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Riding the business wave in a time of crisis

3 Jun 2020

When faced with any kind of crisis, it is human nature to start going through your checklist to see what needs to be done. Most often, people go into panic mode - with little focus and direction. Yet remaining calm and collected should be the first priority when a crisis knocks at the door.

Wayne Zwiers, CEO and co-founder at Basalt South Africa

With the coronavirus pandemic now forcing people to remain indoors, with almost unprecedented restrictions on personal freedoms, staying calm - and developing resilience - has never been this important to collective health and wellbeing. This goes for businesses, too.

Less is more

As most high performers in business know and understand, a lot of detailed planning needs to take place at different stages of the lifecycle of a business.

Risk mitigation and crisis planning is essential here, to ensure that the business is adaptable enough to allow for different crises to be addressed. In this phase, there are companies that make the necessary structural, strategic, and operating decisions that improve their ability to perform in the face of volatility and uncertainty.

This is something that all businesses can achieve, as long as they have a contingency plan - and a strong, focused leadership team.

The leadership team needs to be prepared and should include well-equipped individuals to whom the rest of the organisation looks to for detailed guidance and information. This team understands that their ability to be able to take the necessary measures to regroup and reset the various elements of the business will help the business adjust to a ‘new normal’... and also ensure that the rest of the team can operate confidently and calmly.

Think beyond the crisis

When external events are as dramatic as the coronavirus pandemic, people tend to go into ‘over control’ mode.

This is when leaders need to be the primary source of information and guidance, ensuring that the company as a whole is focused on implementing solutions to the challenge in order to see everyone safely through the national crisis.

Another important part of riding the wave that cannot be ignored is being able to plan ahead - and look beyond the current state of affairs.

As leaders, we need to look to plan for the world of work, post-crisis. So, what do we need to prepare for, and how do we prepare the business, staff and clients in order to ensure that once we move into a new normal, it is a seamless transition for us all? It is critical to think ahead in this way.