Coronavirus crisis: Take advantage of your available time

Should specific measures accompany the decline in the activity of a company? How to keep a strategic approach when the company experiences a business disruption? In times of coronavirus crisis, what are the best practices to adopt to optimize your available time?

No business is immune to a sudden crisis. In the event of a shock or a sudden economic downturn, it is possible to take advantage of the time offered by this slowdown in activity.

Between health crises, stock market fluctuations, or the lack of anticipation of developments in a sector, the company is subject to significant risks. All the more so when the manager has not envisaged any emergency plan or when he faces a situation that he had not foreseen.

Small businesses rarely set up a risk analysis system: they lack anticipation.

Crises, sometimes extreme and sudden, highlight a fundamental shortcoming in terms of crisis management strategy.

Once the company is slowed down, how best to react and use the time left available by the decline in activity?

A decrease in the activity of your business: look for areas for improvement

The coronavirus crisis period is a period favorable to analysis. A drop-in activity is never harmless and always fits into a given context. It is then time to make a comparison of your initial objectives, your strategy, and confront them with the situation:

• Could you have foreseen this drop in activity?
• Which scenario elements have been omitted?
• What actions could have been envisaged?
• What processes could have been improved to overcome the shock?
• e.g.

Analysis of the situation will allow you to understand better what you could improve in your business to lead it towards greater adaptability in the future.

Coronavirus crisis management: review its strategy

After assessing the shortcomings of your processes in the face of an operational crisis, you are ready to reconsider some of your strategic aspects.

If the need to define new objectives seems evident to you, do not forget to consider them in an “intelligent” way. The SMART method will help you consolidate your new approach.

To avoid further drops in activity, refocus on a refined and assumed core target. It is essential to know your environment and its specificities.

Your initial target heart may have evolved. It’s time to question yourself to rediscover what your expectations are. Ditto with regard to the various sectoral aspects: competition, innovation, suppliers, e.g.

To meet these expectations, concrete and pragmatic actions aimed at creating new working bases could be envisaged:

• train and train your teams in new practices,
• invest in research and development,
• encourage collective intelligence, by including your team in the reflection process,
• e.g.

Once your commercial and marketing strategy has been decided, you will have to create emulation.

Prepare your communication to relaunch your activity

The communication efforts that you put in place throughout the life of your business are all the more precious to get out of a situation of declining activity.

Too many entrepreneurs neglect this essential point. By underestimating the benefit of targeted communication, your efforts to relaunch a product or service will be in vain because one cannot go without the other.

Use each of the information gathered about your target audience, then compose an operational and strategic approach to your communication.

Knowing a drop in activity is not inevitable. Everything will depend on your attitude as a leader, in the face of actions to be taken, as well as the resilience of your company.

In this test, which can sometimes prove to be particularly trying, do not remain alone. Surround yourself with professionals who can guide you and advise you.