Post Lockdown-Ways Of Getting Business On Track

It’s perfectly alright to feel nervous, especially during current times. It’s OK!! Shit Happens and it happened with all of us. But being able to move forward despite those unpleasant feelings is key to succeeding despite uncertainty. INSEAD professor Nathan Furr has these tips: Focus on the long term, and not just the situation at hand. Explore multiple plans for various outcomes, and avoid “either/or” thinking. Keep “Hope” alive

Though entry took us off guard and now we should have an exit strategy in place. All business sectors have been severely affected, be it the travel industry, the food industry, the manufacturers, the service industry, or retail businesses; but this is not the time to panic but precautions and be prepared for every possible situation.

Sometime last year, our CTO started investing in technology infrastructure. That meant more investments in creating a secure, robust, and uninterrupted workplace to ensure that our teams can work from anywhere for our partners.

I was personally not very inclined towards such a huge investment happening until the lockdown happened. The pandemic hit and the lockdown didn’t create much panic for us in terms of business continuity as we were prepared to work from home, Expect some minor glitches, we are sailing smoothly.

We were lucky, we had a great team who was very proactive and made the right decisions at the right time.

This farsightedness is what is needed by leaders today post-pandemic. Everyone has been affected by it, people from across industries. Some of the worst-hit of course like travel, retail, manufacturing, etc may take a little longer to return to normal but I am hoping we can revive soon.

Some of the things which came out from my conversations with other leaders and founders are important to create a safe yet stress-free work environment once the lockdown is over are:

• Analyze if it’s safe for all employees to come back to work. Given a lot of them might travel back from home towns, you may want to analyze productivity and also areas from where they will travel
• Do have certain checks in place to keep track of their health parameters. Remember certain cases are non-symptomatic
• During this period, keep track of your competitors and also understand customer sentiment analysis on how they will want to use services offered by you
• Prepare a list of things that make you stand out and ahead of your competitors and make sure your target audience knows this. Remember it’s time to rethink marketing strategies as well
• Plan a remote service implementation plan. Given this is a time of isolation, so create a plan of how the cycle of implementation > Support is taken care end to end
• Give more human touch to your employees and customers both
• Stakeholder satisfaction is prime, make sure services offered solved the purpose and has been fit for purpose. Use surveys like NPS or Fit for purpose for the same

Remember you are not alone in this, look at the positive side, and don’t forget our actions determine how this impacts you and your business. What we can do now may change lives. An outlook to try new things and more openly accept uncertainties is the key.

Do share your post lockdown plans or reach out to me in case you want to connect and plan a process for yourself from a business or technology side.