The 4 Rs (Reflect, Review, Reconnect, Reboot) – business after lockdown

Do you want to make excellent performance infectious?

Now that I have captured your attention; do you want to maximise the performance of your employees, teams and ultimately your business in the “new normal”, once the lockdown for COVID-19 has been lifted?

When the lockdown is lifted, albeit in stages, the floodgates will be opened and there will be a tidal surge. Businesses will be trying to recapture their market share and reconnect with their customers.  But the market may have changed; customers may have also learned valuable lessons; existing products and services may be obsolete and new ones from competitors may have been introduced establishing a foothold in the market.

One thing that will remain the same though; it is the passion and agility of an organisation’s people that will hone the organisations’ competitive edge. This passion and agility will make excellent performance infectious.

What is keeping you awake at night?

With things changing fast, businesses and leaders need to be making the best use of the present now, spending time now thinking about the answers to a range of questions.  These questions may actually be whizzing around your head whilst you are trying to sleep at night. The questions may be like these:

1.     How do we transition into the “new normal” and move back from remote working back to open working? Is moving back the right operating model?

2.     What are the key things that we have learned during these last months? What has worked well and what shall we jettison?

3.     How can we capitalise on the good things we have done and make them part of our new way of working by building them into new processes and new operating models?

4.     How do I support my people to transition from where we are now to where we need to be?

5.     How do I want the business to look in 12 months’ time?

Consider the context

With these questions, the context is also important. They need to be answered with a range of scenarios in mind. There will be those who are working more productively at home and who now have a better work-life balance. Do they want to come back into the workplace; and if they don’t how will you handle this? Do they actually need to come back to the workplace anyway? If you are thinking of moving totally to remote working how will those who want to come back to the workplace feel? How have people experienced these different ways of working? There may be employees who have been furloughed and employees who have kept on working, either by choice or otherwise. This may lead to feelings of being valued or undervalued, of pride or jealousy and of comfort or anxiety. People may be bringing grief back into the workplace; grief because of the loss of family or friends or grief because of the loss of something treasured. During the lockdown, new habits may have been formed, positive habits around fitness and diet or negative habits around dependency on alcohol or drugs. How will you support these people to keep and use these positive habits and lose any negative habits? There are so many important questions to consider.

So what can be done?

There is a need now to review, reflect, reconnect and reboot.

Reflect on what has worked well and what hasn’t.

Review what to keep, what to amend and what to ditch.

Reconnect with your people and with customers and with the market in the light of the “new normal”.

Reboot the business to ensure that opportunities are capitalised on and ambitions are realised.

How can I support you?

To reflect:

I will supportively challenge people to not only self-reflect but also appreciate the experiences of those around them. I will create space and opportunities for real and deep reflection.

To ensure that the reflection is purposeful and positively orientated, I will provide frameworks and techniques for structured, deep, reflective practice.

To review:

I will provide facilitated conversations, be the person to ask the na?ve questions,  be the playful provocateur.

As a trained and experienced workplace mediator, I will enable individuals and teams to work through conflict so that learning takes place.

I will provide guidance, techniques and support throughout the review processes so the good is identified and capitalised upon and the bad is learned from and avoided in the future.

To reconnect:

Using my experience of working with leaders and teams I will help teams explore how they have worked together in the past, explore what has changed and to be innovative about how they will work together in their version of the new normal.

People will need to reconnect with the workplace and reconnect with each other. The workplace will be different, ways of working will be different, the way we connect will be different.

I can help build teams that are creative, supportive and high performing.

To reboot:

By working together we can reboot business. I will challenge you to think about how to recover by rebuilding your business and your teams for the new normal. I will enable you to develop a new resilience which is not just about bouncing back it is about bouncing forward.

Why me?

I am an engaging, expert, award-winning facilitator, qualified coach and work-place mediator with over 30 years' experience in Leadership and Organisation Development. I bring a practical, business perspective to organisation development initiatives. As a results-orientated, self-motivated, client-centred supportive practitioner, I work closely with key stakeholders in complex and diverse organisations to enable them to develop their people and teams in line with strategic ambitions and values. I am also able to draw upon extensive Higher Education Sector, Private Sector and Local Government experience from the senior positions I held in a variety of organisations. 

What you need to do

If any of the above resonates with you or if you want to explore how I can help you reflect, review, reconnect and reboot please visit my website:

www.markstephencrabtree.com or email me at [email protected].

Together we can help people adapt and learn and bounce forward with confidence and make excellent performance infectious