After Covid-19...

In the first months of Covid-19, in an interview on the social media I emphasised the importance that it was the right time to invest. Needless to say, I was taken aback by a number of colleagues in the management consulting and some individual economists. They claimed that this was not the case and I should have never said this simply becuase the level of uncertainty was too high. In simpler vanilla english, the future was bleak. My judgement was purely theoretical based on years of experience. Humbly enough, looking in retrospect I believe I was correct.

In other words, those Managers who have understood that during a slow down it is the right and most appropriate time to re-engineer their business are now in an opportune position to meet the new challenges. Others who have looked inwards, are now probably looking into new "urgent" strategies to meet the new challenges with the least possible disruption. The levels of stress of the latter group is more strenuous and complex and one cannot guarantee that all new opportunities will be met.

One of the biggest challenges faced by industry today is the lack of man(women)power available on the market. The disparity between the demand and supply of labour is not only in numbers but it is further accentuated in the lack of skills and competencies which are required in today's business world. Unfortunately, companies who have not taken the opportunity to upskill their employees have lost a golden opportunity. Months later, these companies are too busy to release their employees from the daily routine to up-skill to new levels to meet the real and desired qualities required today.

Simultaneously, during Covid, companies had the time to look into their business process and assess if they are really meeting the business needs, whether they are customer focused and above all if these processes are effective and efficient enough. From time to time, companies need to go through a defragmentation process, whereby like the files on a computer hard disc, the business processes need to be re-aligned, re-modified and re-engineered. In doing so however, companies require their business processes to be examined and evaluated.

Thirdly, during Covid, companies also had the opportunity to build new bridges with different stakeholders being customers, suppliers and competitors. In a small island state, where members of the same community know each other by name, where proximity becomes and issue, one is generally averse to open communication. Fierce competition, resulting from small markets, led companies to become more isolated than before. Rather than becoming more collective in our approach we ended up becoming more independent.

However, there is still light at the end of the tunnel. Companies are still in time to meet these three challenges by looking into their business more strategically and proactive. On daily basis we are meeting companies that are in (dire) need to business re-alignment, moving from functional silos to customer driven processes. These companies are still in time to re-engineer their processes to meet the new challenges; to train and up-skill their talent and most of all to re-establish networks.

It is never too late to re-position the business in the right place within a new eco-system that conditions our new way of working.