With all the negative news floating around out there from every media source in the world, I would like to bring a bit of sunshine into your business world…because there is so much for us to not only be thankful for but to take advantage of during this difficult time.
Remember doing your SWOT analysis…hopefully you do one every year. If not, we should talk about that sometime. It’s a great way to put things into perspective as you begin to do your strategic planning. NOW is also a great time to reassess the opportunities that are in front of you today (even amidst this crisis) and throughout the rest of the year and beyond. While we have to focus on the present because it is so overwhelming right now, it doesn’t mean we should forget about the months ahead. Since I am so passionate about helping companies become Customer Obsessed…now is a great time to ask yourself and your leadership team, “How we are doing with our customers?” It’s a question we should all be asking all the time, but even more during this difficult time. There are amazing opportunities in front of every organization…today and well into tomorrow if we just look.
If you haven’t done a SWOT, read this paragraph. If you have, skip to the next paragraph. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. The goal is to have your leadership team work together for a half-day session where they about these four areas…every year (because they always change). Once you have created a detailed list in each area, the next step is pretty straight forward, but one where you may need some assistance in pulling it all together. Once the lists are finished, create specific goals and actions around the output from the discussion and the lists you made. For example, one thing you want to do is “capitalize” on your Strengths and leverage those even more…you want to “eliminate or mitigate” your Weaknesses and try to turn some of them into Strengths. You usually can’t do much about the Threats, these are generally out of your control and presented by the outside (such as COVID-19, legislation, and competition) so you just want to note what they are so you can try to do things to mitigate them as much as possible. This leaves us with the most important part of the analysis, Opportunities…the one group you want to “take advantage of and accelerate” as much as possible in your business. I know, this is really a shortened version of SWOT but hopefully gets you at least thinking and moving forward. When I facilitate these sessions, it is usually centered around getting the most ideas and comments from a group of leaders without going down rabbit holes on one or two…always a challenge. It is a free-flowing discussion to capture as much as possible from the group without judgment or analysis. There you have it…a quick breakdown of SWOT. Hopefully you are seeing why I recommend doing it annually as part of any planning you already do.
OK, so now that you know what SWOT is, let’s talk about the one huge area that is looming out there right now even amidst one of our biggest times of uncertainty. This is a great time for leaders to really focus their teams on “moving forward” when the world seems to be on hold or sliding backwards. While the world is on hold for personal interaction, it isn’t on hold for making things happen. It is not on hold to create some innovative and creative ideas that can help your company today and well into the future.
That’s the “O”pportunity I hope every business leader can see and take advantage of…right now.
You might be saying, “You don’t get it, we have to lay people off and our revenues are already down and still dropping…this is a very difficult time to just hold things together.” I get it…no argument about this happening (to almost everyone). And while this is going on, we all have a choice…stay focused on the current doom and gloom or spend some time and lift ourselves (and our thoughts and planning) into the future we all know will be here at some time in the year. While there are things we have to deal with (and are ugly) we also have the choice of spending some time escaping this and thinking about hope, opportunity, and a stronger competitive position in the market. This time is critically important to the mental well-being of your leadership team and employees.
For example, there are numbers out there that say the average leader spends more than 20 hours per week in meetings…some significantly more than 20 (you know who you are). Those hours of in-person meetings are gone…don’t exist. Sure, now we are using online video meetings like Zoom and other tools to conduct meetings. But, from my experience, these are much shorter in many cases…people either get right to the point or don’t want to hang out online that long in a meeting. I would venture to say you may have just gained back up to half of your meeting time…10+ hours per week!
Let’s think about travel time…commuting and going to meetings. This is gone (for most of us). This time can average close to the 20+ hours a week. Those hours just got put back into your bank account of time!
While we have issues we didn’t have to deal with before today, such as personnel and declining revenues, we probably aren’t burning up all our extra hours on this…at least not yet. This might give you back an additional 10 hours per week. Doing some quick math, we gained back 10 hours from meetings (minimum), 20 hours from travel (minimum), and we gave back 10 hours for additional crisis management issues. Net hours gained per week is 20 hours (or more) per leader in your company…20 hours. Let’s make an even more drastic cut and cut this number in half right now for other contingencies…now we’re down to 10 hours of EXTRA TIME right now.
While you can probably argue this further, let’s move forward with what you can do if you and your leaders have an additional 10 hours of time on their hands. They can either fill it with other activities that expand to fill the time…OR…they can focus on “O”PPORTUNITY HUNTING.
I think this is a great time for leaders to do some serious planning and discussions around what we could do going forward NOW and in the FUTURE when this is behind us…and it will be behind us. It’s a matter of “when,” not “if.” Even if this goes on for a month (or two or more) you have somewhere between 40 and 80 hours of additional time where your leaders can work on “O”pportunties. When, if ever, have you ever had this amount of concentrated time to focus on the “O”pportunity side of your business. My guess is you never have, unless it was just before it started up. What are you going to do with 40 – 80 hours of leadership time???
Why not review (or create) your SWOT for the year…revised of course because of the crisis we are in the middle of right now. Why not dive into your SWOT and really beat it up and do some “heavy lifting” around what you could be doing NOW for your customers (and others) and what you could do in the FUTURE for your customers (and others)? Why not?
You already know my passion is for every company to be Customer Obsessed so they can become “REMARK”able and get talked about so much that their audience of customers and others become their active “Marketing Agents” for them. If heard me talk about this, go back and read some of my past blog posts and you’ll get it pretty quickly. Today would be an excellent time for you to do some real “O”pportunity planning for how you could leverage your Strengths (and lower your weaknesses) and be more Customer Obsessed. Now would be a great time to really see how you could truly help your customers improve their lives or their business.
One thing I know for certain…it is what people (and companies) do in a time of crisis or uncertainty that sticks (for a long time) in the memory of those you help. Doing things to help your audience improve their life or their business RIGHT NOW will be remembered well into the future.
This time will pass…how do you want to be remembered for what you did during this time?
For example, what if this was a Tsuanmi? Would you want to just hunker down and ride out the storm or would you dive into it and do whatever you could to help your neighbors, friends, colleagues, and fellow businesses? We are in the Tsunami…
What To Do Next...
TODAY, right now, is the time to schedule a SWOT session with your leaders. Whether you use a facilitator or not, just do it. Dive into it…maybe take a full day instead of a half-day. Go deep…get creative (wildly creative)…be bold…identify some incredible “O”pportunities for your business and your audience. I guarantee it will be the best use you can make of the extra 40 – 80 hours all your leaders have on their hands. And you will be shocked how quickly it can help change perspectives and attitudes within your leadership team and your company. No naysaying allowed…only bold creativity. It will change everyone’s attitude guaranteed. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll find some ideas that will cause your customers to have long (and positive) memories about you and your company during this crazy and unpredictable time. FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) don’t help move the ball forward…but coming up with some unique “O”pportunities will make some lasting impressions!
If I can help in any way with some guidance to get you started, don’t hesitate to ask. I’ve done hundreds of these so I can give you some guidance and tips on what to avoid and how to make them very productive. I’m happy to guide you through this if it would help. I just want you to do it. Let me know if I can help jump start you to blowing up your “O”pportunities and setting the stage for your company to thrive this year…despite our unthinkable situation. You can do this…we can all do this!!
