Faced with a politicized environment, Mercy Corps temporarily removed web pages with terms like 'climate.' The goal was not to abandon the mission, but to find new language to describe their work without triggering political opposition, allowing them to continue engaging stakeholders effectively.
To combat aid diversion in crisis zones, Jada McKenna proposes a counterintuitive solution: overwhelm the area with supply. By 'flooding the zone with food,' the aid becomes less scarce and therefore less valuable. This tactic disincentivizes theft and reduces dangerous swarming of delivery trucks by desperate crowds.
Mercy Corps' CEO highlights a nuanced form of organizational grief: it's not just mourning what was lost, but also the future that 'could have been.' Acknowledging the death of a planned strategy, like a major rebrand or expansion, is a critical step for leaders and teams to process major setbacks and move forward.
Beyond 'fight or flight,' Mercy Corps' CEO identifies a third, more dangerous crisis response: 'freeze.' She argues that holding still or failing to adapt guarantees a slow demise. For leaders facing existential threats, radical rethinking is the only viable path forward, even when the future is uncertain.
The loss of US aid didn't just defund specific projects; it dismantled an entire operational 'architecture.' The collapse of shared resources, like UN-funded logistics and transportation, created cascading failures across the sector, showing how the entire humanitarian value chain can depend on a single keystone funder.
Jada McKenna debunks the myth that billionaires or foundations can replace large-scale government funding. She explains that while helpful, private donors rightfully see systemic support as a government responsibility and are unwilling to fill massive, structural funding gaps themselves, sticking instead to their own strategies.
Instead of tightening control during a crisis, CEO Jada McKenna deliberately handed off critical decisions to team members who weren't as involved in the initial trauma of layoffs. This strategy diffused leadership away from the most exhausted executives, giving them a needed break and preventing deeper burnout.