Till now, I reported conference insights from mostly conferences conducted by Indian organizations. This time, I made an experiment. “Being Local… I went Global…”. This conference insight is based on an online international conference conducted by CEEMAN (Slovenia), which I have attended during June 2020. This conference insight focuses on What are the competencies business organizations should have?, and what is the skill set employees should have during tough times in order to continue the normal business operations. This is based on the experiences of some of the CEOs (speakers) of Europe based organizations running businesses during tough times. This conference insight describes Competencies required for Business Organizations, Challenges Encountered, How organizations handled the challenges, Converting risk into opportunity, and Individual Skills required during Difficult Times.
Competencies Required for Business Organizations: Observation is organizations are winning the market and they gained community support. During tough times, organization should have:
- Agility and flexibility in carrying out business operations
- Organizations should be designers of development experience
- People quality depends on leadership skills
- Leaders should learn to simulate decisions to the environment
- Should reestablish partnerships with customers
- Organizations learned that their relationship with employees is important for organizational future
- Organizations tried to travel better in future
- Every employee needs to understand the digitization/automation
- Organizations should revisit their business models
- Be humble, Be ambitious
- Hard data, insights drawn from data becomes businesses drivers
- Organizations should keep track of external environment (PESTEL-Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental, and Legal Environments)
Challenges Encountered: Transportation issues were reported at some places in first half of 2020. Distribution and sales networks got effected. How to motivate employees is one of the challenges. Nobody knows what is there in plate for next month. How to drive the culture of the company is one more challenge organizations encountered. Bringing expertise together remotely is one of the challenges. Occasionally, change in business models was required.
How Organizations Handed the Challenges: Businesses first tried to survive. First two weeks, they understood that safety is first. Organizations continued operations with 0% to 30% staff. Business continuity was their top most priority. Their next step was learning. They understood that basics of how quickly we can learn. At the same time, customers also adopted the situation quickly. Sales executives move to team based work instead of struggling alone. Everyone understood that organizational flexibility is important. Organizations learned crisis management with fewer staff. Work from home proven “it works”. Organizations moved from fixed mindset to growth mindset creating networks among supporting stakeholders. Organizations got the insights from data. Organizations were open to innovation and moved to handle under pressure. Organizations became learning organizations with:
“Learn…….Unlearn…….Relearn”
Organizations brought their purpose to the community/society. e-tailers diversified their portfolios from delivering essential goods to non-essential goods. They have expanded their delivery networks with increased safety measures; ensuring goods are delivered till the last point. Earlier scenario was:
“Organizational Business World Vs. Producing World”
Now, co-creation/co-designing is the philosophy.
Converting Risk into Opportunity: Organizations which have the funds, but earlier they were having inhibitions to go online, or lazy to go online, went online with minimal functionality immediately to continue business operations. Building the platforms incrementally to provide the more services/features to the customers. Earlier done manual and not customer friendly business processes are immediately gained advantage with automation of business processes. Here organizations gained the competitive advantage with the environment forcing them to automate the business processes. Some of the Indian organizations particularly educational institutions have done this. This will have long term positive impact on the organizations in increasing customer value. Flexibility is about creating customer experience. Retailers in India such as Reliance Fresh (JioMart), SPAR, Spencer’s went both online and offline modes. Some of the business organizations (e-firms) moved to subscription based business model ensuring consistent returns for the organization. Farmers in rural areas got opportunity to directly sell their produce to urban residents through known networks; such as known urban resident advertising this farmer produce in WhatsApp groups wherever the urban resident is a member.
Individual Skills Required During Difficult Times: Across the world, it is observed that individuals are working as community support staff helping governments. For example, somewhere in US, one of the top CEOs worked as pizza delivery boy to help the community during the tough time, going beyond normal. Individuals should have the soft skills such as adoptability, empathy, resilience, IQ (Intelligent Quotient), EQ (Emotional Quotient) and AQ (Adversity Quotient). People should be able to ask themselves philosophical questions. Individual’s level of knowledge, intellectual capability and earlier insights learned help the situation. One should have self-motivation, self-confidence, flexibility, and know different ways to adopt the situation irrespective of the age. Communication and problem solving are required for business executives. Individual characteristics impact the businesses during tough times. Individuals should identify the need for learning and should be curious, inclusive, and learn to work in teams. Leaders of tomorrow should start from soft skills.
Hope, I have conveyed, whatever I learned.
Best wishes,
Dr.Goparaju Purna Sudhakar