Reboot Your Team, Department or Business

Essential for managers at all levels to start acting on now.

Stay positive, keep busy, save your goals.

The coronavirus pandemic has affected businesses across the globe.  And whilst this has affected some businesses far more than others, we have all felt the effect. Indeed, some industry sectors being literally reduced to a small shadow of their former selves.

Within large companies workforces have been reduced and alienated, and community spirit has evaporated under the work from home rules. So, years of careful team-building, skills development and process learning have now been lost to three months of drifting in an open sea.However all is not lost.

As the dust and mist clear we can begin to see an end to the lockdown and difficulties we have all been facing over the last few weeks and months. Now is the time to start planning, focusing and implementing reboot plans for our careers, business, team and department.

While this may not be easy… it is possible.  If you begin by following these 4 stages it will make it it possible to see progress in a very short time. The four stages to reboot your business are:

1. Create a two-year vision
2. Reskill your staff
3. Reset priorities
4. Innovate and modernise

Let’s look at these in more detail.

Creating a vision for the next 2 to 3 years is essential. Without a clear vision, and a series of goals, people cannot be inspired, motivated or empowered.  The fact is achieving major goals always takes at least 2 years in both business and in our personal lives.  Create a Clear Vision of where you see your department or business in 2 years time and then work back to a series of Strategic goals and milestones.  As an individual, complete the same task: “how do you want your life to be in 2 years time?” Include finances, personal situation, family and so on.  Create this compelling vision and keep it in mind on a daily basis.

 If you are a manager or leader of men and women communicate this vision at every opportunity in as many ways as possible.  In particular, create a communication channel to update people on progress and small victories along the way.

Upskill people

Now is a perfect time to begin training coaching and giving your staff new skills, knowledge and standards to work to.  if your progress to your vision is going to be positive, you’re going to need a team of well-trained and highly skilled individuals to help you get there.

And it is likely that people will be glad to have the challenge and encouraged by your faith in them.  So look at the opportunities in every area to try and stretch their skills and knowledge and improve their abilities. The three core areas are:

• Technology
• People skills
• Leadership

Hopefully busienss activity and sales levels will return the pre covid-19 levels, perhaps faster in some sectors than others. In order to offset the losses and challenges of this year it will be important to have greater productivity and achieve more with less.

Reset priorities

In the last few months we have seen the most unbelievable effects, both human cost and economic devastation.  The human cost and impact on the economies of the world have been substantial.  The way forward is to now reevaluate the operations, goals and priorities of your team, business and department.  Strip away less important markets, products, services and processes.  Instead focus on the core values, essential revenue areas and most important priorities.

Innovate

 Finally and perhaps most importantly you will need to innovate, simplfy and modernise.  Perhaps people will not be as keen to work in offices, travel on planes or spend money as they did before the coronavirus came to town.  In order to tempt your customers back and regain your market or build your team spirit you will need to think clearly and creatively about everything you do.

 The first step is to build ideas within your team.  This means building a dialogue with people to allow them to ‘think outside the box’ and perhaps reconsider previous ideas that were thought of as being unrealistic.  Many organisations have managed to reinvent themselves after difficult economic times.  Most famously, Nokia used to be a logging company shipping timber until that market was closed to them and they decided to move into mobile phones.  Whilst the changes you may need to make will not be as dramatic as that, looking at everything you do with a new set of eyes is recommended.

So as you begin to plan your business reboot think carefully about how you can focus on these four activities:  Vision,  skills,  priorities and ideas.

---