When There Is No Road Map: Mitzi Johnson on Practicing Leadership in Crisis
Published Jan 28, 2026
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When the COVID-19 pandemic reached Vermont in March 2020, the state’s legislature faced a problem it had never seen before: how to keep democracy functioning when the very act of gathering could endanger lives. For Mitzi Johnson, then Speaker of the Vermont House of Representatives, this wasn’t just a technical or logistical question. It was a deeply adaptive challenge—one where, as she describes in the video interview below, “you don’t know the solution and sometimes you don’t know the problem.”
In Harvard Online’s new Adaptive Leadership course, Johnson shares what it took to lead through extreme uncertainty, maintain legitimacy and trust, and redesign core democratic practices in real time.
From Budget Writer to Crisis Leader
Mitzi Johnson represented Vermont’s Grand Isle–Chittenden district in the House from 2003 to 2021, ultimately serving as the 93rd Speaker. For a decade, she worked on the Appropriations Committee, including as Chair, helping steer Vermont through the financial and political turbulence of the Great Recession.
That experience honed her skills in navigating competing priorities, scarce resources, and high stakes—classic conditions for adaptive work. Her legislative portfolio spanned community development, water quality, and landmark tri-partisan gun safety legislation, and she became known for improving collaboration across party lines and strengthening transparency and inclusion in the State House.
But the early months of 2020 required something even more fundamental: reshaping how democracy itself functioned under stress.
Redesigning Democracy Overnight
The Vermont State House is, in Johnson’s words, “a busy little bubble” built on relationships: hallway conversations, informal coalition-building, and the dense interactions of a crowded chamber. Practically overnight, that entire system became a public health risk.
At the time, Vermont had no precedent or clear playbook for remote legislating or virtual voting. Yet the legislature still had to pass emergency COVID-19 measures, maintain government continuity, and protect public health.
In March 2020, Johnson and a tri-partisan group of House leaders worked to design and secure support for emergency rule changes that would allow remote participation and voting, shifting centuries of tradition in a matter of days. (vermontpublic.org) She described the move to remote legislating as “probably the biggest change to Vermont’s democracy since we were founded as a state.” (wgbh.org)
Practicing Leadership from a Position of Authority
In Harvard Online’s Adaptive Leadership course, Johnson names the core leadership challenge of that moment: practicing adaptive leadership from a position of authority while “managing extreme disequilibrium in a system” steeped in tradition.
Three elements of adaptive leadership stand out in her story:
Managing Disequilibrium Without Letting the System Break
The gap between “where we were and where we needed to be felt so huge,” she recalls. Rather than offering false reassurance, she had to keep the reality of that gap visible—while preventing panic, paralysis, or total shutdown. That balance is at the heart of adaptive work: keeping heat high enough for real change, but not so high that people blow up or bail out.
Distinguishing Technical Problems from Adaptive Challenges
On the surface, the problem looked technical: pick a video platform, draft new rules, work out voting procedures. But the underlying challenge was adaptive: Could legislators, staff, advocates, and the public redefine what “real” democratic deliberation looks like when it no longer happens face to face?Johnson mobilized progress on both the technical and adaptive components of the issue.
Partnering with Voices of Dissent While Moving Forward
- Adaptive leadership requires engaging dissent, not silencing it. Even as she strongly disagreed with colleagues, Johnson worked with them to respond in a way that preserved the integrity of the institution. (vermontpublic.org) Her story illustrates how partnering with your opposition can hold keys to a way forward by crafting solutions that preserve more than they change.
Learning with Mitzi Johnson in the Adaptive Leadership Course
By June 2020, Vermont’s legislature had wrapped up a historic session that directed more than $1 billion in federal funds to help state recovery. (vermontpublic.org) Looking back, Johnson has emphasized that the crisis opened up neww possibilities: "At that point [on March 13], honestly, it feels like all of our partisan labels sort of dropped off the back of our names, and we became one Legislature, and one group of Vermonters trying to solve the problem."
Today, Mitzi Johnson is a leadership consultant, trainer, and coach, as well as Director of the State Legislative Leaders Foundation’s Beacons of Democracy project and a board member of the Adaptive Leadership Network. She brings to the Adaptive Leadership course not only her formal training (MPA, Harvard Kennedy School; BS, University of Vermont) but also nearly two decades of lived practice in public life.
Johnson’s experience offers a powerful, concrete example of adaptive leadership in action. Watch the conversation with her below and explore the full Adaptive Leadership course to go deeper into the frameworks, tools, and practices that helped her, and can help you, lead when there is no road map.