New Epoch, New Leadership – Tranquilizing the Turbulence

The actions and decisions that this generation of business leaders will take now and in the weeks to come, will define the fate & future of them and their companies. Firms that balance protecting and running the business today with retooling the business for tomorrow will outrun extinction and thrive after the pandemic.

In today’s remarkably rough times, when the world is experiencing the extreme levels of upheaval, there is only one guiding force that has the power to flip the prevailing economic and societal conditions – The Resilient Leadership.

We all are well aware of this fact that the outbreak has hit the global market and almost every industry in a hard way. To manage this economic turmoil, from loss of clientele, demand and supply disarrays to remote work, businesses are striving hard to adapt and evolve.

The actions and decisions that this generation of business leaders will take now and in the weeks to come, will define the fate & future of them and their companies. Firms that balance protecting and running the business today with retooling the business for tomorrow will outrun extinction and thrive after the pandemic.

The greatness of leadership is forged in the heat of adversity. At this time of unprecedented disruption, as a leader, you are supposed to armour your businesses and organisations with a shield of adaptability, resilience and innovation. This hour demands from every leader a commitment to drive the actions led by purpose and not by fear. It is you who must keep your companies and organisations afloat and you can do this by taking care of the two most dynamic parameters – Integrated Response & Organisational Resilience.

INTEGRATED RESPONSE

This situation has endowed the collective responsibility on the shoulders of the leader. To stand firm and become actionable again, you need to have an integrated response for three concrete spheres of your organisations – Workforce, Workflow, Workspace.

Workspace

Workspace

Plan and take strong measures to ensure a safe working zone

As the offices set to reopen, employees are heading back to offices with a constant knocking of fear at the back of their mind. To yield greater productivity, that is the need of the hour for your business, it is imperative to ensure your staff that they are safe in working premises. As you address workplace health and safety, include enterprise tools like Automatic Contact Tracing, Temperature testing, regular sanitizing and adequate distancing to mitigate potential risks quickly.

Go for a hybrid model for the initial span of few months

Spilt your team into two broad categories – Work from home and work from office. Model a phased return-to-workplace plan & use zip-code-specific health information to categorize the employees and their roles. For the ones who are residing in containment zones of the city, ask them to continue work from home and the rest to join office in shifts or alternate days depending upon the cores of your business.

State-specific return-to-workplace guidelines

Define policies to keep employees safe with high morale. Build a framework to manage and monitor operational risks and procedures related to a return to the workplace. This includes setting up clear guidelines for every employee, vendors, customers and visitors and enforcing the critical risk measures specific to COVID. Social distancing, wearing masks, using sanitizers, contactless deliveries are some of the new norms for next normal.

Workforce

Focus on the well-being of your team

Be empathetic and come up with the programs and workflow measures to reduce the emotional, physical and mental stress of the current environment. Understand the top constraints of your workforce and help your people work productively at times when they have to be most effective. Reevaluate performance measures, employees’ concerns and productivity blockers.

Re-skill and Upskill your employees

Evaluate the past performance of your team and figure out the areas that need to be worked upon to it resilient for the unforeseen challenges that are going to come. Take proper actions to upskill and re-skill them – enrol them into online courses, conduct remote training programs and share your expertise and experience with them to upgrade their level.

Make New Leaders

Split your team into two parts by keeping in mind the core capabilities of each individual. People who were great at handling operations must be put together in the team to work for recovery and those who were great at research and solution building should be given the responsibility to map and trace the future acceleration for the company. To make it even better, check-In for employee preference analytics to better develop a workforce strategy that is agile and can act and react quickly You will be needing more hands and it’s the right and high time to create new leaders who can take your company in a new direction under your guidance.

Workflow

Analyse and Accent Urgent Actions

Go through all the existing plans and strategies and sieve out the essentials tasks to be performed and hold the non-essentials for time being. Use data-driven insights to pinpoint where you can reduce costs and how you can have perineal revenue streams. Ensure quick and safe restart of facilities that are driven centrally with a profound emphasis on efficiency and productivity.

Channelize the entire framework

Address the supply-chain disruption and re-define the processes to handle the crisis. Perform market research, study about consumer behaviour and redesign your existing offerings to remain functional in these trying times. Take a clear view of forwarding demand and the new normal & restructure the organization to fit the capacity needs as well as stabilize the supply chain accordingly.

Ensure operational efficiency

Look out for the root reasons and manual processes that have stood in the way of smooth operations in your company. Curb those root reasons immediately and replace those processes with automation. Speed up digital adoption for efficient management and greater productivity of your employees. After addressing the immediate actionable measures, digital acceleration & process automation should become your top priorities.

ORGANIZATIONAL RESILIENCE

Scenario Planning

Create space to scan & visualize the longer-term horizon. The response window for a crisis is typically measured in months, while recovery is measured in years. As a leader, you must evaluate the likely impact of the crisis on the economics of your business and run scenarios to create a crisis agnostic plan that works for your business

To come up with that plan, you need to understand and consider two major dynamics that are going to decide the direction of your action plan. The first is the depth of change in demand and the duration of the impact. You must monitor these variables regularly and deeply to figure out the strategies and work plans that are going to work for your companies.

Dive deeper and analyse each aspect of your business keeping in mind the purpose, potential and perspective of your business. To manage this prolonged uncertainty, establish a dashboard of metrics that will help your team to assess how quickly each scenario is approaching and to map the direction in which you are heading. It can include traditional business metrics to map demand shifts, supply/ops issues, regulatory requirements, and potential operations restart; adjust for sector-specific issues in real-time and the goals that are supposed to be achieved in a pre-defined timeframe.

Revenue Channels

After developing the scenario-based planning approach, analyse the projections and plans that you had structured for FY20-21 before this sudden outbreak. Revamp the business plans and allocate the budgets and resources to different avenues of your business to survive and continue your business.

Streamline all your efforts and investment in offering the solutions that cater to the needs and problems of the present. Review the existing products and services that you have been offering, categorise them into three categories – Keep Up, Modify & Drop. Keep up the services and products that are serving the solutions to present problem, modify some existing offerings to accommodate the pandemic cover and Drop the ones that have been rendered obsolete by the situation. Apart from this, tap the consumer needs with data analytics to craft solutions for the future. Dedicatedly work on building solutions and products that are going to address future needs, problems, habits or wants of the consumer to transform your industry like no other.

Try to come up with more than two fixed flow revenue streams. It can be done through various means by expanding the horizon on the digital landscape, by tying up with some platforms, collaborating with some agencies or similar means to channelize the capital required to sustain and scale your business.

Agile Strategies

Many leaders believe that work may never be the same again and working methods need to evolve. Owing to the great imbalance due to this outbreak, business leaders must rethink, revamp & redesign their existing strategies & reform their existing models. 

Build agile strategies that are dynamic enough to attract market response and have the flexibility to evolve with time. Short strategic time slots will enable you to make agile decisions and tune your company’s strategy in response to changing demand patterns.

Stress-test current value proposition and business offerings, and scan crisis impact on key customer/market trends. Take a strategic approach to expense management — by protecting the core, investing in the future, reducing or eliminating low-value spend — to safeguard the organization against potential competitive threats & unforeseen challenges. Harness your core capabilities to manage unstable supply chains, create better bandwidth by onboarding new and multiple suppliers for critical goods and develop strategies to create and tap new demands in the market.

Customer Security & Trust

You must reach out to customers to understand their needs and challenges. Build and cherish the emotional connection and make them believe in the fact that your organisation is there to hold their back in these trying times. Adapt the flow and policies to make your existing clients comfortable in making buying decisions that are in favour of your company. Drive actions to inspire confidence and ensure the ability to deliver them with the best.

Transform and ramp up sales efforts to seize the market shifts; map the consumer demands and leverage learnings to accelerate digital capabilities. It is high time when your sales team sell the purpose and perspective and pitch the experience to the clients rather than the products or services. Transform sales cycle and channels to manage the volatility in demand and refine the objectives for the long run.

Digital Transformation

To address new needs and new challenges in the most efficient and accounting way, speed up digital adoption. Identify and implement key digital use cases to make your system and processes robust and agile. Increase focus on digital campaigns & embed advanced technologies to transform your businesses.

Digital is defining the new world and your customers are going to flow with the trends and tools that are going to make things simple and transparent for them. It becomes extremely important for your business to redesign key customer journeys with an emphasis on digital interventions. Once the dust settles, go for worthy technologies like AI, Blockchains and Data Science to expanding the digital horizon encompass your business with security and resilience.According to the survey, conducted a few weeks back, here is the breakdown of the priorities that leaders have

Regardless of the setting and structures, leadership at its heart remains the act of appending new avenues, growing businesses and retaining relationships with team and customer. Achieving these things requires a series of “defining characteristics,” that leaders should possess in the current time to drive the time wave in their favour.

“Leadership is the ability to transform Vision into Reality”

Define and create a reality with these 5 characteristics

Be Empathetic

As a leader, it is your core responsibility to listen and understand the challenges of people, be it personal or professional. Acknowledge their efforts and spirit in this stressful situation and let them know that you are there to back them up in these times of crisis. Be considerate and try to emotionally connect with your team, customers and collaborators to get their loyalty in return.

Be Executional

Be an example for your team to follow you. You have to be action-oriented and reflective while driving the purposes and perspectives through the entire channels of your company. Work on details to and expect the same from your team to mitigate the hindrances that come your way. Find a balance between pause and action as they both are critical to run the organization.

Be Equanimous

Remain calm, compose and confident in every situation that comes your way. Avoid being too passive or too hyperactive during these times. Communicate frequently with realness, clarity, and authenticity. Openly express your vision and explain every between now and next with an actionable plan. Tranquillize the turbulence with a line that “we will do it together”

Be Encouraging

Acknowledge and encourage the efforts of your team at every step of the way. Motivation and encouragement propel your team to perform better and instil in them with confidence. Be humble, kind and appreciative to all the people who are working for your company at this moment as they are the people who are carrying your vision on their shoulders to make it happen.

Be Energetic

Leaders must radiate positivity and energy. Keep yourself healthy and be disciplined about your daily routines to channelize your energy. You should plan your day in advance with a range of timeline to judiciously allot your efforts and energy in accomplishing the tasks. Take care of your sleep and exercise cycles to increase your dynamism and say no to fatigue.

Conclusion

With the global outbreak upending the modern world, it is the high time when leaders should harness their potential to bring opportunities and avenues on the interface with their foresightedness and thoughtfulness. By consolidating the integrated response and organisational resilience, leaders can effectively define short term actions and long term vision with elaborated plans of execution. Leaders should make purpose, potential and perspective the axis of every decision to survive this crisis and thrive the new normal. Only effective leadership can mark the bright beginnings from this dark despair.