Business success in a pandemic

My previous two posts have explained what happened to my business in previous ‘Exceptional Times'. 2020 has been another huge challenge, but this time things were different.

We finished 2019 on a high, a difficult HR issue had been resolved and plenty of work was promised for 2020. However, in January the HR issue developed unexpectedly, and the promised work did not materialise. The first quarter was poor - and that was without any effects from COVID-19. It was very slow to start to the year and my attention was hijacked by other things. Before we knew it, COVID-19 was upon us and we were suddenly dealing with the whole team working from home whilst adapting our systems to deal with the fall out.

There was a lot of fast changing advice coming from so many sources, it was impossible to deal with everything immediately - we needed a full time HR team just to keep up! However, like most small businesses this simply was not feasible, especially in the middle of a pandemic!! Fortunately, HD has a terrific team, and everyone pulled together. Despite extremely difficult and challenging situations everyone accepted what needed to happen and they just got on with things.

Managing a team remotely, at a time when projects were extremely fragmented, was especially tough because the leadership team all had families with children away from school. To deal with the immediate change in demand/operations, and to achieve a balance between home and work life, most people dropped to 80% working. Some had to continue at 100% to meet deadlines which made things even more complex. Despite challenges, this approach worked very well but was only possible with the backing of the entire team.

Without everyone’s hard work, flexibility, and can-do attitude we could easily have been consumed with more HR issues. The importance of selecting and building a trusted team came home to me at that point. Instead of dealing with problems, we could focus on sales and marketing activity, which is crucial in any downturn.

It was not easy during this period and there were times when the effort required was almost too much. So many other businesses and people were on furlough or had temporarily closed whilst the weather in the UK was glorious, it was difficult to remain focused. It would have been easy to think we were powerless and to justify easing off because we were in ‘Exceptional Times’. However, by having a compelling reason to succeed, and customers we did not want to let down, we decided to work harder and not panic or take it easy. Our view was that this would be a short-term issue. Key to success was keeping the team together and winning as much work as possible. Therefore, we took the decision to let some business goals and development work slide, with the view that this could be caught up later. Luckily, our strategy paid off quickly and we unexpectedly won a large project meaning we could restart our growth plan and begin recruiting again.

So, what did this latest, and hopefully last ‘Exceptional Time’ teach me:

1. It’s vital to have solid people around who have the resilience needed to see things through.

2. It’s necessary to think ahead, be nimble and brave. Every COVID-19 related decision was made ahead of the government’s advice, so we had control throughout.

3. To be open and honest with those around you, even when it means difficult decisions have to be made.

4. Ultimately, it’s down to me to ensure there is a vision and strategy to enable others to trust in the decisions being made. People need to know there is a plan to get through difficult situations.

5. That some people have incredible dedication and tenacity which isn’t always obvious until a crisis hits.

6. That always being respectful and considerate to everyone in your team will always pay off.

7. Building up cash reserves to deal with a crisis is vital. It enables medium and long-term decisions to be made over short term cash chasing.

8. That you must keep working hard at business even when it seems pointless. We worked harder than we thought possible throughout lockdown.

9. That tenacity, hard work and dedication are not optional if you want a business to survive.

10. That downtime and holidays are also not optional and need to be taken regularly to avoid burning out.

I hope that my posts about ‘Exceptional Times’ prove useful to other companies and people who may be experiencing short term issues. There are lots of posts about how easy it is to succeed but truth is, for most it is not. Hang in there, stop thinking about what has passed, or you can’t control. Focus on solutions, not problems and it is possible to succeed in ‘Exceptional Times’.