The businesses that have slowed down because of COVID-19 pandemic, know for a fact that they will emerge stronger. Management in a crisis is not easy – and this pandemic is unusually difficult -It is very critical for leaders to lead the organization during this crisis by communicating and organizing (re-organizing) in crisis times.
In this information age, most of the organizations are pretty smart in their strategy, marketing, finance, and technology, they know how to run their businesses. But, some of the organizations are differentiated by the health of the organizations by minimizing politics, confusion, building high morale, and by bringing high productivity, they can lower employee turnover. Though it is not going to be an easy ride to build a healthy organization, if the leadership works smarter with determination, it can make things happen, make the organization stronger than it was when the market conditions turn back to growth state.
The downtime is an ideal opportunity for corporate leaders to reflect on, indulge in course-correction, fix the gaps enabling themselves to bounce back stronger. The following four principles are helpful in achieving long-term and sustainable success.
Building a Cohesive Leadership Team
As we all know, along with strong and trusted founding partners who make the organization stronger, it is very important to build a second level cohesive leadership (C-Level / Sr. VP Level) team. The passion and trust from each of the leadership team members will make the bond stronger.
Creating Clarity
Create clarity about the value offering (product/services), the reason for the existence of an organization, cultural values, rework on strategy and differentiation and define the one thing that the organization should focus on in tough times so that the entire organization will come out well during the crisis and will have healthy growth when the good times come back.
Over-communicate the Clarity
People will fill in what they don’t know with misinformation. Therefore, it is very important for the leadership team to over-communicate the clarity defined in point two.
Reinforce Clarity
Leadership should enforce clarity without bureaucratizing it by laying a strong foundational structure and policy in place. Leaders should institutionalize cultural values.
