When business as usual cannot continue or be seen as a safe option, organisations must act inversely, adopt a different approach, and ultimately, think like a startup in order to navigate through unprecedented times. This type of crisis leadership requires us to find solutions under stress, considering our conventional risk management frameworks may be rendered irrelevant.
Predicting needs in this environment will be very difficult, which is why leaders must manage the coronavirus (COVID-19) as a whole event to address evolving medical, financial, economic, supply chain and psychological impacts to be successful in an extended remote environment. This means, organisations need to think through different business and operating models, like our risk management frameworks and crisis management, to allow for flexibility in an environment of high uncertainty.
COVID-19 is likely to have a huge impact on customer needs requiring many industries to reinvent, develop new risk management frameworks and crisis management plans. More than ever, organisations need hypothesis-driven business models, primarily based on disruption, instinct and insight, through an iterative cycle of experimentation and evaluation until the needs are met. Long term goal-setting will be impossible, and therefore, organisations need to build an ability to set short-term goals and take appropriate decisions.
Taking steps to assume a startup mindset, leaders can access a talent pool of creativity, ingenuity, imagination, invention, and problem-solving if needed. Innovative thinking has to be nurtured to make immediate pivots in implemented strategies. Leaders should develop multiple versions of the future and keep adapting the models as the assumptions change.
Steps to take:
Agile teams
Amid the chaos of the current crisis, we suggest organisations focus on developing more agile teams to replace traditional team structures and choose speed to market versus excellence. This will allow for various parts of the organisations to work seamlessly together and can therefore quickly adapt, or pivot, to changing external circumstances. Leaders will be required to think of their entire organisation as one team, which can be moulded to suit the specific needs on a bespoke basis.
Conditions for experimentation
Many things we are doing are experimental and tentative with short-term outcomes as we try to survive the current unchartered territory. As we know, experimenting is a foundational element within a startup which creates conditions for agile problem solving and piloting tactics to determine market success. Organisations need to embrace this mindset of experimentation. More partnership initiatives should be endeavoured as no one organisation or person has the answers to endure this environment so it is imperative we work together to build a future through and post COVID-19.
In the coming weeks and months, organisations will be required to shift culture and behaviours that are focused on continuous learning, rapid innovation, resilience, optimism, risk taking and adaptability. Today, we see many of these traits in start-up founders and entrepreneurs. Corporate leaders must start creating organisations that are agile, innovative, adaptable, experimental and people-centric to deal with pandemic impacts.
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