Stronger after the Storm — Become a Digital Collaborative Company

Enrico Scopa — Founder & CEO at Enrian Partners & Tony Tarantini— EMBA Professor, trainer and coach, owner of ELP Academy

Small and Large Companies are now all very busy with short-term responses to the Pandemic impact on their operations, an impact full of uncertainties and unknowns.

Business Executives, stressed if not even exhausted, are facing important questions:

Are we really doing the right things now, under the pressure of the emergency?

How long will this stormy transition last and how to manage it over time?

What will the “New Normal” finally be and how to be prepared to be a successful part of it?

Whatever the context of each specific business, the questions need immediate attention and future-shaping intentions.

The rush and the initial results

The pandemic containment measures triggered short-term cost savings measures and halt of investments. They triggered also a rush towards the first available technical shortcut to keep the business running. Not to mention some fantasizing about possible disruptive innovation, that would allow capturing new opportunities while stopping the possible fall of the business.

Some of the early results of this initial race may be concerning:

• Companies with thousands of people connected in haste from home using a bunch of different and often inefficient/expensive tools and devices.
• People who never worked remotely have been compelled to invent their own new way of interacting, without any skill or habit or etiquette to do it.
• Managers, used to the physical presence of their employees in the office, are struggling with delegation. And have little or no preparation for remote team-management, work organization, monitoring, feedback.

It is of course obvious that something had to be done quickly. The unmanageable pressure, however, easily replaces the “what makes sense to do” (to be structurally better) with the “let’s start doing something immediately” (to continue somehow functioning).

This, if kept for too long, leads to increasing complexity and burning of extra energy. In a race that could be a marathon, not a 100mt sprint.

And surprise: Command & Control (not great even in the Old Normal), does not really work well when your own workforce is remote. Your workforce is not an outsourcing Partner, it is your own people, you do not have the same type of “contractual” levers to use.

Waiting until the Storm is over is not an option

Extra-costs, productivity decrease, public policies evolution and business-model changes are messing up the economics and the entire competitive arena. Can you stay still until the dust settles fully?

The extra costs (and risks) of setting-up and running a gigantic remote working infrastructure — needed to connect and manage thousands of employees in a safe and regulatory-compliant manner — are adding up to the legacy costs of the traditional physical premises and workspaces. Something not sustainable, it calls for a rapid optimization.

The decrease in productivity of the workforce — often unskilled, unprepared and not motivated enough nor well managed to work in a remote configuration — is driving backlog accumulation, drop in the quality of the services to customers, inefficiency in sales. Sooner than later, these gaps and backlogs need to be resolved.

The change in the business models driven by new public policies (social distancing and all the other existing and future restrictions) are obliging to reconsider in a profound manner the interactions with clients and providers, the distribution and sourcing strategies, the internal operating model and the supporting technological platforms. Design and execution of such changes take time — it cannot wait for the end of the storm to be started.

There’s no way back, only forward

Most likely, Social Distancing restrictions and people’s “social fear” — at any level — will diminish quite slowly.

Travel across countries or regions will be subject to an even slower transition, with policies evolving with different timing in different locations. And who knows how it will be regulated over time… (i.e. a digital “health visa”? Applicable to enter/exit countries or maybe even between cities?).

In practical terms, the mixed interaction in-person / remote will be around for a long while (if not practically forever).

Customers’ habits, on the other hands, are changing drastically, accelerating as never seen before the use of digital (to overcome the limitations of social distancing). And we see emerging a divide between “at risk”, “less at risk” and “immune” Customers (and Employees), de-facto a new type of Customers Segmentation.

There are clear obstacles to run the business as before… And there is an historical opportunity to reduce unnecessary commuting, to cancel avoidable internal meetings, and to push efficient & digitally enabled interactions as mainstream.

This mainstream should be at the center of the renewal of commercial and operational approaches: any digital tool and collaborative approach that works well in “remote” interactions, it can be used successfully also in the traditional in-person interactions.

Shape your own better future

Each Business has its own specific context and challenges, and equally specific are the most appropriate actions to take. Practically every Company, however, should consider seriously to:

• Trash any “legacy waste” in the operational and managerial activities as much and as fast as possible. Over-complicated processes, committees and meetings of questionable value, redundant controls / rules and hideous habits of inflexibility. It’s a good moment to “do less of them”. Cutting such type of waste saves energy (and money) for what matters.
• Fix the interaction & collaboration infrastructure, accelerating with no excuses the Company digitisation journey, to build an operating platform suitable for the New Normal.
• Design explicit collaborative behavioural rules, standards and etiquette to adopt in the remote interaction, internal and with clients. Measure their impact against productivity, quality and satisfaction.
• Ensure that the Management reinforces new leading behaviours, crucial for a Company-wide adoption of a collaborative culture based on trust, empathy, feedback, motivation…rather than on a digital nightmare of “command and control”.

These four things can change drastically, and in a lasting manner, the attitude of most Companies from “suffering the emergency” to “trying to capitalise on it”.

With that attitude, it becomes naturally easier the recovery of the lost productivity and the adaptation to the New Normal.

A basic recipe, step by step

1. Elect a small group of energetic Managers, driving this change with broad empowerment while in coordination at top level. Make sure not to pick the “command and control” advocates.
2. Invest in building / acquiring skills on digital technology, simplification and collaborative management. Ideally, people with direct operational experience on a combination of such topics.
3. Pick some “burning pilot areas”, where to make the first steps, and build on the learnings for the expansion to the whole Company. Some struggling pieces of the Customer Sales & Servicing or BackOffice Operations can be great starting points for many.
4. Pilot with an A/B testing approach, e.g. experimenting variations of the changes in parallel: it’s not an extra-cost, it’s an accellerator of the discovery of the most effective solutions. And it is engaging for the organisation, fostering healthy internal competition, cross-learnings and pride (maybe also some fun, finally).
5. Extend systematically to the entire company in an agile way (ready to change direction if needed), with the explicit goal of becoming your own version of a “learning and collaborative digital organisation”. Celebrate and capitalize continuously on failures and successes, remembering that manageable mistakes teach better than successes.

This Storm is everything but pleasant, but we wish you will find the energy to make of it an opportunity to shape the better future of your business.