I honestly cannot think of one thing that was not affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. It touched every aspect of our lives and, in many cases, forced us to come up with some creative, even ingenious, solutions.
As the country starts to slowly loosen stay-in-place restrictions, I hope we do not return to business as usual in the way we interact with our employees and customers and in the way we run our departments, divisions and businesses.
COVID-19 presented us with an opportunity to do things differently, in some instances without having to justify why we were “blowing up” existing systems and processes. Everyone was focused on keeping the business afloat and meeting customer needs. As a result of these changes, many of our businesses became nimbler, more customer-centric, more employee focused.
I hope that each of you is planning to gather your leadership teams together soon to look at all the changes you made during the pandemic in order to find best practices that you can incorporate into your businesses going forward.
How you reacted during these trying times should have shown you a lot about your strengths and also your weaknesses. Make sure you let everyone inside your organization know what your company’s strengths are so they can leverage them in their day-to-day dealings with customers and suppliers.
Pay even closer attention to your weaknesses. Figure out what changes you need to make in people, practices and priorities to turn those weaknesses into strengths. Ask yourself some tough questions about what it will take to get better at the things that need improvement. Do you have the right people in place? Do they have the tools they need to get their jobs done? Are they funded properly to deliver maximum value? Do they know their value within your organization?
We all know that our businesses will be tested again whether it is another pandemic, a natural disaster or an economic slowdown. Taking the lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic and applying them to your operations could make the difference between surviving the next challenge and going out of business.
