14/04/2020
I've made this summary, with points on how Business Leaders may wish to choose to get the Better of Covid 19 ............................................................................................
Get the Better of The Covid 19 Situation
1. Form a Crisis Management Team , led by an assertive , listening person ( answers can come from anybody, not only from experts)
o Give them an overall goal and they break it down into smaller achievable ones
o Involve internal as well as external experts
o Distributed Leadership works best, many across all levels need to take charge and collaborate across company and across vendors/business partners
o If necessary form more than one team to focus on different issues , or in the Crisis Mgmt team, each member could take leadership for one particular issue – say procurement of critical raw materials or unravelling stuck logistics or delayed inward payments to the business or orders risking turning invalid or labour unable to join
o Encourage the team to think of key bottlenecks, weakest links in the chain , to ask for clearances/support urgently and ask directly right to the top of the company/ partner , to creatively find a way out of the situation at earliest
2. Strategise and Review :
o Replan production keeping in mind priorities of top line and gross margins
o Team to keep looking at demand trends emerging and review plans suitably
o Scenario planning and market intelligence to be given good emphasis
o Growth areas to be picked and supported fully so that overall impact of shortfalls in other areas can be minimised . Hence strategically propel growth pillars even more
o New areas/markets to be explored if sizeable opportunity and have potential to start contributing early in the year
o Think deeper on how existing customers can help achieve more for you through cross selling and upselling and being more active
o Plan for the demand rebound at a certain point of time – keep self and partners ready for this , supply chain must continue to trust you so have fair policies
3. Revisit Processes and Spends :
o Processes to be questioned wherever necessary , make changes that can lead to saving time and resources , esp . if resulting in fairly good quality and with low risk to the image and customer satisfaction .
o Accept reasonable changes proposed by vendors/business partners to help them come out on top sooner . Time to throw out sacred cows !
o Conserve Cash - Revisit marketing spends esp. during lockdown , delay capex plans , reduce burn rate – stop salary increases, freeze hiring , ease out low performers , relook at need for rollouts and service delivery and administration infrastructure
o Reskill and rotate , redeploy workforce and front line sales/customer handling staff , automate and digitise as much as makes sense
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I believe a point of time will come soon,esp. in all developing countries , when consumption of most goods and services will boom, as once health threats come down, consumers will say - Let's live it up !
Hope you find it useful.
