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You Can Create Opportunity in this COVID-19 Crisis

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During times of uncertainty, there is still opportunity. As you look to usher your business through Corona-virus and, more importantly, beyond, what can you do now to strengthen the business and prepare?

Many business owners and executives struggle working ON their business because of the demands of customers, partners, suppliers and others keeping them bogged down on work IN their business. Take some time now to look at your business and streamline some processes, get organized and identify insights for the future.

Look beyond the immediate crisis and recognize that you and your organization will survive. And since you are going to survive, position your organization for the opportunities that will present themselves.  Here are some ideas that could help:

Seize the opportunity to focus on your internal processes.  While the tempo might be slower than normal because orders or production is slow, identify some of those long-term processes that you have been meaning to document or update the documentation.

Capture the opportunity to do preventative maintenance. If your municipality allows, have a small team use this down time to get preventative and long-term maintenance completed.  Before production returns, use this time to clean up your equipment, replace those worn out elements and get them in tip top shape.

Leverage the opportunity to build those dashboard, key performance indicators or analysis that you have always wanted but never had the time to analyze.  Engage your team to analyze their data or build the data tools to assess the business when it is up and running.  While the tempo is off, use this time to ensure you and your team are looking at the information that impacts your business.

This is an opportunity to organize your records, contracts and financial data to support growth. Digitize and organize those contracts and agreements to simplify remote operations and centralize information.  Digitalize those records to clear out floor space to support production, collaboration or additional office space for growth.

Capitalize on the opportunity to identify those organizations that could help address the strategic needs of your business, and then reach out to them to build a relationship/dialogue.  Some may not be as well prepared for this slow down, others may desire to transition ownership sooner, and yet others may recognize scale would benefit the combined business. These are often the best times to evaluate an acquisition or joint venture/partnership.

Each of these presents an opportunity to develop your business, make it stronger and provide you more options when we come out of the current crisis. And rest assured we will come out of this and you will be better positioned to look at acquiring other business, realize the value of the business for you or your shareholders and/or growing because your business is running more efficiently.

As Dan Sullivan shared in The “Scary Times” Success Manual, “As the world changes, opportunities suddenly become available to achieve far more than you ever did in the past.”