned). I had never been to America before, and I had no idea where to stay in Phoenix. I'm not sure that I'd even got as far as buying a Lonely Planet guide – my usual travel staple – so we stepped off the plane and decided to ask a taxi driver, first, where he'd recommend that we stay, and, second, to take us there. All went to plan. And we headed to the YMCA, Phoenix.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "You Didn't Mention the Piranhas"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Sarah Nelson Smith.
Excerpted by permission of Unbound.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

About The Author,
Praise For You Didn't Mention The Piranhas,
Dedication,
Introduction: The Beginning,
PART I WHO ARE YOU REALLY?,
1. Figuring It Out,
2. Understanding Your Comfort Zone,
3. Get Your Brave On,
PART II COME WHAT MAY ...,
4. Find A Role You Love,
5. Find Your Tribe,
6. Understand The Background,
PART III SURVIVE THE CRISES,
7. Spotting The Footprints In The Butter,
8. Communicate (x3),
9. Recognise The Canoes,
10. Recognise That You Are Human,
PART IV RECOVER,
11. Learn!,
12. Know When To Walk Away,
13. Keep Your Promises,
Epilogue,
Notes,
Useful Addresses,
Acknowledgements,
Patrons,