Today, if you’re not doing business virtually you’re going to have a tough time succeeding. Take IPO roadshows, for instance, where CEOs pitch investors prior to taking their companies public. This was always done in person with as many trappings such as impressive board room tables and precise presentation choreography. Not so today, it’s all in one place now—online.
As we all know, managing a pandemic in 2020 was not on any executive’s to-do list, but it is now. This changes any executive’s agenda, business practices, and work-life balance. After twelve months of quarantined work environments, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that as things get back to normal, the word, normal is probably going to have a new meaning.
The challenges of managing Zoom meetings are many, particularly for companies that had not begun moving forward with a cloud-based business model. After conducting hundreds of virtual meetings, webinars, and workshops, we’d like to share some realities we’ve learned during the past year.
Reality 1: Preserving your company’s value is probably the most essential imperative you have to ensure you can live through the changing business environment. Whenever a disaster or unplanned event takes place, it pushes management’s mindset into a preservation mode. This is the correct reaction that guides the company into making choices that preserve its valuable assets: Its time, cash flow, and most of all, its people.
Reality 2: The pandemic forced many companies to digitally transform their business in literally three months or less that many companies would have taken three years to complete. Looking through the lens of innovation, that change is for the better. For larger firms, their number one priority is preserving their market positions, whereas it’s a matter of survival for smaller firms.
Reality 3: Strong cash flow coupled with excellent cash management is a top priority for all sized companies. Larger companies are looking for ways to contain their costs, sometimes at the risk of slowing their innovation progress, whereas smaller firms are looking for ways to postpone services to build up their cash pool.
Reality 4: Disruption of any size business can come in many forms. The less understood the disruption is, the longer it takes to develop a new solution. Decisions such as having employees work from home versus on-site is a top of mind decision. Quite often, this is not an easy transition for employees to make given their home situations, so helping them prepare for this change has become an essential imperative.
The work-life balance significantly impacts the overall happiness of employees. The pandemic has put a strain on everyone and everything and these stressors are easily detected on the faces of people during virtual meetings. The net impact of these realities is the new normal may boil down to slowing down in some ways and speeding up in others. Knowing what to start, stop and continue is very important!
Our firm has particular experience in organizational effectiveness consulting for Middle-Market Companies and Nonprofits. We provide an Ai-Driven Software Platform, SmartPlan360™, benchmarked across hundreds of organizations in various industries to guide strategic change. CEOs and their leadership teams have used our Rethink Workshops to rethink their strategies and transform their organization. Contact us about our price and speed-to-solution advantage.