To thrive in the post-Covid-19 era don’t jump into a knee-jerk strategic plan, think radically by introducing an honest personal review first, writes Amanda Daly, founder of coaching firm The Turnaround CEO...
Questioning the viability of your business and challenging your model is an essential part of the process of moving forward. Embracing change, and the fear of change, provides an opportunity to reflect and lift the lid on the boxes we perhaps have feared to open. And by facing fear we can progress to a new comfort zone. That said, it is natural to be wary of change, especially when it is enforced.
Routine, familiarity and habits form a stable part of our daily lives and even our identity. But what happens when an event like Covid-19 takes that control and certainty away? Fear can creep in. When we are considering how to move forward, beyond Covid-19, we will of course need to think about an array of factors – finance, staffing, marketplace, funding, direction, destination – the list is endless.
If we allow our thinking on these elements to be influenced by fear, they will become universally negative and emotional, and it stands to reason that business decisions resulting from this thinking will be different from those arrived at in calmer more stable times. Our fear can make us freeze, and we miss the chance to make the business choices we want to.
Our fear can make us freeze, and we miss the chance
Many of us hailing from a traditional comms background recall the sense of fear, doubt and uncertainty we felt when confronted with the new challenges that moving from fixed line technology to the cloud presented. We just had to change our style of selling and even our business models to fit in with change. The Covid-19 pandemic is no different. It is exponentially larger in scale and impact, but it’s still just change.
Covid-19 has accelerated change. The adoption of cloud, home working, collaborations and video conferencing were always on the agenda, and have been for more than a decade. But the pandemic sped up something that was steadily being incorporated in some resellers into a head-long rush to completion. This is a significant landmark in our industry, and a turning point on how we will conduct future business. And in the world of business, we will all need to overcome the potential indecision, doubt and fear such pivotal milestones can bring.
Any event, however far reaching and enormous, can be viewed from different aspects, and if we ‘reframe’ our experience of Covid-19 in a positive way we can learn valuable business lessons, or even secure new business wins. If you are willing to look openly and bravely at the experience and your business, it will enhance the process of moving forward with these lessons and take your company to a stronger level.
Many of us will start looking inwards and challenge our thoughts about ourselves in terms of our skills as a leader and business owner. But a positive outcome to any event is dictated by your response to it. This is your chance to assess all of your processes, your functionality, your resilience, and yourself. Mindset is critical, and the stories we tell ourselves will affect the way we are able to transform our business and, to a large extent, our lives.