Navigating a Crisis & Ensuring Continuity

The global economies have taken a severe battering due to the Pandemic, businesses and entrepreneurs are striving hard to ensure business continuity and respond to the changes required by the markets and customers in the New Normal. This entire year will be crucial as every organization is determined to make a positive comeback into the market, with a formative response to every challenge. The markets, consumer sentiment, norms, preferences & simply everything has changed, and thus, responding decisively to every problem will be a common thread across businesses.

Against this backdrop, it is vital for founders, managers, and organizations with LLP company registration to respond with firmness, agility, and ensure proper communications at all times. They need to admit to themselves that responding like in a crisis, will help them navigate these times better. Driving core agendas, ensuring team spirit, and regularly tracking progress can be a good start for businesses to respond as if they are in crisis mode. Let us take a look at how leaders, founders, and managers in organizations can navigate a crisis and ensure continuity:

Be where the action is:

For leaders to lead, it is crucial to have a good judgment of the situation so that remedial measures can be planned. Against this, you have to analyze dispassionately and then know where you stand, judging what immediate next actions are required. Be there in the main picture and brief the team about what needs to be done. In a crisis, helping others achieve purpose boosts team spirit enormously. Acknowledge others’ work, giving credit where it is due. Mainstream purposeful actions and these alignments will build resilience into the organizational DNA. Get clarity on resources available, so you can know where to invest them properly for results. Define vital tasks that get the most results and impact — drive these and delegate the rest – thus efficiency can be built. Most importantly, this will make teams feel valued and appreciated – a core requirement for middle managers and their teams.

Lead by Example and be Calm.

When a senior leader or manager stays calm, in the most difficult situations, his teams take the lead accordingly. This is a situation where teams look up to their leaders – they soldier on, calmly, and efficiently.

This resilience in leaders is a mindset that can and will be transferred to middle management and thereby to the other teams, bypassing panic and therefore, mistakes. Taking responsibility for their own actions and thus dictating to circumstances, rather than the other way round. In a crisis, this trait of leading by example and staying calm can help organizational leaders build a strong resilient team that can withstand changes and responds as an efficient unit.

Communicate consistently and Clearly:

When a crisis is on, misunderstandings and therefrom, mistakes: can prove to be very harmful to organizations. Thus the leaders, founders, and businesses making a positive impact and conveying the ideas simply & clearly is vital. Every task, every instruction, and goal will need to be conveyed simply, clearly, and feedback was taken. This is to ensure that everyone is on the same page and no misconceptions exist. Similarly, outcomes, expectations, and goals can be discussed clearly between teams consistently to drive clarity. Putting this habit in the process helps to avoid mistakes and builds a communication culture in the organization. Not only are silos avoided, but a team that shares information, results, and communicates regularly will help to build resilience to fight the crisis on-hand more effectively. Leaders can leverage communications to drive team leaders towards achieving common goals and negate the crisis mentality a great deal. Transparency and information flow are good habits that leaders can instill in the organization.

Conclusion:

While there is no text-book response to navigating a crisis and ensuring continuity, leaders across the world are stepping up decisively, trying to implement new strategies. Every organization, business, and functioning unit is responding in its best capacity to the changes wrought by the Pandemic. Taking a new approach, being flexible, and communicating regularly with the teams, clients, customers, and partners can help negate a crisis to some extent. Taking the initiative to lead, responding decisively, and with learning, culture can build resilience into the organization’s DNA, better equipping it to fight a crisis next time.