Navigating Uncharted Waters : Adaptability & Innovation

In my last few blogs, I discussed how you can manage your business in the new shock reality of the top line decline – revenues and income. With cash preservation top of mind, your business should now have a plan for survival and to emerge from this crisis stronger. And you will have adjusted your fixed and variable costs to allow your business to navigate these unprecedented times. Having done so, (and having relentlessly communicated the message ‘We are all in this together’ with employees and customers), it’s worth pausing momentarily to give you and your teams a ‘pat on the back’ to have done what normally takes 3 months business planning/execution in less than 2 weeks.  

With your ‘survive and then thrive‘ plan in place, it is now timely to explore with your employees the novel and innovative (and even fun?) ways to keep connected to customers -engage your fellow employees WFH and to search out new revenue sources. Your business will be unique in some respects and therefore, the solutions for you to explore for revenue upside may vary – the key is the thinking of adapting quickly to hunt for value with ‘stay at home’ customers for the new reality. To exemplify this, let’s look at one sector that faced the threat of a 100% shut down; the restaurant industry.  When the UK Government announced the shut-down of pubs and restaurants on Friday, March 20th, I was struck by the dexterity of many of the restaurants who faced closure. Within hours of the Government announcement, many restaurants had repurposed their businesses to offer take-outs. I posted about a local Pubrestaurant switching to offer on-line deli. The restaurant sector has embraced a key strategic message to businesses affected by this crisis is ‘Adapt - Go Online, Be Social, Be Safe’.   

As we can all relate to restaurants, I have used this as an example to explore the options in ‘Lockdown’ to get creative and seek new revenue sources as well as keeping colleagues employed – here a sample ideas list:

• Obviously, check out government grants, loans & employee furlough packages
• As well as social-distanced take-out, offer delivery (again with safeguarding employees with protective gloves/mask and leaving the food outside to comply with social distancing). Only provide hot food (destroying any pathogens). One interesting idea by another restaurant was ‘Fill you boot’ service where you drive through without getting out of the car, the server (with mask/gloves) puts the take-away into your car boot. Simple, safe, and fun branding.
• Reduce & simplify the product/menu possibly as far as a meat and vegetarian option ideally ‘family style’ – perhaps with a bottle of wine pairing as an offer
• Extend to offer breakfast, lunch and dinner deliveries
• Reach out to local businesses to support WFH workers lunches
• Offer a discounted service to keyworkers in the NHS and emergency services
• Offer free meals delivered to the elderly and vulnerable and build a sponsorship program for your customers to donate
• Go Social: Create a cooking channel on YouTube, FB and IG and build a FB community group. Engage more in social media to become the trusted source and the magnet for the community including volunteering connections to support the vulnerable
• Offer a subscription services for weekly meal delivery
  
• Go no cash, ‘card’ only to minimise any human contact
• On celebrations like birthdays and Easter, offer gift vouchers for future experiences and maybe vouchers for loyal customers
• Plan reopening party/event for when any sense of normality returns

If you chose to adapt, you will have adopted the highest standards of personal hygiene - washing hands after every delivery and sanitizing hands touching a payment portal etc. It is key to communicate the safe-guarding standards to your customers to make them aware that you have taken all reasonable steps and care for employees to keep everyone safe. Again, this should be part of your communication to make sure customers know you are setting the highest standards to care for them and your employees.

If you are running a restaurant, while there are a lot of ideas above, it’s always best to experiment, start small and ‘test drive’ 1-2 ideas before thinking more grandly. Also, this is a time when you need to weigh carefully the options and judge what is in the best interests short-term so that you emerge stronger for the longer-term. For example, if by creatively changing everything on online/delivery/take-out, you then can’t cover payroll and operating expenses, then it may be better to shut down temporarily and protect everyone by staying at home and waiting until the lockdown relaxes before reopening.  Again, if you choose to ‘mothball’ the business, then it could be a great time to attack that maintenance and improvements program you were planning ready for re-opening.

Using the restaurant example, we can see the creativity, innovation, ideas that can be explored to see what makes sense during the ‘lockdown’. The good news is that with this innovation, it creates upside to your reset plan and will provide some additional much needed cash – the fuel of the business.  In your own business, I trust that you will be able to relate to the restaurant example and extrapolate for ‘road-testing’ revenue ideas of how to connect to your customers in the new world of your own business without face-to-face contact. You can do this staying ‘true to yourself’ and keeping your employees and customers safe. Some great innovations that you can test in these times, may help you not only survive but thrive as we emerge from this crisis. Good luck and as always, be the Best Leader you can and be safe.