What to do when your plan is tossed on its head...

In the past few days and weeks, the sharp rise in #COVID19 or #coronavirus cases has been a hot topic of business conversations. Companies who never follow #healthcare news are scrambling to figure out what the outbreak means for them, and for their customers. Earlier today, my friend Rick Nason reminded me of this quote:

"In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable". - Eisenhower

Why is this the case? Plans are useless, because they are static. On the other hand, the ambiguous, complex world in which we operate our businesses, is not. There are multiple factors (and actors) always at play. The advantage of planning, is that it is the activity of considering multiple scenarios. It lets us bring our team into a room and consider what may happen - and to ask the question, "how might we be prepared for this?" Planning also allows us to apply multiple perspectives in a short timeframe. While it can be advantageous to do so in a face-to-face setting, at the moment online collaboration tools are looking like the best option - especially if your company has already had employees or customers who have tested positive for the virus, or you're engaging one another with an abundance of caution.

You may be in the midst of trying to figure out employee health implications, while simultaneously considering the impact of balancing caution with the need for customer engagement. There are many tools that can help in this situation - what you don't want is to be figuring out how to use them, while under pressure, when face-to-face is your default operating style. I'd like to recommend six key points for you to address, before finding a partner to work with:

1. What is our current situation, in terms of your staff complement, work coverage, and readiness for new approaches?
2. Who do you most need to serve, and what's the most critical need you might be able to help them with?
3. Where would you normally meet with customers for a meaningful conversation?
4. When can both you and the customer(s) be available to meet virtually?
5. Why might you want to set something up sooner, rather than later?
6. If you're running on reduced staff, how will you encourage members of your team who aren't usually involved in customer contact to be part of the engagement process?

If you've already answered these six questions, you've already started planning. Congratulations. My recommendation is to keep revisiting them - "early and often", as they say. That's planning. They'll give you a good idea of what you need to tackle first. Then, make sure you're using tools that are a good fit for the solution. Good-old conference calls may be more than enough, but video can also reduce the feeling of separation that isolation brings. When everything is moving too fast, it might seem counter-intuitive, but the best thing you can do is to slow down your thinking. Once you've done all that, if you need help with specific kinds of decisions or conversations, we'll be here.

I'm Megann Willson, and I'm one of the Partners and the CEO of PANOPTIKA. We help our clients see everything they need to know to make better decisions and engage their customers, even in the face of ambiguity and complexity.