The pandemic changed so many things for so many companies. The business landscape is different now and we have all had to adapt. Within change, however, there is opportunity.
We’ve all heard about the ‘new normal’ and though at first it seemed uncertain, as we come out of the pandemic there is no reason the new normal can’t be better for your business than before. All you need is a focused and reactive strategy.
In this article I will give you 3 actionable tools that I have used to grow my company, and that can help you grow your’s in the new era through a new strategy.
The first tool is the Crisis Management Assessment and this has been designed by us at Boardroom Advisors as a means to assess company strategic direction coming out of a crisis. Now, a crisis doesn’t have to be a global pandemic – though obviously that is the one that may have been on the mind of most people for the last 18 months.
But it can be anything from a loss of personnel to the financial crash of 07/08 and everything in between. Crises take many shapes but the way to deal with them should be the same.
This tool helps you break down the crisis into manageable sections through questions posed to you and from this you can assess the effects your company has had and how best to move forward.
Through the Crisis Management Assessment you will define the crisis (whether it’s happening now or could potentially happen) in a single sentence in order to get to the core of the issue.
You’ll look to assess how the crisis will affect your revenue stream and your value proposition. It will also facilitate you looking at potential changes to your customer segments/relationships and alterations to your distribution channels and partners.
It will help you analyse whether your resource needs are going to change and will your cost structure be affected by the crisis.
Through breaking up the issues the crisis has thrown up and listing the effects – and opportunities – you can begin developing your strategic direction to negotiate the obstacles you face.
The next tool is SWOT – an oldie but a goodie. You’re likely to have used SWOT at some point in your businesses’ life but the question I would pose to you is; when was the last time you used it?
SWOT is a brilliant tool to get the company’s issues out on the table in order to move forward. It is a tool that you, as a company, should use regularly to evaluate where you business is at and what might be holding you back.
As a board, you would write down what your company’s strengths are, what its weaknesses are as well as what opportunities might be coming your way along with potential threats. And in this new normal, it is crucial that you look at the threats but also the opportunities – because there definitely are some to take advantage of.
The third and final tool I would highly recommend for your company is MOST analysis. This is perhaps the most complete tool because it facilitates the creation of an actionable strategic plan for your company from which you can grow.
Again, as a brainstorming exercise you need to decide what your company’s mission is. Keep this to profit and turnover and give a timescale, i.e a year, so it is tangible and measurable.
Then you have to list the objectives you have to achieve your mission. I like to think, if the mission is the end of the ladder then the objectives are the rungs on the way up.
Following this, write down the strategies that could get you to your objectives. Write down at least two different strategies for each objective so that your company has options.
Finally the tactics – this is where the actionable plan is developed. Your tactics are essentially deciding on the ‘who is doing what and when’. Delegation and progression.
All three of these tools should be in your strategic armonary to move forward out of the pandemic. Use them regularly to reflect, evaluate and move forward profitably.
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