A leader outlines three priorities during crisis: show empathy and offer flexibility to keep people engaged, manage cash ruthlessly by cutting non-essential spending and making one deep staffing cut rather than many small ones, and start planning the post-crisis future now by reassessing your value proposition and identifying new customer problems.
Chapters
If you're the leader of an organisation suffering from the crisis right now, I guess you've got your hands full with all sorts of problems. But let me give you an idea, a hint. I think you should focus on 3 things right now. First, your people. Secondly, your survival. And thirdly, your future. Let's start with the first of those, your people. Many of your people are feeling anxious, worried, Depressed, concerned about their jobs, about their future, about their income, about their children, about catching the illness. And they need your empathy. You have to listen sympathetically. You have to communicate. You have to show you understand their problems. And they will appreciate this. And if you show this, if you invest your time now, it will be repaid back in their loyalty later. So speak to each of your people individually On the phone, even if they're working from home, they're doing fine. Talk about their personal issues if they want to, and show that you understand and you're sympathetic. And be flexible in how you let them work and the time they spend and the time they need for their personal and family issues. Secondly, your survival. This is critical, as you know. Some businesses are affected a little, some quite a bit, and some to a devastating extent such that they'll never recover. But whatever situation you're in, if you're going to survive, there are 3 things that are really important. First of all, cash flow. Secondly, cash flow. Thirdly, cash flow. This is so important. So what you need to do, as you know, is you need to look at all the areas where cash is going out of your business and see what you can slow down, see what you can stop spending money on. And secondly, you need to look at all the areas where money is coming into your business and see if you can promote that, if you can encourage people to give you early deposits or other ways of encouraging cash flow in. But certainly you should look at all of the outgoings, all of the standard expenditures, and see which you can reduce right now. And you may have to make some tough decisions. You may have to let some people go, and if you do, I would say it's better to cut deep and cut once rather than have lots of small cuts, because that's very demoralising for the people that stay. Thirdly, you You should consider your future, and now's not too soon to start thinking about what life's going to look like after this as we recover. Nobody knows exactly the shape of the recovery. If we find a vaccine, it might be quite quick. If there's no vaccine, we might be in a difficult situation for many years to come. But you need to speak to your people, gather them round in a virtual meeting, in a Zoom, and talk about the future. Talk about what's really important in the business. What is our value-added. What problem do we solve for customers, and what new problems will customers have in the future? You know, the problems you solved last year are not the problems that customers have right now. They've got a different set of problems, and a good thing to do is to speak to some of your leading customers and ask them what are the key issues that they face now and in the coming months. Because if you're going to survive, you'll survive because you can solve problems for customers, and you have to understand your customers and their needs, and you have to talk to your best people and ask for their ideas about how we can change, how we can pivot the business to become more flexible, lower cost, more suitable for our customers in the future, and that requires you to lead a good brainstorm meeting with your team. So there you are, the 3 things I want you to focus on: your people, your survival, and your future. Good luck.
