Coronavirus: there’s no one-size-fits-all recovery

In this article, our CRO Ken Ferguson explains why there’s no single approach to business recovery and what businesses need to consider when planning a return to productivity.

We constantly hear this idea of ubiquitous business recovery from President Trump, UK PM Boris Johnson, and Australian PM Scott Morrison. It conjures up thoughts of every organization recovering at roughly the same pace once this is all over.

This is nonsense. It’s vote-winning platitudes and nothing else. There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ business recovery.

Every path to recovery is different

Consider how the UK is planning a staged re-opening of various types of business from June 4th, while the US approach looks to be heavily dependent on state governments. In Australia, a three-step plan was unveiled to ease lockdown restrictions socially first before businesses even get a look-in.

Similarly, every management team out there will need to plan for multiple scenarios and to recover in their own way. Basing your recovery on a single stat or an economic average is dangerous and myopic.

Here are some steps all organizations should follow to help them develop their own recovery strategy.

Forget about ‘business as usual’

The pursuit for a return to the status-quo is futile. The ever-present threat of a secondary wave of infections crystallizes the fact that the only way organizations can ever truly recover is by changing their approach to modeling and planning.

Only by identifying as many scenarios as possible and modeling different strategies to tackle each scenario effectively can businesses truly recover.

Plan for different exit strategies

Will the workforce return in phases? Will it be decided by sector or by type of worker? And what does the curve of recovery look like?

Management teams with a firm grasp on the work that needs to be done and the competencies needed will be able to model each of these scenarios. They’ll then be able to make decisions now and execute with agility depending on which scenarios transpire.

Take a look at our other article on emergency planning for more insight here.

Maintain focus on productivity

Focusing on productivity now will enable your business to get on the path to recovery or maintain growth, faster, regardless of how long the current situation continues. How? Keep the muscle of your business intact; the foundational tasks of your organizational planning. This will give you more time for priority initiatives that’ll optimize post-crisis performance.

Next, it’s vital to develop a plan that’s tailored to the needs and goals of your business based on the absolute worst-case scenarios from the above exit strategies. Doing this will help regain performance at speed and give you the information you need to adapt work policies and practices to manage workforce recovery.

Everyone needs to shape their own destiny. Smart business leaders will be instilling a new era of management involving continuous analysis, modeling, planning, and execution, the rewards of which will be agility, confidence and, yes, recovery.

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