The pandemic showed us our vulnerabilities and gave us the opportunity of a lifetime to rethink how we work and build and grow businesses globally. As we enter a world of the ‘new normal,’ here’s how I think companies can develop, reimagine the workplace, and accept technologies to stay relevant in the future.
Over the past two years, the world has faced several challenges that will go down in history. Looking closely at what motivated some businesses to perform better was primarily by staying relevant and being able to change and adapt to the changing needs and demands of their customers. Turbulent times expose flaws but more importantly, opportunities. How you handle these relies on how well-prepared your organization is; have you used scenario planning, adapting new/changes in strategy more quickly, do you have fast action reaction teams, increased their stakeholder base and the "contact points" for their stakeholder base to get a constant flow of information, being able to recognize the soft cures even before they start happening? Today, however, businesses work in a setting that is unlike anything we have ever known, the term "VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity)" is frequently used to describe this new environment.
The VUCA environment has an impact on many facets of society, including its institutions, in addition to business. In this setting, "conventional" leadership philosophies fall short of inspiring the creativity and entrepreneurship needed to stay relevant.
The following tactics can help businesses get ready to handle any roadblocks:
- Agility - Leadership that is distinguished by agility (or "adaptiveness," the capacity to make quick adjustments in reaction to changing circumstances), inventiveness, enhanced decision-making through cooperation, and reliability is the cure to business turbulence.
- Leaders’ role in times of turbulence - The stress and anxiety levels in the VUCA world are exploding. To help individuals survive, a leader should provide them liberty and authority over personal decisions. Trust is another crucial component of leadership. Credibility, dependability, openness, and self-orientation are all components of trust.
- Adapt bravely - Great leaders anticipate and respond to changing conditions. They are willing to own their ignorance, seek advice from a variety of sources, and, when necessary, enlist the assistance of outside experts.
- Engage for change - Taking good care of your employees during a crisis is more crucial than any other task. Effective leaders recognize the challenges and diversions that their team faces, but they also find methods to engage and inspire their group while effectively communicating crucial new objectives and information. Your leaders must constantly reaffirm new priorities to maintain alignment during this period of demanding and continuous change.
- Innovation - Most business leaders prefer to maintain the status quo over innovate with novel concepts and offerings in order to maintain business continuity. But situations like these are precisely the ones that call for creative business solutions. It's not necessary to entirely give up on your core business to innovate. Instead, consider the market's needs and where your unique skills suit best.
The intriguing thing which, in my opinion, is extremely crucial is that the businesses who have managed to get through the tough times faster and more successfully than others have done so by staying the course and putting a real emphasis on innovation. The intricacy, turbulence, and ambiguity in the modern corporate environment are all on the rise. Organizations must become more "Agile" or relevant if they are to thrive and survive in this environment.
