I’ve been extremely grateful for the thought-leaders and expert resources who have made themselves available to assist us and our CEO Think Tank® community of Enlightened Leaders through this difficult time.
Greg Crabtree, Veronica Cram and Mike Maxson from the CRI group who pulled together a Simple Numbers Financial Crisis management webinar the first week of lockdown here on the East Coast of the U.S.
Randy Nelson, two-time CEO and author of “The Entrepreneurs’ Decision Series” in late April with contingency planning and how to play Defense as well as Offense. And this week, Deb Gabor, CEO, branding maven and best-selling author of “Irrational Loyalty: Building a Brand that Thrives in Turbulent Times” on re-imagining your Brand.
You’ll be hearing more from me about the best practices that they’ve shared with our CEO’s and their teams over the coming weeks. For those of you who might have missed their talks, we’ve got recordings – so let me know and I can send to you.
One of my biggest takeaways from Randy’s talk on Contingency Planning and Beyond?
The hardest thing to discover sometimes is the obvious. The more that you reach out to others during a time a crisis, however, the more you will learn, and the less likely that you’ll miss what’s right in front of you.
Having gone through two downturns in his own business career, Randy has definitely learned from the entrepreneurial school of hard knocks. But he also knows the silver lining that these times present to us.
“Ideally a crisis significant enough to make your business a smaller version of itself,” shares Randy, “will make its leader a smarter version of him or herself.”
Here’s a few more to assist you in the weeks and months ahead:
Use What You Already Know
Focus on your “Scaling Up” training and what you know how to do. What are your top 5 Rocks for the next 30 days? Every week or two, evaluate if these are still the correct actions with new information that you’ve collected from your customers, your team and your network.
How do your Meeting Rhythms need to be modified for this crisis? What do you need to do to recognize and reinforce engagement in your team?
And finally, what decision have you been avoiding that need to be made? Said another way, if you were fired today, what three major changes/ decisions would your replacement make in the next 90 days?
Leverage your Team for Contingency Planning
Know Yourself, Improve Yourself, Compliment Yourself – Get the Right People in the Room, on Your Team to work through what you need to in order to survive.
Identify the Leading Indicators that you need to be tracking now, that may be different than what you’ve done in the past. Re-openings? Virus numbers? What are the same, but the targets may need to change? Pipeline numbers? Client reach outs and conversations to check in?
As long as you’ve consistently “inconsistently” collected the data, you have gold mine in your data. What can you baseline now that will help you build a foundation for going forward?
Re-evaluate and lay the Foundation for Going Forward
A recession is a fantastic time to build your “Diamond Value” – clients who are not ready to do business with you today, or this quarter, but who will do business with you when times return to normal. Who are those people and what’s your plan to connect with them – personally? HINT: Not in an email campaign.
What would someone else well-funded and new to your industry do to succeed wildly in the next 30 days?
What’s going to stay exactly the same / that’s not going to change where you can dominate? What has changed? Where can we Innovate?
Start Playing Offense by Asking Yourself these 3 Questions
1) Listen to your Customers. What are their needs NOW and how can you be Indispensable to them?
2) What are your Core Competencies as a company? Where can you pivot? WARNING: If you’re considering alternative forms of revenue generation beware of losing your differentiation and / or compromising your values. Have a NO list.
3) Where can you grow your business during this time? What are your Revenue Levers? Product/ offerings? Customer base (large; medium; small)? Delivery (salespeople; internet; channel partners)?
And Randy’s final message to our community? Take care of yourself.
Mentally, physically, and spiritually. Notice where you are getting your Energy right now. What does that say about what role is REALLY appropriate for you – Creator, Functional Specialist or CEO going forward? (HINT: Kolbe and the Gallup Strengths-Finder can help inform this decision.)
