A 7 Point Strategy to Post-COVID-19 Business Growth
Will your company survive and even thrive in the Post-COVID-19 economy? Think again, the data is not in your favor.
In a 2010 article in Harvard Business Review titled “Roaring Out of Recession” authors Ranjay Gulati, Nitin Nohria, and Franz Wohlgezogen provide insight into how companies faired 3 years post-recession for the past three recessionary periods (1980 crisis, 1990 slowdown, and 2000). After researching 4,700 companies, the data showed that 17% of companies didn’t survive, resulting in bankruptcy, being acquired or forced to go private. In fact, 3 years post-recession, 80% did not regain their prerecession growth rates for sales and profits, while only 9% flourished!
What was the difference between those that flourished and those that didn’t? The companies that flourished were found to effectively balance between cost-cutting and investing to grow after the recession, but it isn’t that simple.
It comes down to the psychology of the company and its leaders. Those that focused on cost-cutting by firing, laying off or furloughing their best employees, often the most expensive ones (usually for a reason), did not have the foresight, expertise, employee engagement, and morale that the high growth outliers in the 9% did. Post-recession, it is extremely costly and timely to rehire the best people back to your organization, forcing the organization to over-work current employees, burning them out, which leads to lost productivity and demise. Those companies that go into a negative mindset by focusing on extreme cost-cutting and projecting pessimism across the organization leaves everyone in survival mode, thus creating an organization that is making decisions from a negative emotional state of fear. When we are making fearful decisions, we make defensive, emotional decisions that turn out to be detrimental to an organization.
Those companies that took a positive approach to where they want to be post-recession, flourished. I liken it to the growth mindset approach Dr. Carol Dweck wrote about in a Harvard Business Review article in January 2016, What a Growth Mindset Actually Means where she wrote “Individuals who believe their talents can be developed (through hard work, good strategies, and input from others) have a growth mindset. They tend to achieve more than those with a more fixed mindset (those who believe their talents are innate gifts).” In this case, I substitute “individuals” with “Companies.” Those companies who believe their talents can be developed through hard work, good strategy and expert opinion, will put themselves into a “growth mindset.” The companies that develop a growth mindset approach to their business Post-COVID-19, will be those that flourish 3 years from now!
So, what are some strategies that can be implemented today? At G3, we are encouraging our clients to do the following:
- Focus on rational thinking by acknowledging the issues that the organization is facing and naming them.
- Getting the leadership team into a growth mindset by focusing on the strengths of the company and its key stakeholders. Creating liberating thoughts, instead of limiting beliefs.
- Focusing on values
- Defining the purpose of the business in the next 3 years. Purpose is a pre-requisite to resiliency.
- Painting a clear picture of where the company wants to be 3 months, 6 months, 12 months and 3 years from now.
- Creating a strategy for each one of those time frames.
- Aligning the talents (strengths) of these key stakeholders to that growth picture at each of the time frames.
- Aligning the aforementioned to KPI’s and clearly defined business outcomes.
In 2009, I became Director of Sales for an $80M brand in the U.S. At the same time, I was also working on my MBA from the University of Nebraska\Gallup Leadership Institute, which allowed me to implement this same strategy to the sales and customer service side of the business and have it tracked by some of the brightest minds at Gallup consulting. The results were phenomenal, we grew $48M in the 3 years post-recession and the strategy has become the impetus to how G3 Development Group works with companies on their growth strategies, post-recession or not. Our clients have experienced an average growth of 38%!
To find out more about how G3 Development Group can help your company identify the right strategies to flourish Post-COVID-19, email [email protected] or call us at (407) 612-2500 ext. 1.
Check it out on Linkedin also:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/7point-strategy-post-covid-19-growth-gregg-frederick-mba-cse
