We are a month or so into a major disruption of our organizations. Almost everything has changed in how we run our organizations, how we interact with our team members, customers and suppliers. Many of us have had to reduce the number of team members, impacting families and friendships. This has been stressful, and candidly, not much fun. It comes with the territory.
The “responsibility” of leadership.
So when do you begin looking forward? NOW! You must begin developing your company’s strategy so your organization can emerge from this crisis at full speed.
The “obligation” of leadership.
As the leader, your obligation to the employees who remain, and maybe more importantly to those you had to let go, is to build your organization back, better. Where do you start?
To begin, you likely need to revisit your strategy. In light of the change in how people will interact once we are allowed to emerge from our quarantine, your products and services may need to be delivered differently. They may need to change. Certainly your employees will work differently (social distancing is going to be “a thing” for a while).
This process shouldn’t take very long, and if done properly, will be an important and effective team building exercise. Here is an easy template:
1) Clarify and confirm your mission, vision and values. Do they need to evolve to reflect the new environment?
2) Understand the new environment in which you will be operating, and evaluate this “new normal” against your current products, services and operations.
3) Based on #2, what can remain the same, and what needs to change?
4) Conduct a SWOT to identify priorities and establish goals/objectives.
5) Develop KPI’s to monitor progress against goals/objectives.
(The steps above are iterative, not sequential.)