Carpe diem - Moving out of lockdown

About the Author:

Paul Wilton (editor)

CA with degrees in commerce, accounting and information technology. Paul worked overseas in the “Big 4” accounting firms and served as a director at Audit New Zealand before setting up his own consultancy. Author of A-Z of New Zealand Business Law, Paul has over 20 years of experience as a business owner and consultant. He joined FBA in 2004 and is totally committed to providing excellence in quality and value to our subscribers. 

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The times they are a-changing.  Some businesses will be frantically working to get back up and running.  Others will be champing at the bit, but still have some time on their hands. Whatever your position, do try to set aside time at some stage to pause and assess how it went.  Seize the moment and opportunity to learn from the lessons of the past several weeks and see if they can provide a lasting benefit for your business.

The Challenge

Every business will have been affected in its own way.  Some have been able to continue operating with staff working from home and others have not. 

Before you move forward, make sure that you clearly understand your current position.  Focus on your cash flow and make some projections.  Be realistic.

Whatever you contemplate, plan or undertake has to be in this context and any ideas you have must be properly evaluated in terms of its impact on your finances, resources and other practical considerations that will determine the feasibility.

With that in mind, this article challenges you to think outside the square; to take a new look at your business in the light of what has happened over the past two months and to consider if you have learned anything that will enable you to make your business better in future than it has been in the past.

Whilst our challenge is for you to find an appropriate time and set it aside to pause and assess, we suggest that you set yourself the challenge of identifying and defining changes that will make your business better in future than it was before.

Brainstorming

Consult you staff:

• Find out what went well and what did not. 

• Share with them ideas and thoughts that you have had in a way that stimulates their thinking, but does not make them feel threatened, especially regarding ideas that may affect them but are unlikely to be implemented.

• Call for their thoughts.  Give them some challenges.  Make it clear that you cannot guarantee that their ideas will be implemented, but give them assurance that all ideas will be heard and considered.  Then make sure that you honour this.

• Consider:

  • Incentives for original ideas that you actually implement;

  • Fun ways of getting teams together to brainstorm.  Perhaps have a competition for teams to come up with great suggestions.  The team that "wins" (you'll have to set the rules) will be treated to a great meal out.

• Take notes and make sure that you get back to them with feedback.  Don't hold back on giving credit and praise to those who come up with good ideas.

• If you have a whiteboard, it may be helpful to group ideas into different areas.  Then choose specific topics to help focus thinking. 

  Consider for example:

Customer service

Objective:  Help customers in ways that you have not done before. Such ideas need to more than pay for themselves.

Looking back over lockdown, consider:

• What did you do differently?

  • New ways to offer the same service or meet the same needs?

  • New needs identified that you were able to satisfy?

• Were there any missed opportunities?

• What could you have done better?

• How well did you keep in touch with your customers?  Did you reach out, find out how they were doing; ask if there was anything you could do to help? 

Looking forward, consider:

• Lessons learned

• How can you benefit from these ideas moving forward?

• What will it take?

• How would customers appreciate you reaching out to them now and in the future?

Productivity

Look at all areas of your business and for each service or product, consider each stage from acquisition, transport, production, packaging... all the way to sales, delivery and follow-up.  Don't forget admin, finance, accounts, HR, communication, technology...  No matter how small your business, you may be surprised, when you stop to think about it, at the number of areas it covers and how many decisions are made to make it what it is or could be in future.

Working from home. 

For many businesses that have been able to continue operating with staff working at home, the obvious question will have arisen: Can or should we be doing this in future? We will be publishing articles on this question soon, but here are some thoughts in the meantime:

• Do all staff need to rush back to work immediately or should this be staggered, given both health considerations and the demands of the business?

• Regarding options for working at home longer term:  Does it need to be all or nothing?  You may find that some aspects of the business can work well with people working from home, while others don't.  This could lead to cost saving options for downsizing your office;

• Take your employees' circumstances into account.  The same job may be easy for one employee to manage from home and impossible for another.  Perhaps you will need to still have options for some employees to work in a shared space.  Does it necessarily need to be the office?

• Think outside the box.  Desperate times call for desperate measures, but circumstances don't necessarily have to be dire to come up with ideas that may seem crazy at first, but that actually work and make financial sense.

• Don't forget about your health and safety obligations.  Take these into consideration before finalising any decisions.

• Beware of creating a situation where you become overly dependent on employees whose circumstances may change.  Solutions need to be sustainable and/or easily transportable and contractual arrangements need to be agreed to protect all involved.  It all comes down to what works and how to achieve win-win.

Summary

Go through a similar exercise for all aspects of your business, re-evaluating how you have done things in the past.  Involve your employees, giving them space (ha ha) and the freedom to speak freely.  Don't knock them.  Make it easy for them to express their views. 

Manage expectations.  Perhaps explain that you want to go through an exercise to confirm that you are operating in the best way, but will be open to new ideas if it can be shown that they will be easy to implement and cost effective.

At worst, you will continue to operate exactly as you have done before, but will have been through a useful exercise with your employees to prove that you are doing business as well as you can.  At best, you can really change your business for the better and benefit from this for years to come.

FBA Editor

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