Whether your business thrived or barely survived 2020 there is, believe it or not, reason to celebrate! 2020 was BIG and you made it through what has been the most universally disruptive year. Some businesses did not. As the new year begins, we encourage you to pause to reflect on your achievements and the challenges you faced and plan for how you will build on this to make your business even stronger in 2021.
Check the rear-view mirror before focusing on the road ahead as you continue your journey.
The beginning of 2021 brings sustained pressure for businesses to adapt to the ongoing COVID-19 emergency and the ever-growing impacts of climate change.
In the first few days of 2021 in Australia, we have seen:
· continued unemployment and economic uncertainty
· the emergence of new COVID clusters in NSW and Victoria
· a more contagious “UK variant” of COVID-19 in returned travellers
· a cyclone in North Queensland
· flooding across parts of Queensland and NSW
· bushfires in Western Australia
· export market uncertainty for some industries
Any one of these incidents could cause a business to fail. But NONE of these incidents are occurring in isolation. Can your business withstand concurrent emergencies?
The advantage that all business has right now is the luxury of hindsight to guide us
Be realistic about the toll that changed work methods have on your people and their outputs. Have you considered the backlog of non-critical or less urgent work you may have created when implementing alternate work strategies? How much longer can you sustain alternate work strategies? Are there any potential crises hidden in that backlog or decisions you’ve made in 2020?
The phrase “we got through COVID; we can get through anything” is wonderfully positive, yet potentially short sighted. Did you get through 2020 by luck and unsustainable work effort, by careful planning and execution, with skilled staff and effective decision making, or a bit of everything?
Are you controlling for bias? The Illusion of Control is the tendency to overestimate one's degree of influence over external events. When we overestimate our control strategies, we are assuming our response will fix the crisis. Getting through 2019/2020 did not fix the external crisis, nor will changing the number from 2020 to 2021.
A clear-headed, independent review of your organisation’s response will help identify what might be sustained, improved or fixed. We recommend considering:
· Organisational response to the disruption experienced in 2019 /2020
· Management structures and how they coped
· Effectiveness of plans and policy (business continuity, crisis management, COVID-safe)
· Health and safety with particular emphasis on staff welfare and fatigue management
· Supply chain resilience
· Customer satisfaction levels
· Revenue and cost impact
· Robustness of your recovery plan
· Readiness for emerging risks
· Capacity to clear any backlogs or further transform
Tigertail can help you undertake an independent review, validate recovery strategies, supplement capacity shortages and train your team to maintain capability and preparedness levels. Take the most effective step toward recovery today by contacting us.
