In today’s new normal; leaders, managers, and staff are facing ever challenging times. This holds for both their personal and professional life.
At times, we go through our internal crisis alone not having anyone to reach out to. Firefighting and making tough decisions can take their toll. We sometimes feel that going to our superiors or peers is a show of weakness.
Even if we reach out to our colleagues, being in the same boat results in the same understanding of the situation and the same advice.
As a member of Victory Christian Fellowship or VCF, we have what we call a fellowship group. We help each other in our Christian walk. We help each other understand scripture. When one of us is facing difficulties, we all try to help.
There is always a need to reach out to an unbiased individual who can listen in confidence. Someone with enough experience to help navigate the current situation by asking the right questions. Someone with enough credibility and knowledge to tell you exactly what you need to hear and not just what you want to hear. Someone who has coached a wide variety of positions and nationalities. Someone who has coached company Presidents to middle managers.
We cannot know everything. We are not designed to shoulder all of life’s challenges alone.
Dear Leaders, let us be honest enough to accept that the pandemic will not go away as fast as it came. Eradicating the virus will take time even if an antivirus is made available today. The manufacturing and deployment of the anti-virus is a massive undertaking. We need to take into account the population of the world.
After the virus has been eradicated, it will take time also for businesses to recover their former glory. Business processes would have changed or will have to change given the new way of work. Consumer consumption will not automatically switch back to pre-pandemic values.
Given the business climate for the following years, our Leadership competencies have become even more important than before.
Great organizations do not run under singular leadership. Under the new normal stress and challenges, the quality of the second and third line of leaders becomes more important. Their competencies play a role. Their ability to set aside their differences and work as a cohesive leadership team is even more important.
Empathy for employees is another critical value. We have to remember that rank and file employees are already barely making enough in pre-pandemic times. Reduced pay and getting safely to work has added an extra layer of burden in their minds.
We need to accept the fact that we cannot know everything no matter how smart we are. We cannot anticipate everything no matter how much we plan. We need to learn to get input from others who are smarter than us in particular areas of our business.
We also need to understand that given the volatility of the economy, we cannot always get the result we planned for. We need to be agile enough to accept the result and adjust accordingly. We need to be more innovative than before.
Extreme stress can also push us to blame others. It’s normal to delegate work. However, we need to remember that accountability is still ours and ours alone. The people around us may be trying their very best to deliver for their love of the company. However, they may not get the results they planned for. There is so much indecisiveness out there because of uncertainty.
We have a great responsibility to our customers and employees.
That is why we are here. That is why we are leaders.
Our house burned down when my siblings and I were still very little. It was late at night when my mom woke up from a loud commotion coming from our second-floor window. Barely awake, she stumbled towards the window. As soon as she opened her eyes, most of our neighbors were running up and down the street carrying their items. Parents had their children in tow. The little ones could hardly keep their eyes open, embracing their pillows trying to keep up with their parent’s rapid strides.
My mom shouts to the frantic crowd asking ‘what’s the matter?’ An elderly man in his boxing shorts and plain white shirt points up towards the direction of our roof shouting ‘fire’. My mom shakes my dad so hard that he falls off the bed. With a loud ‘thud’, he angrily wakes up. In less than five minutes, we were all out of the house.
As we watched from the street, we witnessed the fire from the neighbor’s rooftop slowly crawl to our rooftop. Out of the blue, our Iranian neighbor appears in front of us. Masood, a dental student, living with his wife two blocks away from us. As soon as he heard about the fire, he rushes over to see if we were okay.
Watching the fear and concern on our faces, Masood talks to three bystanders. The second time I turned to look at them, Masood and the group was running towards our home. The group braved the fire. By now, our roof was on fire. One by one they hauled our appliances and furniture out of our home. One of the by-standers stood to watch over our things. In less than thirty minutes, they brought out as many things as they can. By now, the fire traveled down to the first floor. There was no way anyone can enter our house.
Looking back years later, I share this testimony as proof that anyone can lead. Masood was not your typical textbook ‘leader’ with a great job title. He was a foreign student who influenced three Filipinos to join him save as much of our belongings as possible.
If you influence others, then you are a leader. I am not talking about dictatorship or leading using fear. These people are not influencing. People follow them simply because they have no other choice. People are following them until they find a new job. People are following them because they need their pay. People are following them thinking they have no choice.
Real leaders can influence others to follow them onward toward their vision. This ability can be inborn or developed. Leadership is primarily about effectively influencing others. You don’t need a fancy job title to be a true leader. All you need is the skill to influence others.
Since I was a young supervisor, I hear about this common misconception that leaders are born or went to the best schools. So goes the theory that you are either born a leader or not. From my experience, I beg to differ.
Yes, there are people who are born leaders. However, that far and few in between. The rest of the great leaders of our time had to learn it. Of course, you have to want to learn and practice the right leadership principles. Allow me share a story that supports why I think that leadership can be learned.
August 15, 2020 7pm started as a normal fellowship for our Victory Group. That Saturday was a little different than our previous Zoom fellowship. That night, our Bible Study group discussed a brief lesson from a very interesting topic – Lead Like Jesus.
The members of our Victory group comes from all walks of life. For everyone in the group, we are all equal. We are all leaders in our own way. Some of us are leaders by designation in our jobs. All of us are leaders by the roles we play in our family structure. Some of us are leader Dads, leader elder brothers, leader uncles, leader cousins and so on. Our role leadership is something we are born into. We cannot easily turn our backs on our role leadership.
In the course of our 90 minute fellowship we touched upon two kinds of leaders that began over 2,000 years ago. On one corner, you have the powerful Roman empire led by Emperor Augustus all the way to Emperor Marcus Aurelius. On the other corner you have a carpenters son leading twelve disciples. If I could time travel back to those days, I would have imagined that the Roman Empire’s leadership would have carried the empires dominion all the way to present day.
Ironically today, the Roman Empire no longer controls the 50 countries it did before.
On the other side; Christianity, under the leadership of Jesus and the twelve disciples has ballooned into 2.3 billion believers or 31.2% of the worlds population. Talk about successful and sustainable leadership.
Let’s see what the disciples were doing before they were called and trained by Jesus. Thomas and Bartholomew were possibly fishermen. Philip, James (the son of Alphaeus), and Judas (Thaddaeus) were tradesmen. Andrew and Peter were fishermen. James and John were possibly businessmen. Matthew was a tax collector. Simon was a zealot or someone that was passionately against the Jews.
These twelve disciples learned important leadership principles from Jesus in the years prior to the great commission. This Great Commission, lead by the Jesus disciples, has transformed the lives of billions of people for over 2,000 year and is still continuous to grow.
If these unlikely twelve was able to lead, so can you. Anyone can lead provided you understand the leadership principles the disciples learned (and practiced) from Jesus.
It has been almost four years since I last spoke to my friend B.B. I reached out to him a few weeks ago and we finally touched base last week. He has an interesting job as the University Director of a large Telecommunications company. I walked him through what I am currently doing as well. He unselfishly asked me to send him an email about the different services/products we provide. He is happy to forward the email to the right person within his company.
B.B. also walked me through his companies approach to leadership learning and development. Their primary focus is Leadership development and leadership wellness. Leaders cannot give what they don’t have. The current focus is their ‘Inventiveness’ competency.
Inventiveness, as he defines it, is a leaders ability to get their teams to come-up with solutions to todays challenges using whatever resource they have in hand. However, as they ran these program across the company the result was not very promising. Leaders where not able to raise the level of inventiveness of their respective functions. The company then had a foreign consulting firm design and run a survey to get to the root of the problem.
The results finally came out after a short time and they found it strange that their creative abilities or inventiveness was quite high. Apparently, the issue was with their teams. Even more specifically, the issue was with the teams low phycological safety. Even though some of the teams have been worked together for a while now, they had not yet normalized. Most of the teams were stuck between the forming and storming stages of team maturity. After getting to the root of the issue. the company then ran a program to help teams normalize and thrive in the new normal. The program proved to be successful after a couple of runs.
After we concluded our reunion, I got to think more about inventiveness. It seemed like the younger brother of the powerful framework used by organizations to reposition their products and services in todays new normal. There are slightly different approaches to the model but they carry the same principle. There is Design Thinking, Design Sprint and so on.
Let’s go back to the definition from my friend. Solving todays challenges with whatever resource you have at hand. We laughed when he used the former hit show ‘MacGyver’ as an analogy. MacGyver would always get out of his predicament using his Swiss Army Knife and whatever he had at hand. This important ‘inventiveness’ competency again resonated with me when I reached out the next day to an old friend who owns a ‘medrep’ outsource company.
Cathy had a dilemma when the pandemic hit. Her employees could not go to supermarkets, doctors and hospitals due to the lockdown. She started thinking of her situation and instead of complaining, she did a quick inventory of what resources she had. She has people on float that she can call back, she had medrep training rooms that was not being used, she had access to pre-paid SIM cards and pre-paid load.
She then assigned outbound and inbound call agents. She is not in the BPO industry. She is also not an expert on the topic. However, the businesswoman in her would not let her sit still. She had to reposition some of her services to adopt to the new normal.
With ten (seven outbound and three inbound) call agents they started calling the people listed in their huge database. They grew their database through the years. They started putting together templates or scripts for both types of calls. They also created scripts for handling complaints. Lately, they purchased a proper telephone system that can record calls for quality control, route inbound calls and so on.
For me. this is a perfect example of ‘inventiveness’ competency in action.
How about you? How about your company? Are you repositioning your products and services to be relevant in todays new normal? Are you repositioning your skills for the same reason? Are you stubbornly doing business the same way you did? Are you thinking that your current business model got you to where you are. However, it may be best to remember that what got you there will not be the same business model that will get you to the next level. What got Blockbuster to their sheer size and success as a business was the same business model that caused them to close shop when Netflix got into the market.
What are you doing differently to make you or your company relevant in todays world?
My take from todays message thanks to Pastor Doc Jun
Todays world has thrown our normal lives into an unpredictable ocean filled with waves and strong currents. What used to be normal is no longer so. Such a massive turn-of-events affected people from all walks of life. Companies and governments big and small are scrambling to get solid footing once again.
We had been too busy living our lives that we had not spent enough time with God and our love ones. In the last 80 days, we can no longer claim that we are too busy for our Maker. God has cleared our agendas.
A lot of us were greatly affected by the recent series of community quarantines. A lot of us has lost so much. A lot of us started settling lower that what we expect from life.
Do not settle for less. We have a Big God that can take us to a bigger and brighter future. A Big God that can bring us bigger blessings beyond our expectation. Raise up our eyes to our Big God in this season of challenges. As we build or rebuild our relationship with God, expect that a Big God can rebuild our lives, our careers, our businesses.
We just need to lift up our eyes to a Big God and understand that all these had to happen so that we can build a stronger relationship with Him. We need to understand, as well, that our God is a Big God capable of Big opportunities, blessings and changes in our lives.
Don’t look down, lift up our eyes to our Big God.
Acts 3:1-10 ESV The Lame Beggar Healed 1 Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour.[a] 2 And a man lame from birth was being carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple that is called the Beautiful Gate to ask alms of those entering the temple. 3 Seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked to receive alms. 4 And Peter directed his gaze at him, as did John, and said, “Look at us.” 5 And he fixed his attention on them, expecting to receive something from them. 6 But Peter said, “I have no silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!” 7 And he took him by the right hand and raised him up, and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong. 8 And leaping up, he stood and began to walk, and entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God. 9 And all the people saw him walking and praising God, 10 and recognized him as the one who sat at the Beautiful Gate of the temple, asking for alms. And they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.
There is a quote in the Arab world that loosely translates to “In the desert, a person walking for miles will try to drink the sand for lack of water.” In times of crisis, people will start to make up and believe in rumors due to a lack of information. We cannot underestimate the power of communication. This is even more valid in a crisis situation. Lack of communication can fuel chaos in any organization. Lack of communication stirs up rumors and fear.
There has to be a communication plan in place in a crisis situation. There has to be a person accountable for orchestrating the dissemination of information. Information needs to be transparent, relevant, and timely. Communication has to be continuous. Stale communication is useless. The damage has been done with the spreading of rumors. Transparency in our communication is essential. We cannot sugarcoat or ignore key issues. We also have to frame our communication in a positive manner.
In times such as these, what people need is hope. People need to hope that this crisis has a cycle and will eventually pass. We need to encourage perseverance in our communication. We need to empathize with the recipient of our communication. We need to put ourselves in their shoes. How are they feeling? What are their fears? We need to tailor our communication to positively address these fears. In times like these, more people come to their knees and seek hope in God. In times like these, we need to encourage them to seek solace in God.
We always say that there is a reason for everything. In crisis situations, we need to highlight the positive changes that is happening as well. In these times, more people reach out to God. More groups are praying every single day. More people are taking the time to bond with their loved ones. More people have become conscious of their buying habits. People are now focusing on what they need instead of what they want. People started spending more time developing their hobbies like; cooking, learning a musical instrument, reading more books and so on. We also learned to appreciate some of the professions we took for granted in the past – the front liners.
We also have to be courageous enough to acknowledge that what has been successful in the past may not be as successful in the next or new normal. We need to take a careful look at our business models, products, and services. We need to see how we can adapt them to the new normal. It will be foolish to think that the public will go back to its old normal buying patterns after the lockdown. It is not logical to think that what made our products and services successful prior to the epidemic will still be exactly the same formula for success post lockdown. It may be the same with careers and professions. Which careers will thrive in the new normal? What working environment will be adopted in the new normal? What digital tools do we need to master to keep relevant in the new normal economy?
Along with repositioning our; business, products, and services, how do we redesign our end-to-end value chain processes to support the changes? We need to be more agile in testing out new/updated products, product delivery, and services. We need to have a digital transformation strategy and execute it quickly. We need to have a digital strategy for developing our people and execute it quickly. We cannot leave these things to chance. We cannot thrive depending on the status quo.
Much will change and it’s our and our organization’s ability to adopt that will spell the difference between success and more difficulty.
Have you carefully given these things enough thought during the lockdown?
How businesses will look like post lockdown has always been something I have been thinking about this past month. There are two things that are certain; most of the old business models that help companies earn their revenue may not be as effective as before, second – we need to think of new ways of doing business and providing our products and services.
I came across a great article from the biggest consulting firm in the world – McKinsey & Co. The article below is a follow-through from a previous one discussing the qualities that will be critical for business leaders in the next normal economy; resolve, resilience, return, reimagination, and reform.
Interestingly, their research went deeper with this particular article ‘From surviving to thriving: Reimagining the post-COVID-19 return.’ The study provides a framework on how to reposition businesses with four areas of focus:
Recover revenue
Rebuilding operations
Rethinking the organization
Accelerating the adaptation of digital solutions.
You may benefit from reading the article using this link:
I am certain that everyone is a bit anxious to get back to what we called a normal life after the lockdown is lifted. However, what we ‘deemed’ normal will no longer be the same post COVID. It has been over 40 days since we started and the impact of the virus to our society and businesses is extensive.
Let’s begin with personal positives. When the world took a pause, we got the chance to spend more time with the people we love and care about. Most of us were too busy earning a living. We were also wasting a lot of time in traffic prior to the lockdown. I personally know people whose family is asleep when they leave for work and asleep again when they got home from work. People were also too busy to set aside a few minutes of quiet time with God. Their concept of a relationship with God, prior to lockdown, is attending weekly services. Attendance to a weekly service was sometimes not consistent. However, during the lockdown, I pray that we were able to spend more time praying and developing a stronger relationship with God.
There are also challenges in our country. A majority of the businesses had to pause operations. This resulted in zero revenue for the company and no work no pay for us employees. This is particularly concerning even more for those of us that have people relying on us; family members and regular support to other people. For companies, like groceries or providers of ‘necessities’, their employees are able to earn a living but are exposing themselves to possible infection.
Now the million-dollar question is “how will business owners reposition their businesses?” For a number of companies, no contact and no congregating policy will impact their revenues. I would imagine that CTO’s and other executives in charge of IT will have to accelerate the companies Digital Transformation from years to a matter of weeks. If they don’t have a clear Digital Transformation Strategy until now then I cannot imagine how their business will cope with the new normal.
There is no question about the immediate need to automate services. It has to be clear, communicated, and planned. Companies that still refuse or are slow to decide will clearly be left behind.
The question is no longer ‘do we implement a digital transformation program’. The question now is two parts;
How fast can we implement our digital transformation strategy?
How can we align our products and services to leverage digital technology?
During this pandemic, I tried purchasing my groceries online. However, the experience proved to be frustrating. Our more popular online groceries are not up to the challenge. There were two so-called online groceries that accommodated by transactions all the way to payment. When I was about to pay, the online grocery advised that there were no slots for delivery. Why did the system allow me to reach the payment and delivery portion if there was no way for them to deliver? I wasted at least 30 minutes. Very poor customer experience design and management of the site.
Here is an opportunity. If there is a company out here in the country that can create a truly reliable online grocery and partner with a reliable delivery company then you are golden. A TRUE online grocery does not yet exist in the Philippines. The ones that are available are poorly designed and managed. Once a reliable online grocery (great customer experience and quick delivery) plays in this market then the rest of the mediocre ones will start fading away. I cannot wait for that to happen.
Another possible opportunity is an online service for running errands. These can be errands from buying flowers to searching the internet for the best comfort food restaurants in Quezon City. There is a similar app in Android. However, they charge way too much for an hour of service. Considering the traffic situation and distances of the errand, the cost can be prohibitive. If an errand service business model can be designed to be low-cost and scalable similar to the business model of Grab then maybe that’s something worth using by the public.
Here is what I am trying to say. If business owners simply stick to their pre-COVID business model then it’s highly possible that the model won’t work as successfully as before. What business owners need to start considering prior to the lifting of the lockdown is ‘how should my business model look like in order to take advantage of the New Normal?’ It’s not an easy question to ask. However, there is clear peril for the companies that do not bother to ask this question.
How will you position your products and services in the New Normal? The answer would be different for different companies and industries. Clearly, for the educational industry, online learning will be the main driver. For the retail industry, e-commerce may be one way of mitigating the risk. However, the e-commerce platform should be reliable and easy to navigate. The retail prices should also be lower than ‘brick and mortar’ prices since the cost of selling their goods is lower.
This is the time to get into a Design Thinking exercise or something similar. Design Thinking is an exercise that was created years ago by an Innovation company. Companies that use it are able to come up with innovative customer-centric solutions to their challenges. Design Thinking can also be conducted with careful preparation using a digital platform.
Time is gold, take a careful look at your company’s product and service. The world will not adjust to us. We need to adjust to the changing needs and situation of the society and the world.
Back to my question ‘Company product and services post lockdown – will it be the different?’
Most leadership training is forgotten after the seminar. 