In my previous article, I clearly argued out using empirical data, how business leaders may be failing businesses globally by not taking notice of how hugely businesses have been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. Needless to say that there are so many things, such as processes, workflows, activities that can no longer be done like before. So what are some of these changes that business leaders ought to make?
Based on the information that is already available out there, these are just some of the changes that every sensible business leader in an organization ought to make.
1) Strategy;
Business leaders need to quickly re-visit their strategy and see if their strategic goals are still attainable in the way they were intended. There may be need to revise a few things including and not limited to the planned resources to support the achievement of strategic objectives. So the organization may need more resources or an addition of certain capabilities which the organization did not previously plan for. In addition, the strategy may also need some re-alignment before it’s too late to make meaningful changes in the financial year. The executive leadership and teams badly need this kind of pat on the back to aid their efforts of realizing the organization strategic objectives. In the event that this does not happen, frustrations among the leadership teams creep in, leading to demotivation, loss of productivity and eventually, frustrations and poor performance.
2) Financial/Budget support;
It is normally very difficult once organizations have set resources for a give financial year, for them to come back and review especially upwards. This is where the strategy committee arm of the board must play a big role to help out management. Everyone needs to understand that for organizations to sail the same course successfully, with the Covid-19 storms along the way, more resources will be needed to calibrate the passage way. Thus it should not be difficult for organizations to adjust the budget and give more support to manage. Some priorities clearly will need to change in order to pave way for new ones. In the absence of this, life would be very difficult for the executive leadership and their teams.
3) Knowledge, Skills and Capabilities;
Generally, the skills and capabilities of staff have been greatly challenged in Covid-19 times. Leaders’ abilities, knowledge and skills have been tested and boundaries have been pushed. Employees have died, and lost family members, relatives and friends in an unprecedented numbers, causing extreme emotions, stress and mental instability. Clearly the business leaders and teams were not prepared for this. So training in psychology, and mental wellness has now become mandatory for all leaders and staff.
In addition, the pandemic massively disrupted workflows, processes and systems due to limitations in human interactions. Organizations were forced to reduce staff on the shop floor and offices. Many other organizations are not fully automated. When all these happened, business leaders were challenged in their decision making abilities trying to operate in an unfamiliar environment, with fewer staff, and lack of knowledge and capabilities of managing the changing work environment. So a lot of training is required, including acquisition of new technological and innovative capabilities at the work place. In the absence of these, teams become hopeless and helpless.
4) Human Capital strategy;
The Human Resource docket should be the busiest in business organizations, with everything that has been happening. Most of the interventions in this pandemic times require a solid and astute HR leadership and stewardship. To successfully surmount the business challenges, you need a visionary and strategic HR that will help navigate the organization through the Covid-19 storm. Some of the critical changes that HR leadership needs to make are as follows:
a) People strategy;
The up-skilling of staff in terms of knowledge, skills and capabilities is very critical. This includes mental wellness initiatives and how to make the depressing and fearful work environment, fun to work in again. They also need to be able to re-organize teams and their working modes.
b) Work environment changes;
This will include initiatives of how to re-organize the workplace and allow staff to work comfortably. They may want to consider remote and flexible working initiatives to ease the burden of bringing the entire team to work.
c) Review of HR policies;
Some policies need to be reviewed, amended and/or introduced to cope with the new challenges at the workplace.
d) Review and re-design jobs and conduct a job evaluation exercise
e) Re-visit your talent and succession strategy
f) Review your recruitment strategy
g) Review the reward, recognition and retention strategy
h) Review the leadership capability and competency model
i) Review the organization staff benefits to capture the new emerging challenges at the workplace.
5) Organization structure;
Review the organization structure to bring in the much needed flexibility and agility that the organization needs to have in order to cope with the new emerging challenges. This will also involve re-looking a fresh at your processes and systems to inject more efficiency.
6) Technology;
Business leaders must also re-look at how better they need to interface the people and technology in order to bring in more efficiency and productivity. This requires bringing in new innovative technology portfolio and allow employees to work remotely and with flexibility to improve productivity and efficiency.
7) Building Board Capacity;
Organizations need to train and build capacity on their boards in terms of re-skilling them to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic, people and leadership strategy, change their strategic mind, embrace technology and innovation, among other things.
In conclusion, these are just some of the changes that business leaders out to make in their organizations. No organization, regardless of global location and nature of business needs to continue operating the same way like in pre-Covid-19 times. Business leaders need to know that the landscape has changed, and if indeed, they still want to be in business and stand out and succeed, then they ought to make serious and critical changes in their respective organizations.
