Why Interim Innovation is the 'Growth' Vaccine You're Business Badly Needs.

What is the new normal?

None of us really know because the speed the world has had to adapt to this crisis has seen what we thought was normal turned upside down. 

In the next 90 days. CEOs should ask their business leaders to assess how the needs and behaviors of their most important customers have changed and benchmark their digital channels against those of their competition. This information should form the basis of a renewed digital and operating agenda that should take no longer than 30 days to establish.

Recent data show that we have vaulted five years forward in consumer and business digital adoption in a matter of around eight weeks.

Banks have transitioned to remote sales and service teams and launched digital outreach to customers to make flexible payment arrangements for loans and mortgages. Grocery stores have shifted to online ordering and delivery as their primary business.

Schools in many locales have pivoted to 100 percent online learning and digital classrooms. Doctors have begun delivering telemedicine, aided by more flexible regulation. Manufacturers are actively developing plans for “lights out” factories and supply chains. The list goes on. Source: McKinsey

Let's be truthful - there isn't a business or person who hasn't experienced some kind of 'transformational' impact as a result of this crisis. 

Because consumer behavior has already changed I would strongly argue that Covid has been the catalyst for you to get to grips with your post-Covid 'Why'.

So when you return to what will hopefully be your business and job, my guess is that 'growth' in the next few months will be the biggest priority you and your leadership team will face because transformation has already taken place and you didn't lead it - Covid did!. 

The pre-Covid reason to hire a CMO was usually because you’ve got a big strategic problem to solve, you need to drive growth and become more innovative, reposition the brand, and reset the operating model. 

But, findings suggest that today's CMOs will have to significantly adapt to hold onto their positions, which is now also opening up opportunities for the CMOs of yesterday going it alone as consultants, or in my case 'practitioners' to embrace the role of the interim "CGO" (Chief Growth Officer) a role that looks beyond being the company bullhorn for just brand advertising and digital communications. 

The management of inventory, finance, employees, and relevant skill sets will become even more business critical as will demand planning expertise and tools.

When the resource is depleted, more of your teams are 'working remotely' and marketing budgets decimated in favour of 'keeping the lights on' how do you go about growth?

A "Growth' mindset is defined as a leader who encourages teams to work internally and externally across the company, fostering an agile culture of internal/external collaboration ensuring that the brand vision and customer experience align in order to achieve growth.

As fingers, legs, and toes are crossed along with anything else that gives us hope that the global rollout of a vaccine cocktail mitigates the restrictive stranglehold on social and business activities, companies everywhere are already contemplating what the world of work will look like.

The phrase 'social distancing' has entered our daily vocabulary and for many is now ingrained our behavioural habits . This oft repeated message that tells us to 'stay away from positive people' has curtailed and devastated economies, livelihoods, governments, and businesses everywhere - so, if not before, now is the time to seriously look at how to reset the 'growth' curve?.

Without a doubt 2020/21 has made us all open to change, particularly in the way we have to go about our daily lives. It will go down in history as a defining few years where the world stood backed cowed by an unseen global 'change maker'.

There are a few lessons that this pandemic has taught us all, however one of the key (refreshing) business trends I am seeing is that at last an open minded 'innovation ideation' for growth is firmly back on the boardroom agenda.

What this pandemic has highlighted is that an established operating model doesn't always equate to the continued growth of a business already teetering on the edge. It has also shone a very bright light on the internalised view that the 'experience' isn't as valued externally by the end consumer or client as you might have thought.

Companies are now bound to fast and profound transformations in an unprecedented way as they face disruptive geostrategic, demographic, ecological and digital changes all over the globe.

Whilst furlough initiatives have helped suppress unemployment rates the longer term business benefit of this has yet to be fully realised.

Without a doubt some extremely talented people have found what they thought were 'safe' careers suddenly upended by the pandemic, whilst people whose job has been to help 'keep the lights' on have been the key beneficiary of this fiscal initiative - but simply keeping the lights on doesn't move the growth dial forwards.

Businesses that lingered too long with legacy systems, legacy mindsets, and the old order of the 20th Century have had to rapidly unlearn what they thought they knew.

They have had to re-think the timeline for change, and better understand what agility and being consumer centric really means for growth in this dystopian - (sometimes apocalyptic for some) world we find ourselves in.

This business predicament often leads to tough and ever changing demands on management to look at new ideas and new ways to get the job done.

Pre-Covid, the world of the 'interim' was confined to either large consultancies, or individuals who having achieved great successes in the corporate world realising that the work/balance lifestyle was their way of trading what they know, for a lifestyle they really wanted.

The interim management solution allows companies, during a limited period of time, to keep control of their operations, without entailing permanent fixed cost.

To address this, interim managers are being parachuted into businesses to tackle often large projects, at both senior level and more operational , middle-management level.

Hence, the use of high caliber individuals or highly skilled experts as additional management resources, in order to cope with both daily business challenges and the ideation strategies to support implementation of transformation projects, proves to be a good solution for going forward.

Intermediary level interim management is about to consolidate the flow of independent work (freelance), which is on the rise, in all developed societies, at the expense of traditional salaried employment. Whilst senior executive level interim management help directly achieve the more significant objectives attached to transformation projects requiring hands-on involvement covering preparation, execution phase and handover. source: batenborch.com

All logical you might say, yet not all companies grasp the accelerated transformational growth impact this mindset can have, especially as we look towards the new world order for whatever the 'new normal' might look like.

So, let's try and take this thinking to another level.

Clearly there are several things that business need to get to grips with, but in the new order post lockdown and hopefully post pandemic there are 3 things that require an agile focus;

1. Consumer Behaviour
2. Unpredictable Revenue Demand
3. Remote Working

"A few years ago whilst building out an entirely new channel to market for what was then the U.K's biggest direct home shopping company, my team and myself built the UK's 5th largest e-mail marketing company - purely by accident."

The motivation came from frustration around not being able to deliver a cost effective e-mail marketing platform in time to assist with migrating circa 2m customers from the offline space onto our new eCommerce platforms for (then) one of the UK's most successful 'Direct Home Shopping Company'.

Following numerous in-house long winded meetings with the IT team who were already busy keeping the IT lights on, then holding a beauty parade of existing ESP's (e-mail service providers) we worked out it was never going to be cost effective or feasible to deliver on the first phase of our 'transformation' strategy. 

This is where we partnered with an innovative start-up software company who built what we wanted in exchange for a 3 year fixed price contract to use the system - a true win/win scenario.

Sometimes working with a start-up, just like bringing on board an interim senior manager can get you where you want to go a lot quicker. They're not constrained by your 'legacy mindset' they are not looking to take an incremental step to 'innovate' they might already have some great ideas, and in exchange for a mutually beneficial commercial relationship can get you where you want to be.

Many organisations have shifted to remote-working models almost overnight. A remote-first setup allows companies to mobilise global expertise instantly, organise a project review with 20—or 200—people immediately, and respond to customer enquiries more rapidly by providing everything from product information to sales and after-sales support digitally.

For many companies, customers have already migrated to digital. Employees, and former ones are already working fully remotely and are agile to some degree. Companies have already launched analytics and artificial-intelligence (AI) initiatives in their operations.

IT teams have already delivered at a pace they never have before. But for most companies, the changes to date represent only the first phase of the changes that will be necessary.

It seems that the role of an agile interim Chief plate spinning commercially focused Growth Officer with the ability to pull golden growth rabbits out of magic hats might be the undoing of the pre Covid CMO?

So, does that set the scene for the interim CGO and the talent they can bring with them to focus on growth, innovation, and product development will allow for the incumbent CMO to remain focused on the delivery of the sales and marketing ambitions to communicate not just today's message, but that of tomorrow's growth?

In effect, remote ways of working have, at least in part, driven the faster execution drumbeat that we’re all experiencing in our organisations. And this step change in remote adoption is now arguably substantial enough to reconsider current business resource operating models.

The author: Stephen Sumner is the Chief Growth Partner for 'Titan Partners Group'.