Over recent weeks, businesses of all sizes and types have creatively responded to the drastically different operating environment we find ourselves navigating. In many cases, this has involved business owners and managers creatively pivoting their operations to serve evolving market needs.
This has been an often-necessary exercise to maintain cashflows and survive, but it has also allowed businesses to support their community and vice versa.
But what happens when the operating environment begins to return to a more normal situation? Should a business also return to their old ways? Or is there a better approach?
Reinventing the status quo
As with any disruption to business, there are considerable opportunities to learn and improve organisational performance; and business impacts of COVID-19 are certainly no exception.
Now is the perfect time to review your business’s operations to increase efficiency to deliver better customer value and maintain a symbiotic relationship with your community.
So, where should you start?
The first step is always to determine your company’s objective. Great companies align their purpose and objectives with what serves their stakeholders, being their owners, staff, customers and the wider community.
There are too many businesses that have drifted from these objectives in the pursuit of profit at all costs. Unfortunately, this almost always leads to poor business outcomes. Right now, is a time to address this! After all, historically, the most successful businesses are ones which maximise value to all their stakeholders.
After the objectives are defined, a broad business strategy should be developed to focus the business’s operations on scalability and growth. If your business isn’t growing, it’s shrinking, and a shrinking business is not sustainable in the long-term.
The most critical part of a business’s strategy is defining your unique market offerings. This is what separates your business apart from the others and is the source of your competitive advantage.
This is where innovation really matters. By continuously, and rapidly, improving your product or service and your internal processes, your business will be able to improve the value you deliver to your customers, enhance your community and in turn, improve your competitiveness and success.
Once these three elements have been developed, your focus should turn to implementation. A great strategy is worthless without an amazing team to execute it. This is where links with your community will help you find and retain the right people to help your organisation achieve its full potential.
As soon as your strategy is being implemented, and you can start to measure the results and repeat the process. The business improvement cycle never stops.
