Because the sage confronts difficulties, he never experiences them. -- Lao Tzu
As we navigate life during this global pandemic, we can all use some clarity and perspective to make the right decisions for ourselves, our businesses and the people we vowed to serve.
I often challenge myself to ask, “What opportunity does this provide?” as a way to gain some clarity and perspective whenever I face difficulties.
This question becomes exponentially more powerful when we act on the answers we find through this thought exercise. So what answers can we find in these challenging times? What kinds of opportunities can a global pandemic provide for our businesses? Here are three examples to get you started.
1. Operational Effectiveness
Practicing social distancing means that most of us have to work remotely. If we are used to meeting in person with our teams regularly, working remotely can be challenging because it's hard to imagine communication and collaboration without that face to face component. However, remote work provides opportunities to build systems that leverage technology and enable us to communicate and collaborate perhaps even more effectively. In this time of crisis, many businesses are finding great success incorporating new technology such as the video conferencing system Zoom for team and client meetings, as well as project management tools like Asana, Trello, or Slack to be even more collaborative, transparent and productive. In the process, our people are acquiring new knowledge and learning new skills, all of which can only benefit them, and us, in the long run.
2. Innovation
It is said that necessity is the mother of invention. Challenges usually fuel innovation because they force us to think outside the box-- if we choose to confront difficulties. This global pandemic is no exception. Companies are finding new ways to deliver their products or services, like yoga studios offering online classes or restaurants offering pick up and delivery for the first time. These quick fixes have the potential to add new revenue streams for their businesses even after the dust settles. For other companies, innovation doesn’t merely mean incremental changes; it can lead to new products and services that will allow those companies to reinvent themselves and possibly disrupt their entire industries. If we put our problem-solving caps on, this crisis will provide many opportunities for many of us to build new companies with the potential to completely rethink existing industries and create new ones.
3. Brand Building
In good times, it’s easy for companies to talk about brand values such as community, transparency or empathy; to pride themselves on the cultures of trust, open communication or collaboration they’ve built when things are going well; to present their brands as people-centric or customer-focused. All of those ideals are a lot more difficult to uphold during tough times, and that’s precisely why it’s so powerful when we do. Our brand values are more strongly communicated when we uphold them in moments of crisis, like a CEO forgoing months worth of salary to ensure no one gets fired, companies closing all their stores and losing millions in revenue to protect employees and customers, customers making donations to support local small businesses or refusing to cancel their subscriptions to protect their tribes and the ideals that bind them together. This is an opportunity to put our values to the test and show them in action because when we do, the ideas we want to communicate through our brands
become clearer, as they solidify in people’s minds. And in the process, our brands grow stronger as customers reward us with their loyalty.
So as we all navigate life during this time, it is worth asking ourselves what opportunities it provides, not only to keep our sanity, but also to gain some agency in a time when most of us feel helpless. Above all, let’s become those sages who never experience difficulties because we always choose to confront them.
