COVID-19: Aggregated List of Recommended Actions
In my 3 memos on COVID-19 I’ve offered actions for leaders based on the situation as it is evolving and how I see it impacting business in the future. Here’s an aggregated list of those actions. I’d recommend reading the full memos for context, but if you’re in a TL;DR mode, see below…
Remote Working. Examine who can do their work from home, make sure they have what they need in access and equipment, and when it looks like the virus is scaling in your geographies send as many people to work from home as possible. The long incubation period of this virus means that you cannot wait until people show symptoms before sending them home.
Strengthening Remote Worker infrastructure. Work with IT to unblock any available video and audio-conferencing solution from company firewalls. So many people will be staying home, including your customers, that conferencing solutions will be hit with high demand and people will want to switch between providers such as Google Hangouts, Zoom, Webex, to communicate with coworkers and customers.
Ensuring Access to Medical Care. Review your workforce to identify those who are not covered by employee health plans, such as part-time and contract employees. They may be reluctant to seek care when they have symptoms, exposing the rest of the workforce and suffer more severe symptoms. Extend temporary benefits to these people to help the virus transmission rates slow and reduce the overall impact on your communities. It also avoids a PR problem if you have a large percentage of part-time workers who become sick because they do not have medical benefits.
Ensuring Access to Medical Equipment. Large companies may want to order their own supplies of masks, gloves, portable ventilators, and anti-virals (once they find some proven to work). It is unclear if supplies may be difficult to get once this gets rolling, so having some back-up in case of outages may be important for your employees and operations.
Ecommerce and BOPUS. More customers will want to shop online or Buy Online Pick Up in Store. Ensure that your ecommerce infrastructure can handle a significant increase in volume. Cross-train employees for more BOPUS deliveries.
Employee Communication Plan. Build a strong educational module for employees and talking points for leaders, ahead of a potential pandemic and for updating and informing employees during a crisis. Encourage employees to get a flu shot to reduce the workload of healthcare professionals not having to treat flu patients while trying to stop the coronavirus.
Supply Chain. Check in with critical suppliers and ensure they have contingency plans for lower worker availability, inventory problems, and delivery work-arounds.
Travel. Pretty obvious one but restrict business travel to affected areas and check in on employees who have recently returned from Asia.
External Advisory Board. Build strong relationships with municipal leaders, healthcare professionals, disease experts, and other businesses. This will ensure access to up-to- date information and coordinate the company’s efforts with the larger ecosystem.
Lower Revenues and Profits. If the virus breaks containment and has a significant impact, it is reasonable to expect that it will shave a point or two of GDP and tip many economies into a minor recession of 2 quarters. This will not be anywhere near the impact of the Great Recession, but companies will experience lower productivity, lower sales, and higher costs associated with responding to the virus.
Product rationalization. Right now, it’s time to make the most money from the least amount of stuff. Trim your product line of any dogs or failures. Prioritize on high profit, not high volume, products. Sort your products/services based on profit and inverse to volume and market and sell those things. And work really hard to set up alternative sourcing for those products and services first. De-emphasize in your marketing and operations high volume goods dependent on Chinese raw materials, manufacturing or sub-assemblies.
Invest in innovation. A recession and tight supply will mean your sales will be down and COGS will be up. It would be tempting to slash the discretionary budget and lay off people. But history shows that companies that invest in innovation during downturns end up market leaders once the economy returns to growth. Don’t fire your people, turn them loose with design sprints and lean start-up iterations that will deliver growth once the recession is over. It will also allow you to retain your culture, intellectual capital, and workforce know-how. And it will avoid the cost of retraining workers when you have to ramp up again.
Go virtual and go digital. Turn on any digital product creation capabilities your existing product development process may have. You may be surprised what your current PLM system can do, and if you are using cloud-based product development software you may be able to turn on these capabilities immediately with a phone call. Without an assessment period or data-cleansing/integration front-end it may be ugly, but it might get you through. It’s the future anyway, so get help and get started. This will replace a lot of loops of physical samples and product testing that needs to be done with suppliers in physical locations. It may reduce physical collaboration to a manageable minimum in this time of pandemics and save a lot of money and cycle time when it is over.
Invest in productivity. Beyond digital product creation, most companies are in industries going through profound disruption. Digitalization, automation, and AI are changing how companies compete and create value. When the economy was hot it felt like building a plane while you are flying it. But now you’re grounded. Connect your operations with IOT. Get your data house in order. Get humans in the loop and apply machine learning to your business. Mobilize your workforce to take the time to become a model-based digital company guided by algorithms. Automate where you can and retrain employees for the future requirements of work.
Communicate with your customers. Your customers know what’s going on. Provide realistic delivery windows and be very transparent in communicating with them. Ask your best customers what they need the most and work with them as best you can. Companies who can maintain or grow trust during this phase will win, both now and in the long-term.
Take care of your workforce. I touched on this in my last POV, but it bears repeating. While mortality rates will be lower than expected, you can’t run a business if everyone is sick. Communicate best practices with them, encourage them to work from home, set up space in offices for workers to get supplies and medications, hire a PA to diagnose illness and dispense medications, use your buying power to ensure masks and gloves are available, and get doses of vaccine for your employees when they become available. Make care accessible to everyone you touch, including contractors and gig workers.
Give back to your communities. Work with community leaders and organizations to be a positive force during this crisis. Companies have advantages that governments and individuals do not. Use them in helping in the communities you do business in, and you will gain employee loyalty and trust, the right to operate, and more customers.
Think ahead. While this may sound a bit self-serving, the world will be different. Where will trends create new opportunities? What is the next big threat to your operations? Can you generate new ideas and where should you invest in innovation and growth? How might new players disrupt your market? A facility to recognize and translate change into business actions is your greatest competitive advantage right now. We can help.
February 28, 2020
Continuously Monitor Developments. That Coronavirus Taskforce I suggested in the first memo? They should have good sources of information by now, have framed how they think things will evolve, and be ready to shift if it goes differently. They need to stay working on this through the entirety of the pandemic.
Leadership and Workforce Contingencies. A large amount of most companies’ leadership is over 50, and probably 15-20% of them smoke or have pre-existing conditions that make them more vulnerable to more severe cases of illness. Be sure to have people ready to take over when a leader is in the hospital for 2-3 weeks.
Cross-train people in critical business functions. Stress-test your partners and suppliers – what happens when account relationships go dark for a few weeks? What can you do in-house? Work with your suppliers and partners to understand their contingency plans.Continue to communicate with your employees. Encourage your employees to be prepared. While avoiding any hint of hording, ask you employees to slowly build up supplies for 2-3 weeks in case a cluster interrupts local travel, shopping, or forces them to self-quarantine. Supplies would include foods that do not spoil that you might eventually eat anyway (canned soups, pasta, frozen meat like burgers, canned and frozen vegetables), as well as any over-the-counter and prescription medications, extra batteries, and disinfectant/cleaning supplies. There are good lists out there on what to stock up on.
Educate your employees on the real facts of this virus. While you have done this already, keep doing it. There is a lot of spin out there, even pure conspiracy theories, and you need to counter what is popping up out with real facts. Help your employees see through all the noise to the real information. Make sure you build and maintain the trust of your workforce during this time.
No F2F External Conferences. Postpone any non-mission critical face-to-face external conferences until we see how the virus spreads. They can be rescheduled. Restrict travel and attendance of conferences for employees. Start activating your plans around remote/virtual working. Limiting the possibility your workforce can be exposed increases your productivity.
Digitize and Automate. As mentioned in previous posts, hit the start button on plans and investment in automation and digitalization of the enterprise. The economy will come back roaring after this recession. Companies that can use machine learning/predictive analytics to exploit new business models that might arise after this virus impacts everyday life will capture share.
Grow Your Business. Look around at other investments. Money and energy will be cheap, more qualified people will be looking for work, companies will have lower valuations. Stop buying back stock and grow your business capabilities, footprint and workforce know-how.
Imagine a Post Pandemic Future. People will adopt new habits to get through this crisis. Some habits will be temporary, but some will stick. Maybe people really start to like BOPUS (buy online pick up in store) – how will you create the ability to impulse buy in a BOPUS world? Maybe people will be lonely from low interaction – how might your company create experiences for people that build connection and community? Start thinking now about how people’s patterns will shift permanently and what that will mean for innovation or disruption of your business.