Three Actions for July 2020
COVID-19 is more like a shifting and gusting cross wind than a rogue wave, and no two businesses have been similarly affected. The past few months are likely repeat themselves in some way, with openings and closings; a consistent shifting of the winds.
Has your organization found a homeostasis in the current state? Has your organization uncomfortably contorted to survive? No matter what, we are where we are and we have to move forward.
Here are three things any organization can do this month to help go beyond their horizon:
You need to counter-rotate like a ski racer. According to the PSIA, "counter-rotation describes the movement when the upper body turns in one direction as the lower body (legs) turn in the opposite direction". It’s about being prepared by keeping your upper body one step ahead of your legs. Counter-rotation creates a lot of stored energy, that when released, quickly initiates the next turn – you can pop from one turn to the next with little effort. Without it, you lose edge grip, and the ability to choose your line. Counter-rotation not only provides you with confidence to choose your path at speed, it helps provide a good rhythm as you go.
Collaborate. What can you do to help your organization by helping theirs? It comes down to symbiosis, in some combination of markets, knowledge, or capital.
Somewhere there is another organization that has excess capacity or underutilized assets, and they are eager to fill that capacity and increase asset utilization - both tangible (facilities, production, vehicles, etc.) and intangible (sales force, customer lists, followers, expertise, processes, distribution networks, etc.), but lacks your vision and creativity.
Financial analyses. As your organization has changed, so should how you look at it. The past several months has presented a good time to reconsider the old business model versus the new business model. Did you identify a new bottleneck, that you never imagined was holding you back? Did the customer get redefined? How has the relationship with customers, investors, suppliers and employees changed? It is a good time to freshly look at: what correlates to financial success, asset utilization, working capital cycle, customer lifetime value, customer acquisition cost, etc. And add in the defensive interval ratio while you’re at it.
The new norm will be the only historical constant: change, but with larger gusts, and we all need stability to navigate into that future.