Resilience to Recovery
Resilience is the path from reactive to recovery.
It is time to come out of triage mode and into recovery mode. This starts with changing the mindset from “right now” to the “future”.
Seeing challenges or perceived limitations with an “anything is possible” mentality. Get out the whiteboard. Ask for input from your team, mentors, advisors, and peers.
Dare to Define the Destination
What does success look like on the other side of recovery? What is the vision that sets the stage to be a thriving business?
Your mission or objectives may not have changed, rather the plan for execution is likely different. (Ok, caveat if the problem you solve for has been eliminated then your mission may need to shift too but there is likely a related mission if you redefine the problem).
What do you want for your customers, employees, and strategic partners? What are the results you want to deliver?
Having a destination allows you to back into the immediate steps you can take to get there.
Pivot How?
Assess the situation. What are the macro changes that impact your business (or all businesses really)? From a recent Deloitte article:
· “Future of Work” - societal expectations. For example, 60 % of workers say they prefer to work remotely even after restrictions are lifted.
· Unpredictability of financing needs and sources of funding. VC dollars are not flowing like they used to and when will they start investing again?
· Customer behavior. For example, home delivery of EVERYTHING.
· New expectations for physical, emotional, financial and digital security.
Yes, the biggest challenge is that many of these are still very uncertain. You may have to take many small pivots in response to the ever-emerging impacts of this pandemic.
Ask Yourself Some Questions.
What needs to shift (1) customer targets or (2) value proposition, or (3) vendors/suppliers/partners. Some examples:
Maybe existing customers need a new product or service or a piece of the solution you offer.
What about new customers with same product or service?
Is there a new problem or unfulfilled need?
How do you go from “nice to have” to “need to have”?
Are there new partnerships to make to horizontally or vertically integrate solutions or create new ones?
Trust, Enough Said
Once you have a go-forward strategy. You need your team, your customers, your business partners to be on board.
The answer is trust. As a leader it is important to project confidence with a dose of reality for the challenges ahead. Be decisive, take the best path available at the time. Don’t wait for a clear picture.
One definition of a resilient organization I read was one that gives permission for employees to take care of their physical, mental, emotional and spiritual needs. As noted, societal expectations about work have changed and one of those I think is that companies give a crap about their employees.
For your employees, trust could be built around how you are going to transition them back. Being as sensitive and responsive to their concerns and fears. Have a thoughtful plan, ask for feedback.
For your customers, listen to them. Maybe for customers it’s improving digital security – Zoom! Or, now that their whole life is online ordering, they care more about protecting their information.
Resilience is the ability to overcome setbacks and tough challenges, to see opportunity to learn from the failures, the ability to adapt and transform. To get on the path to recovery lean into your resiliency and that of those around you. Create trust and work from a place of trust. There is a feeling of being out of control right now and a desire to tighten the reins, but you can’t do this alone.
