Resetting Strategy & Culture as a result of the Coronavirus Outbreak

COVID-19 is causing markets to drop, infusing fear amongst the populace, and shutting down important convening moments across the country. We believe every organization’s culture and strategy will be tested by this pandemic. Consider the past twenty days. Perhaps your plans forecasted revenue from large gatherings of people at conventions or annual meetings; perhaps your supply chain relied on a healthy, global workforce; perhaps your best sales came from in-person meetings. Now all of those otherwise reasonable assumptions have put your organization’s strategy, culture, and your pathway to growth, in question.

As a CEO, board member, or leader, you are leading during a time of unique circumstances. This leadership moment is occurring in an environment in which an organization’s response will be judged in real time by its customers and employees.

As a leader you are likely grappling with an interconnected set of questions about your people and your organization’s strategy:

·     How do we protect our employees?

·     How can we best continue to serve our customers during this disruption?

·     How long will this last?

·     Are our 2020 goals and plans still relevant?

·     Does this disruption create new/different opportunities for us?

COVID-19 and its organizational impacts will vary; leading through times of disruption will not. As a service to our clients, friends, and leaders everywhere, we offer our best advice and some tools leaders can use as they strengthen their organizational culture and reset their strategy for growth.

Our Best Advice for Leaders

1.   Lean into your values: If you ever wondered why your organization has a set of core values, look no further than this crisis. Values tell your employees and customers what you stand for while the whole world is watching and when no one is watching. Build your crisis plans on the shoulders of your values. Think intentionally about the actions and behaviors you will take, and ensure they are congruent with your stated values.

2.   Engage in two-way communications like never before: In our experience, leaders under-communicate strategic choices and desired change by an order of magnitude of ten (without a crisis). CEOs must imagine what employees and customers need to hear, and what they want to say. Every communication should be biased toward transparency and clarity with feedback loops from employees. For helpful tips on communicating with employees check out this post: Three ideas for CEOs communicating strategy.

3.   Review and reset your strategy maps and plans: Strategic plans that were made months or years ago were based on an organization’s state that may no longer be relevant. As a result, leadership teams must reset their strategy maps by asking: What is still true? What assumptions have changed? What do we now know about our customers’ responses to what’s happening? In short, you may need a new strategy and a new plan. We define a strategy map as a one-page document that outlines the mission, vision, values, choices, and key performance indicators, that, once activated, will guide an organization’s actions. Here is a template with key questions that you can use with your team to reset your strategy.

4.   Amplify your customer’s voice: Whatever the future holds, it is how your customers seek to be served and the problems they want solved that should permeate a newly created strategy map. Leaders in your company who are closest to the customers must be given access to the C-suite so that there is no distance between what customers and markets are saying and the new strategic decisions leaders are beginning to make.

5.   Expand dialogue to manage change: Every client who has worked with us knows that we employ an improvisational technique we call “yes, and” to generate thoughtful dialogue and new outcomes. Crisis moments change a leadership team’s language—and rightly so. CEOs and leadership teams must be prepared to shift into expansive dialogue as they search for new possibilities, new pathways, and new growth mindsets. The journey begins with each leadership team member listening deeply and then saying: “Yes, I heard what you said, and I am going to build on it.”

Let's get through this together.

Daniel Forrester, Jame Cofran and the THRUUE-Team