Leading toward a ‘new business as usual’ - Resolve

“May you live in interesting times.” 

Thought to be an ancient curse, today the statement has a bleak resonance. In the past few months, the unthinkable has become reality, resilience has become a currency and reliance on digital infrastructure (e.g. the internet) less luxury than an indispensable utility.

As the global coronavirus health emergency continues to unfold, the enormity of the impact on human liberty, behaviour and habit becomes more evident. And while the human consequences of this catastrophe unfold across world borders, the business community must re-imagine the economic, leadership and organisational landscape of a new ‘business as usual’, if indeed, there is an appetite to do so.

Leaders are envisioning how economic and organisational landscapes will look...

While the pre-COVID19 business landscape was identified as volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) very little could have prepared leaders (business, community or governmental) for the responses needed to contain immediate priorities of human, health and public order impacts as the pandemic unfolds. Leaders, while responding to urgent, unpredictable and possibly transformative business circumstances are simultaneously challenged with envisioning how economic and organisational landscapes will look in the near, mid and long terms. 

In a recently released article, Kevin Sneader & Shubham Singhal from McKinsey & Co identified five elements or stages of navigating toward post-pandemic organisation and operation. They are resolve, resilience, return, re-imagination and reform. Considering each of these in turn over the next week, I examine how leaders might work to re-imagine the application of emergent capability and re-conceive managerial paradigms to create new a ‘business as usual’ in a post-pandemic epoch.

Resolve - knowing what to do is not enough…

Sneader and Singhal (2020) suggest that tackling the scale, scope and nature of a crisis such as this, when traditional notions of operation have been “rendered irrelevant”, requires not only the capacity to respond to immediate priorities (e.g. utilising online technologies, redeploying resources, scaling back workforces) but to avoid the dithering that comes from deep uncertainty. 

How do those charged with making decisions in the absence of surety, data and precedence generate confidence in choices and garner the confidence of others as such a time?

How do leaders make the call between being right and being swift to make decisions in pressing circumstances?

"...organisational values can provide an anchor for decision making..."

One key consideration is keeping true to the fundamental vision, mission and values of the organisation. Once (unkindly, but perhaps accurately) viewed with skepticism and considered to be a suite of statements generated by consultants to hang on the wall of the executive offices or as an imperative preface to the annual report, these platform statements now take on a new importance. While vision and mission may be challenged by a new context as well as shifting demand and a pressing need for business survival, organisational values can provide an anchor for decision making in times when all else is unfamiliar or unprecedented. 

Authentic organisational values identify platform principles for “behaviour, character and culture” in times of relative calm, and more so perhaps, in times of disruption and crisis. As once steadfast beliefs identifying what’s acceptable and what is not are challenged, organisational values can be the touchstone to organisational decision making, leadership behaviour and community/stakeholder engagement during times of calamity and challenge.

The next installment will examine the second 'R' - Resilience.

The original McKinsey article can be found here along with a range of other COVID-19 articles.

Contact me to gain access to the University of Nottingham seminar that examined all the five 'Rs'. [email protected]