100Days1000Days - extending your runway

Based on the webinar on the 21st of April with panel members from travel, biotech and investor communities and 25 CEOs and entrepreneurs in an interactive set of conversations we had the following takeaways:

100Days – what you can do

Leadership in normal times and in difficult times require very different skills sets. At the present time to extend your runway you will need to make tough decisions, which will require that you have total trust of your teams. This means you have to make every effort to communicate in an open way with your teams and staff.

You also need to think hard about who you want to partner with in the longer term – in the supply chain, your customers and others. And work out a plan – strategy if you will – that ensures loyalty and goodwill.

Cash is king – but so is ensuring you have some degree of resilience in the business. If you cut everything to the bone – you may not have any spare capacity at just the time you need it. So you have to think carefully. Some companies seemed tohave cut pay by 50% at one time; others had a sliding scale and some were weathering the storm. Each company has its own circumstances and needs to work through the options.

Obvious cuts had also taken place in overheads; travel; marketing but n the main companies were trying to find creative ways to keep going while minimizing the impact of cost reductions.

1000 Days – what you need to do

It was clear, almost unanimous, that companies need to think ahead and there were some great examples of why this was both important and how to do it.

Had the teams seen such a crisis before? The meltdown of 2008, the effects of 9/11 and had they learnt from those situations in a way that they could respond quickly and decisively this time round? So – not only do we look 1000 days ahead we also need to look back and make sure we have learnt.

Several companies were using the sudden gap – to think hard about what business they were in, to pivot their capabilities out of the sectors they were in or to add to their pool of opportunities. This may be the very time to innovate your product and service lines; to find new gaps in the market.

It is very evident that some sectors are having a more difficult time than others – such as High Street retail; while online learning; online retail; digital healthcare have taken off. You may well have something that someone needs that you have not previously considered.

As one panel member said: Good times will be back – plan for it and prepare for it.

My thanks to Frank Zijlstra; Andrew Lynn and Simon Thorpe

 We look forward to the third in our present series next week on keeping and gaining customers.