Why PPTs matter in today’s times

No, this is not some espousement about anyone’s PowerPoint skills, but something more deep-rooted and important. I am going to talk of 2 more kinds of PPTs, one more familiar viz. Process, People and Technology and the other that needs to drive this PPT – Purpose, Passion and Trust. More on the second.

 As countries, governments, businesses and enterprises slowly and safely re-start their operations in the coming days and weeks, I believe they need both the above PPTs to steer them through this crisis for an effective Business As Usual (BAU) status.

 Purpose: All business leaders am sure have had plenty of time in the last 90 days to think and re-think about their business, business model, way business was being hitherto conducted, vulnerabilities and risks that were not even envisaged earlier, etc. What should not ideally change is your core purpose of your business, why does it exist. So this is not a time to re-purpose but to re-validate that purpose in conjunction with your SWAT team and let the top management re-believe in the same and let them re-communicate that to all those who matter, both internally as well as externally. Externally is also equally important – to your key stakeholders.

 Passion: You’ve always conducted your business with high level of energy, enthusiasm, energy and passion. There’s a good chance that in these last 3 months because you and your team have been WFH, there’s a need to get that mojo back, now that you are back in office. Re-ignite that passion. Let your team not feel demotivated, demoralised. Be mindful of not mixing passion with emotion though. You need to be passionate about your work and your business but shouldn’t get emotionally involved else it might affect your objectivity in decision making.

 Trust: One of the most important tenets of doing business and unfortunately one of the most under-valued and under-utilized. Trust comes from transparency. Be forthright to all your stakeholders, starting with your customers and prospects, your bankers, your vendor partners, your business partners, your shareholders and last but not the least your own employees. All the above parties mentioned have got affected by this and so have you. So there is a better chance they will understand. But also show them what you have thought through and more importantly what are you / have you been doing to remedy things, to the extent possible.

 Once you have the above PPT (Purpose, Passion and Trust) re-validated and redefined, when it comes to implementation, one will need to do a thorough audit of the other PPT viz. Process, People and Technology. How do we need to transform what part of our business processes, do we need so many people and do we need so many people to work in our offices and last but not the least how do we digitize and digitalize what aspects our business going forward.

 The way forward clearly is to combine these two PPTs to secure your future!