Use it or lose it!

I think that is the best way to sum up how a lot of the business conversations I am having are going. None of us know what the rest of this year looks like – we only have to think about the quarantine restrictions being imposed on people returning back from Spain to know we can’t take anything for granted even when it felt like the market and economy was trying to open back up again.

What I do know, however, is that like myself, many people across the UK and other parts of the world are willing on September. That’s when the children go back to school (please let that happen!) people return from annual leave (for those lucky enough to have booked something/anything) and we can, once more, turn our undivided attention back to our careers (or for at least some part of the day). The market will undoubtedly pick up, if only because decisions can be made again with full teams back in business. 

This summer lull is familiar to us, we experience this every year, recruitment quietens down, employees take weeks at a time off work, and we all come back with a bit of renewed vigour in September. It’s certainly something I have always accounted for and advised my candidates and clients about – July and August are fairly quiet, projects get paused, recruitment decisions are delayed and then things happen when everyone is back into the full swing of things, normally mid-September.  

This familiarity, however, might then be the very thing that puts your business behind the curve because whilst we are working differently we have a real unprecedented, certainly in my working lifetime, opportunity to make some business changes for the better. But if we allow ourselves to return to pre-COVID practises we might have missed the only chance we will get to fundamentally change how, when, where, and with whom our businesses operate!

Think about how quickly people (who could) adapted to working from home. Just because ‘that’s the way we’ve always done it here’ does not mean it is not possible. The new way of working in most aspects is more likely to be better, more cost effective and leaner. But if you slip back into old ways and old habits it is a damn sight more difficult to make change happen both financially and logistically. In an already fragile market, that is not a risk business should be taking so let us continue to break the norm and finish the summer as we mean to go on! Use the opportunity to change or lose it! The choice is yours.

To discuss how The Project Bench can help you plan for change via the specialist interim's coming on to the bench (People, Process, Systems change consultants) please contact [email protected] or call 0333 123 2823

Watch this space on some upcoming collaborations discussing this very topic from people who know how to make change stick!