To win, I recommend you apply the ACT model of winning behaviors for creative and successful business management during hard times. ACT stands for agile, change and teach others.
You must be agile. Change fast. And Teach to empower your team. ACT to tap into opportunities that always come with tough times.
Agile
Agile is about responding fast to the winds of change. That way you do not wait to see but create organizational fitness by identifying the right resources that will enable it to survive the hard times.
Agile is about thinking fast and acting before someone else. If you are a business, who are your top customers who bring the 80% revenue to your business? If you are a Church, who are the top parishioners and well-wishers who bring 80% of the tithe to the Church? You must have a record of such people. Keep them close. And when faced with a challenge, engage them on social media for solutions. More than before, the Church must be at the front line of mobilizing resources to support the most vulnerable members.
If you are to win, you must throw the old strategy out of the window. Whoever does that faster, wins.
Change
To change is to transform and adapt to a new normal. Change is not necessarily bringing new products and services. It is about repacking their existing products and delivering them in the new channels. For example, for a Church, traditionally, people come to the Church and physically attend Mass.
Today, people do so on their mobile phones. For your business, what new technologies will you adopt? To survive, your business and brand must evolve in different ways. No business survives without adequate cash flow. And no business earns cash flow without delivering services. You must, therefore, deliver services and earn revenue to continue and be sustainable in the new normal. Failure to do so will weaken your organization. Since many businesses are in operation, the Church should consider digital channels to receive tithe from those who can.
Ask, what changes are you are making to win? Are they adequate?
Teach
If you do not teach it, you do not create succession. Have you created a leadership operating system that empowers people and you are not afraid of what happens when you are out of the room?
Are you an empowering leader who shares information freely, trains colleagues, and juniors in the way you do things? Imagine how the Church would be today if Jesus Christ was not a great Teacher. Great leaders are great teachers in the first place. Instead of holding information, you release it through training others to empower them and allow decisions to be taken at the lower level?
During hard times, great leaders harness the power of their teams to address business challenges. Training yields the positive effect of keeping businesses close to their customers and other key stakeholders. Empowering leaders do it through the creation of an environment of Trust, Clarity, and Momentum.
Re-establishing trust by owning up to business mistakes demonstrates care, reliability, and fairness and thereby drawing customers closer. Clarity is achieved through effective communication. Momentum is the energy, drive, and zeal and dynamism exhibited by business leaders. Good business momentum will not only make a business thrive, but it will get employees to fulfill their potential in unimaginable ways.
COVID-19 has been a great disruption, but has also created many opportunities, especially for creative and responsive leaders!
As several businesses are experiencing a period of slowed business and economic growth and loss of key customers, dynamic business leaders are moving forward and thriving despite the backward push and roadblocks created by COVID-19. You too, don’t call this ‘scientific’ as many are doing.
Will you join the dynamic and creative institutional leaders who have embraced ACT?
Remember, when hard times hit, your response actions matter more than all your pre-existing factors and conditions before the hard times. And whatever you do, put people at the center of your response strategy. ACT. (Be) Agile. Change (fast). Teach (to empower). And win.
Copy Right Mustapha B Mugisa 2020
