These are challenging times for leaders. The current crisis is forcing us all to move into survival mode. It’s a natural human reaction – when faced with an immediate threat to our survival we are programmed to focus all of our mental and physical resources to address that threat. And, as one of my bosses once said to me: ‘the long-term is just a series of short-terms, and if we ever forget that, we won’t make it to the long-term’. He was, of course, right. But it’s also true that if we devote all of our time to addressing the challenges currently being thrown at us by Covid-19, then we are potentially putting the long-term future of our businesses at risk. Unfortunately, as a leader, it’s your job to find some time to start thinking about the long-term.
It’s quite possible, and almost certain for many, that recent events mean the strategy you were following just a few weeks ago has now passed its sell-by-date (unless, of course, your strategy took into account the possibility of a global pandemic). The big question for strategic planning, as we consider ‘what’s next’, is trying to understand what the ‘new normal’ will look like. ‘Normal’ strategic planning would start with a detailed situation analysis, reviewing past trends, possible shifts in consumer and trade behaviour, to provide a clear enough future, with enough certainty, around which we could to build our strategy and subsequent plans. The problem we face now is working out just how much recent events will change future behaviour, and the extent to which the ‘new normal’ will differ from the ‘old normal’. Of course, it is entirely possible that everything, and everyone, will settle back into their old habits. But it is also possible that things will be different. According to a recent YouGov poll, only 9% of UK consumers want things to ‘return to normal’ and 54% said they hope they will make some changes to their lives after lockdown. The problem is that this type of data, collected in the midst of the crisis, is likely to be a poor predictor of likely future behaviour. Examining consumer behaviour in China may give us some hope – but is behaviour in the immediate post-lockdown period a good predictor of long-term behavioural change. The issue is simply this, we’ll have to build our future strategies based on imperfect data, or few ‘facts’.
So why not wait until things become clearer to review and revise your strategy? My contention is that for those people who wait, it will be too late. In the first instance, unless you have no competitors, if any of your competitors is reviewing and revising their future strategy, placing some bets, making changes on the basis of that new strategy, then if just one of those initiatives pays off, the first-mover advantage will be substantial (so why not make sure you are the person with the first-mover advantage?). In the second instance, there is quite possibly a disruptor out there somewhere thinking about how they can steal your business with a new or revised product or service much more relevant in the ‘new normal’ world. Unlike you, they have the advantage of not having to focus on managing any immediate threat to their business, they can put all of their time and effort into this new ideas. And the risk to you is that there may be many of them out there, all thinking up and trying different things. Once again, just one of these bets needs to pay off to have a significant impact on your business.
Of course, in both cases you could wait, see what emerges and then respond. This is a relevant strategy – but the question you then have to ask yourself, if you opt for this approach, is how well set up is your business to respond at pace to a competitor initiative?
As a leader, it always has been your job to manage the short and long-term. Now it’s even more important and even more difficult given the uncertain future ‘normal’, but the history of major shocks to our behavioural system is that the people who started to think ‘what next’ first, generally came out stronger on the other side than those who didn’t.
So sorry, I know you are already at peak workload, but its time to revisit your strategy.
