Your 2021 Secret Sauce

It is clear that 2021 offers new interesting challenges and opportunities. Here are some ingredients to add to your secret sauce:

Advanced Insights and Analytics

Beyond the unjustified fears generated by artificial intelligence (AI), the technology is everywhere, from your Alexa at home to your favorite phone features. It would be hard to navigate common tasks these days without AI. For example, phone systems are extremely effective, even with a wide variety of input sound variables. It wasn't long ago when we had to repeat the same voice command 2 or 3 times, before getting the expected result in the bank phone system.

Are you exploiting the power of advanced analytics to grow or maintain your business in times of uncertainty? Although being a "guru" in AI is quite specialized, exploiting the power of advanced analytics might be easier and less expensive than you think. Easy and relatively inexpensive tools will likely give you invaluable insights, from otherwise complex and tedious tasks, such as "connecting the dots" in your e-sales prospecting, e-marketing research, process improvement, and exploring traits and dissimilar factors to make your hiring and your teams more effective.

Business Continuity Expertise

If this crisis didn't teach us to prepare for the worst, nothing else might bring the point across. We might have learned in this pandemic more than in all our previous business continuity experiences.

Yet, some might have not learned enough in this crisis, even after a number of exhausting long business continuity meetings at all levels. Do you know why this might have happened? Because certain teams might have been working hard at "reinventing the wheel", without proper guidance or business continuity expertise.

More importantly, many organizations probably have not defined a mature continuity model, even after this endless crisis, because some leaders still might believe that business continuity skills are inherent, innate characteristics in top-level leaders. This is fairly inaccurate. In many cases, proactive business continuity will have a taste of realism and disruption that will probably naturally clash with the relentless optimism of many organizations with healthy risk appetites.

BTW, If you think this is the last relevant crisis that will affect your business or organization, think again. Remember business continuity is not about how to react or improvise on the fly. It is about *efficient* and effective planning, when threats are likely, including resource (and talent) scarcity, cyber threats, and environmental catastrophes, among others. Make sure that you have a qualified resource to support your business continuity planning teams. It is hard to find a healthy balance in business continuity, yet it is much harder, without the proper skillsets on the table.

Assertive Talent

Last but not least, having an A+ team is more challenging than ever. Why? Simply, because the traditional "success" factors might not work in this level of change, uncertainty, and soon-to-be hotter than ever competition. For example, before the crisis, maybe a non-negotiable factor was to have new talent fit the culture seamlessly. These days, A+ teams might be more about disruptive talent influencing in very assertive ways, driving people out of their comfort zones, and all this assertiveness might have to happen via Zoom meetings.

More than ever, you need an assertive team with "some teeth", connected at the organization's core values, including a unique mix of sophisticated skills and social artistry, mixed with the ability to understand complexity, diversity of though & culture, and fast-evolving technology, all "cooked" by tested experience making things happen in adversity and high-stress environments. Driving a team to overcome adversity is not a common trait or easily acquired "soft" skill set. It is more about inherent motivation, selflessness, shared core values; and more importantly, very hard work.

Learn more about these secret-sauce ingredients connecting with us at Analystem, LLC