Coronavirus outbreak has disturbed our daily routines, working style, business conduct, and the business environment. CXOs are struggling to continue the business flow, cash flow, employees, vendors, and partners management. Almost all the departments have been affected severely. CXOs should look throughout the current crisis and should have a post pandemic future plan ready.
The current business environment is different, but in a year or two from now, when the pandemic ends, it may be more different from what it was before the crisis began. CXOs should start their preparation for the post pandemic future of their business, and to do that adequately, they need to have a longer-term vision of what they want to become in five or even ten years.
We need to predict what is coming to us with certainty, CXOs can develop much more confidence than they might imagine about what they could and should become, build a strategy to live into it, and then it into action.
Spend more time envisioning the future.
CXOs should start investing more time envisioning their post pandemic future plan. Ideally, they should spend approx 10 to 20 percent of their time weekly exploring and envisioning where they want their business to be when the pandemic crisis is gone.
Analyze, what is likely to change about your customers, market trends, and business environment, and what isn’t. Continue to keep your focus on your customer’s requirements, how you’ll meet their new and evolving requirements, the resonance of your products and services, and your overall capacities.
Prepare a strategy to walk back your envisioned future to today.
Working backward, lay out a path from your long-term goal to the mid-term (your post-crisis focal point), and from there to now. Reverse-engineer a set of benchmarks and breakthroughs frequently. The idea to start in the future and walk backward is that. – It enables organizations to clean-sheet what you could become without being overly restrained by today’s crisis business environment. – it will help CXOs to think concretely and in terms of dollars and cents, which enables you to choose which investments should be given priority and which to delay.
Be ready to learn and pivot.
Given the fast-changing environment that organizations are operating in, CXOs should ensure a regular review and monitor the organization’s progress. In the beginning, CXOs will be working off assumptions. As you test them in real situations, you will get more accurate data and expertise to confirm or deny them. Based on data and knowledge, adjust your vision and strategy.
CXOs working toward organizations mid and long term goals, you must be mindful of both the strong and faint signs you obtain. That needs some degree of humility, as you will likely have to surrender some of your facts after they are tested against reality and fail. Speed and agility are key; CXOs must learn fast, continually pivoting, and adjusting.
Work together towards the vision.
The organization’s team and stakeholders will have to be more dedicated and confident, so make people believe in your vision of the better future of post pandemic that together its is achievable, and it is not impossible.
The current business environment is uncertain very challenging. CXOs of the organizations struggling to balance the flow, to deal with it you have to make tough decisions considering the organization’s vision and the future post pandemic.
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