Leading Your Organization Through the Pandemic: Lessons for Company Executives
In times of crisis like this, great leaders are known. A lot depends on the leadership of most organization to help their companies navigate securely during these times of so much uncertainties. The ability for a leader to offer ways through which team members can manage pressure and identify way forward will be most crucial now.
We understand that delivering as a leader will be very demanding given the present circumstances that companies are faced with. Therefore, we have taken special care to provide business leaders with proven strategies that they can quickly deploy during these challenging times in other to help their companies whether the Covid-19 storm.
Based on our experience in delivering exceptional digital transformation solutions and our success with major brands across different sectors we believe that the following solutions can be of immense value to business leaders who are willing to lead their organizations through this crisis.
1. Demonstrate resilience through sound decision making
Certain realities are typical in times like this when most people tend to be under pressure and lack clarity about how to go forward. It is not out of place to find employees that might experience burnout or depression if they are not properly guided and helped. This is one crucial role that every business leader must play in other not to lose good hands. There are so many potential sources of pressure that the employee working from home needs to battle with as they struggle to stay productive and useful to their organization.
The resilient leader must lead with empathy and clarity in such times. Having a good understanding of what your employees are going through and making them understand that you have their back will go a long way to help them manage the pressure they are currently facing. Leaders must also give direction so that their people are not confused about what is expected of them or how they are to go about delivering results. Giving clear lines of action will provide employees with much-needed clarity. For example, team leaders can help employees having little tech knowledge navigate the new remote tools that they will need as they work from home. They can also permit employees to come up with flexible work schedules that will allow them to handle other crucial responsibilities at home like caring for their kids.
Demonstrating empathy and sound decision making will portray you as a great leader to your employees and also help you effectively manage them as you work together to deliver on important business objectives during this season.
2. Create a clear road map for your company
With so many changes taking place in a very short time, business leaders will need to provide their organization with a clear strategy on how they can survive the crisis. The business landscape has become very volatile and several companies have already incurred huge losses due to the effect of the pandemic on the global economy. Business leaders are tasked with the responsibility of engineering solutions that can help their organization combat the crises as they battle to remain relevant to their customers. Business leaders need to come up with solutions quickly by working together with other executives in the company to identify what changes are taking place in their customer needs and behaviors. This will help them develop unique solutions and adopt business models that will effectively address those needs. From identifying which digital solutions to adopt to deciding on what marketing moves to make in order to keep customers satisfied, the options are numerous and require all company executives to work together in developing a strategy that works best.
The company’s success will depend largely on how they are able to set up the necessary infrastructure that can facilitate the development of new digital channels that will allow their staff to deliver results from home and also allow their customers to maintain communication and transactions with them.
3. Get the needed human resources
Business needs are changing rapidly due to new customer priorities. The tools and skills that are needed to deliver on business objectives are no longer the same as what it used to be. This has created a need for a new set of skills and competencies in solving customer problems. Digital is now the new normal. As companies are transitioning to digital channels, they also have to ensure that their people are capable of delivering solutions using these channels. Business leaders must make the necessary arrangements to ensure that their employees have the right set of skills that are needed in this new working structure. They can invest in upskilling and reskilling programs in other to get their critical staff up to speed. In some cases, there might be a need to consider outsourcing options so as to meet up with demand. However, it is important for companies to make preparations for recruiting additional talent, especially those ones that cannot be taught through reskilling or upskilling programmes. The Human resource officer would need to work with other company executives to identify the necessary skills and competencies that are lacking and create a plan for hiring such talent. This is very much necessary especially as companies plan for the long term. The kind of solutions that are needed to keep up with changing business priorities and new business models will require advanced business analytics, critical problem solving, and digital marketing competencies. Business leaders must ensure that their people possess these skills and where necessary they should hire more people so as to facilitate quick response to changing customer needs.
4. Exceed customer expectation
Ensuring that you keep your customers happy is crucial for business success. A lot is changing about the customer and business leaders must ensure that they keep tabs with those changes. Communication is most crucial in times like this. Companies need to go the extra mile in other to help their customers. Company executives can reach out to customers directly using video conferencing tools or even conduct surveys to better understand the challenges that their customers are currently facing. Additionally, it is important to also deploy dedicated teams that focus exclusively on building processes and models that track customer journeys in a bid to identify changing habits and behaviors. By maintaining a culture of testing, tracking, and proper analysis using updated algorithms, business leaders can make informed decisions on new customer priorities and create the right solutions that can be deployed to address their pressing needs. They key is to act quickly in identifying what constitutes customer priorities, develop solutions that meet them and track how the customers are responding to them so as to identify what to change and what to improve on.
When businesses are faced with hard times, they rely on exceptional leadership to navigate through such times. Business leaders can demonstrate their ability to help the company survive through this crisis and also position in such a way that they can thrive in the new business environment.