Never let a crisis go to waste.
We are living through an incredible tragedy. We are massively undercounting and yet we have 3.9 mil cases and 271k deaths globally. I recognize that to speak of taking advantage of the moment seems callous.
I'm anticipating economic pressures headed our way, hence, strictly in a business context, I humbly offer that Rahm Emanuel is right when he says:
“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.”
During a crisis, one can break through inertia, get around the politics, discover that people are a bit more open to change, and leaders a little more open-minded about what in business as usual times they consider inconvenient or slightly painful.
To better protect your business near-future, and enhance the security of your long-term viability of your business/division/team, here are bold moves you should consider:
1. Optimize your org structure.
This might seem extreme but in my experience - as an employee, as a consultant - almost every single problem with your business is an org structure problem because the org structure sets incentives.
Every org structure accumulates crud over time.
Right people in the wrong jobs (or vice-a-versa). Weird fragmentation of team responsibility (one that only makes sense "because of history."). Too many people in an org. Too few people in an org. Wrong teams in wrong divisions. Multiple teams with the same responsibilities. One VP with an odd collection of teams. One VP with power entirely non-supported by any impact data. Yada, yada, yada.
You work in an organization, so you catch my drift.
If you are a great leader, now is the time to prove that. Economic hardship is headed our way all over the world. With this unique opening, it is time to be brave, to be bold, and take a day zero mindset to a revamped org design.
Some people have to move in or out. Some managers have to move in or out. Some parts of your org have to become smaller, sometimes cease. Some leaders have to be rewarded for impact (not just their effectiveness at managing up). Some leaders have to be asked to take on a new challenge because it is time. You won't have an opening better than this one.
For leaders, this is legacy building time.
2. Optimize process/flows.
I don't need to tell you the extraordinary burden that bureaucracy has created for your team and for you as an individual.
Unnecessary steps. Unnecessary approval meetings. Unnecessarily complicated forms. Soul crushing items to be checked to get a pencil or a project approved. Entire middle-management layers in larger companies. Work for the sake of work - with no discernable impact on customers or revenues. And on, and on, and on.
Here's a great exercise - even over VC: List the main processes that power the collection of work that leaves your team. Go through a brutally honest - nakedly transparent - "kill, prune, keep" discussion.
There will be pressure on your team/division/business to do more with less, and to do so faster. For many companies, the pressure will determine survival or closure. Take advantage of this unique environment to optimize processes and flows.
In three years another keep, prune, kill exercise will be required. But, that is ok. Humans. What are you gonna do?
3. Meta-analysis - pattern match - like crazy.
This is the time to focus on the forest and not the trees or shrubs. As you look at the forest view, you'll find patterns that can have broad applicability, improving effectiveness and efficiency across the company.
Look across all the customers you've acquired over the last two years, what signals identify a customer who will cost you more in customer support than you'll ever make from them? Firing your most expensive customers is a merciful outcome for both parties.
Your business leader loves Organic Social (remember, not a good idea), now is the time to roll up your sleeves and, in the name of saving your company from bankruptcy, collect Amplification Rate, Applause Rate and Conversation Rate to prove to your Leader (and yourself?) that there is zero value in Organic Social.
Collect all the data for all your campaigns on TV over the last year across all divisions, what patterns do you see when there was success? GRPs. Reach. Frequency. Publishers. Day Parts. Ad lengths. Creative types. Targeting Choices. Something else.
We get trapped in a silo view, in the here and now, and hence end up with local maxima improvements (at best). Meta-analysis helps us get closer to global maxima.
4. Uplevel your people/skills.
We are all staying home for a little bit, when we get back it is likely business will be slow for some of us in various teams.
You have known for the last three years that with the incredible transformation coming from machine learning and automation, your job is going to change/not be the same/not need you.
If you are an employee, what two new skills you can acquire? One that would make you invaluable in your core job? One that is adjacent to your core job, and would make you unique? Why not use this time to acquire those skills?
If you are an employer, can you put in place a tuition reimbursement program that would create an incentive for your employees to come out of this unique time with better skills? What better way to make your team future-proof?
5. Create a new purpose (mantra!).
If you are an organization that is a handful of years old, it is likely your original purpose has been diluted, you've grown/shrunk, you have different leaders that are pulling in new directions, and whatever you stand for is really hard to see.
Organizations are comfortable with the status quo and during business as usual no one will be particularly interested in investing in spiritual rejuvenation. But, a well-defined purpose will do exactly that.
Here's how you can come up with a new mantra: TMAI #197: Mission Statements (usually) Suck. Mantras Rock.
Oh, and the process of coming up with one is such a fun way to bring your teams together even over Zoom.
6. Upgrade technology.
This might be my most difficult recommendation to accomplish, because it will need money.
There is no question the technology you are currently using in your Operations, Customer Service, Marketing, Product Management, Website, are old, clunky, and not taking advantage of smart algorithms or much else. Not all of it sucks, but probably a whole bunch of it. Not because you like sucking, but because when you are around for a few years one just ends up in a comfortable suckus-quo.
There is a strong body of research that suggests that downturns are the perfect time for strategic investments. When others retrench, you spend smartly to upgrade core capabilities.
So, if you are doing three of the first five things above, it makes sense to upgrade the underlying infrastructure in your company where a naked honest assessment by you would identify suckus-quo.
It is how you create a competitive advantage.
7. Jump the curve.
Another really hard thing, perhaps only possible in a business climate that a crisis brings.
You are an analytics team, you have way too many products (reports, analyses, experiments, models, automation efforts, etc.). You know 30% of these are useless and another 30% is simply to ensure your team size stays at 8. You really need to move to agent-based modeling and leveraging machine learning. Time to jump the curve by eliminating the 30% + 30%. You will not do it in normal times, you can do it now.
Apply the above philosophy to your company's overall product portfolio, to the number of offices you have, to the amount of soul-crushing old content on your websites, to the number of consultants you've hired, and so on and so forth. Time to eliminate.
Use that opportunity to acquire a new company, to take the saved resources to build a center of innovation, to triple-down on a service that sets you truly apart, to... do something that will take your team/division/company off the curve that you are on to a new one with more growth, customer love and profits.
