2021 Ahead! Are you ready?

Thank god, but 2020 is nearly over. While it has been a crazy year, it has, in many ways, flown by. It seems only yesterday that we were all locked down and adjusting to a new world. However, the year is nearly over, and the world has not changed. However, we are experiencing a “K” shaped recovery. Effectively, the economy is bifurcating, and many industries and companies will end up on the downward slope.

As I have said before, I expect COVID to be with us until Q3/Q4 2021, but call me a pessimist. Even so, we should expect to be here till the end of Q2 2021. So how are you planning for 2021? What got you here won’t get you there!

This Year It Is the Accelerant Stupid

As you begin the planning cycle, consider that COVID is an accelerant. Whatever were the major trends were in your industry at the end of 2019, take them forward ten years, that is where the industry is now! So where are you and where should you be?
Concerning where you are and where you need to be when COVID is over, you need to take a realistic look at your organization and do a gap analysis on:

• strengths and weaknesses,
• culture and core values,
• human and capital resources,
• processes and systems,
• customers and buying habits,
• product and service delivery,
• suppliers, and
• competition.

With that gap analysis, you can determine where to focus your attention, so that you can emerge from COVID in a leadership position. I am not going to go through all these today, but here are few things to consider.

Culture

Culture has never been more critical. If employees adhere to the company’s core values and live its culture, then provided they know the organizational goals, they can make the right decisions. Moving decision making down to the front lines is critical during the next twelve months as the environment changes quickly. Having the decision process moving up and down the organization is a luxury few can afford.

For a great reminder, look at Turn the Ship Around by Capt. below.

Further, reading “Adaptation under Fire: How Militaries Change in Wartime,” by Lt. General David Barno and Nora Bensahel, there are several crucial lessons for management.

• Everyone Knew the Mission, not just the task. Post World War I, decentralized, independent battlefield actions, a tradition in German military thinking, returned and became a central tenet of German army doctrine. Mission orders were regularly emphasized and practiced during peacetime training exercises.
• Continuous Improvement. The German army established the culture of relentlessly critiquing its leaders and units’ performance in exercises and war games. Commanders and staff officers at all levels were expected to do so candidly and objectively, without regard to personal embarrassment or potential career damage. This candor extended to critiquing the performance of senior officers and higher headquarters as well. These principles made German doctrine inherently adaptable in the face of battle.
• Changing the rules of the Game. The French army believed the next war would be the same as WWI. French interwar thinking focused primarily on leveraging defensive operations to prevail in any future conflict. Thus, they undertook no “no large-scale examination of the lessons of the last war by a significant portion of the Officers Corps.” In contrast, the Germans examined how to use new technologies to change the “Rules of the Game” and win using offensive operations. They improved their Blitzkrieg tactics that had great success in World War II.

I would bring these lessons into your organization as part of any new model to succeed. Regarding business Blitzkrieg offensives, I would look to John Boyd and his OODA Loop as a better model.

Process and Systems

As you examine your processes and systems, I would recommend asking, “If we didn’t do it this way, would we?” and “Will these systems get us to where we need to be?” In many cases, with the acceleration that has been experienced, the answer may be no. Thus, put together multifunctional teams together to examine these and use different problem-solving models, as I mentioned in “Want the Best Results, Get out of your Comfort Zone.” Some I would look to are:

• Get out of your comfort zone. Change the environment or put limitations on the team. Use Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies, where each card puts a constraint on the team to help too when teams are struggling to break through a problem. They are available on Amazon.
• Break your business process down to its most simplified version, e.g., ship a product to a customer and then work on new solutions. The more you define the process in the question, the more you are tied to that system in the solution. By being most simple, you can expand the range of solutions.
• New ideas, enforce the rule that you cannot challenge any idea until 100 are developed. This rule stops the thought process from being shut down early by those that oppose change, and often the craziest ideas come at the end, but a gem of something great.
• Also, in examining systems, take a look at Tom Wujec’s TED Talk, “Got a Wicked Problem, First Tell Me How You Make Toast,” below.

Using these problem-solving methods, if done correctly, could provide an additional benefit, reinforcing your culture and camaraderie among your employees, which has been challenging to do during our COVID work from home.

Contact me if you need help facilitating any of these processes as you look ahead as I wish you all the best succeeding in 2022 and beyond.

Copyright (c) 2020, Marc A. Borrelli

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