Creating Strategy during a Crisis

Strategy – I’ve written about this a fair bit over the last couple of years and during this same period have helped firms think through strategy for R&D, go-to-market, and cultural transformation, among other areas of the business. Strategy is about looking at options and making difficult decisions to help guide an organization to the attainment of goals. More than ever, the current global pandemic is driving the need for strategy. For governments and large corporations, we are seeing the response to COVID-19 play out literally right before our eyes, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In some cases, these very public stories show how the absence of a well-defined and consistent plan in a government’s response to the virus results in confusion, uncertainty and greater suffering. For companies large and small, it is critical that they establish an approach on how they plan to deal with the pandemic. I have heard firsthand and on the news how companies feel that they don’t have enough information to even begin to think about how they will adapt. For larger firms, I suspect that the leadership team will have many disagreements on how to move forward, re-open or to just try to survive to see better days. In all situations, I contend that the creation of a strategy is always in order even when there is a lack of information. Without an agreed plan, leaders will not have the ability to communicate to their teams and will have endless discussions on next steps that are not grounded on a specific viewpoint but rather the multiple individual perspectives of each leader.

I’m not suggesting that creating a strategy and evolving it as more data becomes available is easy. To the contrary, as I have called out many times in other posts, the creation of a strong and executable strategy is very difficult in the best of times, let alone in the midst of an unprecedented health and economic crisis. This said I believe that this is not a good reason to shy away from the development of at least a preliminary approach. The purpose of my post is to encourage leaders to do something as doing nothing will simply lead to greater uncertainty for all stakeholders.

Here are some thoughts on how to get started or to hone something that you have already crafted:

• Involve only a few people during the initial effort as bringing together a large group to try to develop a way forward during a crisis will likely result in significant debate and a lot of spinning.
• While it may seem obvious, document your end goal. Is it to figure out how to stay afloat as a business during the crisis, or perhaps is it to position the firm to grow its market share at a certain point during or at the conclusion of the pandemic? Develop add-on strategies as appropriate, e.g. for different stages of the crisis – it’s likely that the plans for the initial phases can be fleshed out with greater detail or relative certainty.
• Broaden the strategy team only slightly once you have something down on paper and ensure that the expanded team is aligned and remain in lockstep throughout the crisis.
• Communicate early and often with your stakeholders, letting them know that the plan will change as more information becomes available.
• Determine if your approach requires incremental funding and/or whether there is sufficient cash flow in the business to execute.
• Decide if your product or service remains viable during the crisis or whether it requires adaptations to respond to new customer or regulatory needs. Perhaps the current situation requires a wholesale change in your offer or business model. Of course, we have already seen where the demand for certain products has skyrocketed so the strategy in this scenario needs to spell out how to deliver more product or service in a restricted world while appreciating the sustainability of the demand post-COVID.
• During the early stages focus on policies and broader processes. Of course, sub-processes and specific procedures will need to be developed to support these areas but as you may need to shift policies based on new data, it’s not wise to go too deep into the details until there is some confidence that the policies will not dramatically change.
• Consider the impact to your staff. How will they be affected, will the organization need fewer employees or more team members to see through the plans. What, who and how many employees will be required to affect the changes and operate in the new paradigm?
• Will the staff changes require a corresponding organizational shift, temporary or permanent? The impact to individuals in the firm and how their roles may or may not change along with an understanding of where they sit in the organization will be a key point to communicate early.
• Decide how technology will play a role in your strategy. What is required, what are the costs and how and who will implement the modifications or new hardware, software and services?
• Determine what the work environment will look like in the interim, and if possible what the foreseeable future will bring for the workplace and perhaps the setup for those that might need to work from home longer term, or in a physically distanced environment. Will the strategy reduce or increase costs and how might the change affect your company’s culture and its perception in the marketplace along with your relationship with customers?
• Consider how buyer behaviour may change during the pandemic and whether it might be altered permanently post crisis. Decide how you will need to adjust and the effect of potentially dramatic changes.
• For good reason, government and regulatory body involvement is omnipresent during this crisis so expect that there are likely regulatory changes on the horizon that may influence how you conduct your business in the future. While your enterprise may not be able to predict how things might precisely play out, keeping this potential front and centre is always a good idea.

The scientists and researchers have made a number of things clear about COVID-19. While the impact of the virus has already been devastating, its continued trajectory is not certain and dependent on – as we now know – many, many factors. Until a vaccine is widely available, we will all be living in a ‘new normal’ which is likely to evolve and regress, coinciding with the ups and downs of the infection and hospitalization curve. There does not appear to be unanimity among economists but it is evident that things won’t be back to pre-COVID conditions in the near-term. So there is some data but no clear path which makes strategy difficult, perhaps more so than ‘usual’. What is known and certain is that the pandemic is already having a profound impact on every person and business across the globe. Not having a strategy on how your business will respond is simply not an option.

About the author: David Tom is Managing Director at the Inthink Group and has crafted and executed many strategic plans both as a business leader and management consultant and has written this post as a call to action for leaders who are still sitting on the sidelines waiting for more data before defining a go-forward strategy for their company or business unit.

Review other perspectives and all Inthink Group services at: https://inthinkgroup.com/

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