5 Critical Questions Businesses Need to Ask Themselves to Successfully Sail Through the Waves of Covid Disruption
Coronavirus shook the fiscal and operational thresholds of businesses across the globe beyond tolerable limits. And if you thought that the destruction was over, this isn't quite true for the post-pandemic marketplace. The worst is still to come for marketers who haven't strategized their survival and are reluctant to adopt measures to adapt, adjust and sustain their operational requirements in a post-Covid world.
The strategic approach to seeking the right resolutions starts with asking the right questions first. In this post we will disclose the vital questions that marketers need to start with to synchronize their bottom line endeavors:
- How do you access your position in the marketplace during and after the pandemic crisis?
- What are your plans to bounce back?
- How the crisis will influence your cultural and organizational identity?
- Are there any new projects that you need to launch, run & coordinate and if yes what would be those projects?
- How well prepared are you to execute your plans and projects?
The disruptions caused by the Covid pandemonium were innumerable – the implications of the crisis were both humanitarian as well as economic. The business fraternity faced grave challenges such as a decline in customers' demand, significant regulatory modifications, layoffs, economic recession, and long periods of stagnancy and uncertainty.
The groundwork for recovery needs to be well strategized; however, one thing is for sure – the way to the next normal isn’t smooth and is full of challenges.
According to management theorist Henry Mintzberg, the road to recovery in the post-pandemic era is characterized by 5 P's viz. plan, ploy, pattern, position, and perspective.
Let's have a look at how these 5 P's can be put into perspective by asking the right questions at the right time (the ones enlisted above):
1. How do you access your position in the marketplace during and after the pandemic crisis?
Marketers need to start with SWOT analysis and must question their visibility post-pandemic. They must also analyze whether the value proposition of their goods or services is high-in-demand or diminishing because of the Covid pandemic.
Before marketers can make smart strategic decisions, they need to ask themselves:
- How are their competitors placed in the marketplace and who are their main competitors?
- How the lookout of their ecosystem has changed post-pandemic and how their roles have changed within the ecosystem?
- Can they shut down their operations and reopen, unchanged, post pandemic?
- Have they lost their ground and can they regain their lost reputation?
- What are monetary implications witnessed by their businesses – whether there is a situation of bankruptcy or are they all set to be the whistle-blowers to the new emerging trends in the post-pandemic era?
2. What are your plans to bounce back?
Much of the deterioration caused during the pandemic was not only unprecedented but also inevitable – both because of the gravity of the change and because of the lack of planning during the initial stages. As we have battled our way out of the storm, much of the haze has started to clear and some trends have started to get standardized, allowing marketers to think broadly and deeply in the long view.
This is the perfect time to plan a course of action, pointing the way to a position that the marketers hope to attain.
3. How the crisis will influence your cultural and organizational identity?
The organizational culture has changed a lot in the face of the pandemic. A hybrid work-from-home, as well as work-from-office culture, has evolved. The crisis can bring people together and instill a collective spirit of endurance which might be true for some of the most resilient businesses.
Marketers might want to do some research on how their perspective evolved in the post-pandemic era. They might want to ask themselves some critical questions such as:
- How prepared their organizations are to deal with the crisis
- Does a crisis this powerful brings their employees closer or disrupt them apart
- How the organization will be perceived by employees once the pandemic is over
Seeking answers to these critical questions will inform marketers what they can achieve once the pandemic ends.
4. Are there any new projects that you need to launch, run and coordinate and, if yes, what would those projects be?
Marketers to start with should enlist a set of projects that are required to mitigate the adverse effects of the pandemic. In order to future-proof the organization, careful monitoring and allocation of resources are also required. The judicious utilization of resources, post-monitoring, allows organizations to come up with new initiatives that optimize their strategic responses to rise above the Covid pandemonium on their way to the next normal.
5. How well prepared are you to execute your plans and projects?
The final critical questions that marketers need to ask themselves is whether they are well-prepared to accomplish the projects that they’ve outlined and what changes need to be made to the plans to enable an optimal execution of the projects.
Ask yourself:
- Is your level of preparedness suited for a remote work culture?
- What are the major differences that exist when it comes to the implementation of projects at the individual, team, and organizational levels?
The quality of the decision-making process is dependent upon the resources at hand and the resources play a vital role in determining who achieves success and who falls short of it.
Wrap Up
The five strategic questions enlisted above will help you plot your current and future moves in the light to the dawn of the next normal. The customers are hyper-sensitive at this time and will remember how you reacted during the crisis. A large part of your customer relationship management depends on how mindful the marketers are of the evolving customer needs on their way to the next normal.
Acting in time will allow companies already facing the disruption to bounce back in time as we have just stepped into the future bereft of Covid, or at least hopefully so.
We hope implementing the above strategies will help your organization sail ahead of the Covid disruption and become a more resilient organization in the process.