- Are you an adaptive leader?
Although 2020 has been a very difficult year for many people, reactions to constant change are universal.
Reevaluate, reimagine, and innovate.
In the world of 2020, with the pandemic raging, the politicians trying to persuade, and uncertainty prevalent in our lives, we are all trying to make do under very trying circumstances, particularly in our business and professional lives.
As leaders, let’s set an example on managing under difficult circumstances.
Reevaluate
As professionals, when a crisis strikes we must reevaluate our business and our lives.
During the pandemic in 2020, many businesses were forced to send their workers home to work. This caused a lot of distraction for many companies who had never seriously considered a virtual workforce. They had become complacent, and some had made a decision long ago and never revisited that decision.
Reevaluation of your business or organization is a critical piece of leadership. It’s important to revisit deeply held beliefs and attitudes periodically.
Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
~ Abbie Hoffman~
For some organizations, the disruption of the pandemic not only upended their beliefs about virtual and remote work, it also hampered supply chains and traditional marketing channels.
Those organizations that could adapt survived, at least for a while.
Are you reevaluating the deeply held beliefs of your business or professional direction?
Reimagine
Great leaders reimagine their business.
When your world abruptly comes to a halt, it’s time to envision alternate methods to produce your product or service and get it to your customer.
In a restaurant, even if there are few in-house diners, the kitchen and its workers can still produce great work. By shifting perspective and reimagining how prepared food is bought and consumed, many restaurants moved to a take-out and delivery model during the recent crisis.
Still, others reimagined themselves as boutique food markets, selling their produce, and other foodstuffs directly to consumers.
Test fast, fail fast, adjust fast ~ Tom Peters
From a restaurant to a food market. Those leaders reimagined what their business was – at least for a short time.
Reimagine your professional life, working toward greater resilience and flexibility.
Innovate
Innovation is hard.
It’s hard when the world is spinning perfectly on its axis and all is calm. Innovation can be brutal when your world seems to be falling apart with no end in sight.
To grow and compete in an ever-changing environment, companies need to be able to find the best people – and those people need to be able to find opportunities.
When it became critical to move all hiring online – that face-to-face interviews may not happen for a while, companies had to innovate in their hiring practices.
Suddenly, interviews were taking place via web streaming services and many techniques managers used to judge an applicant was void, or difficult thru a video screen.
I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out. ~ Jeff Bezos
New skills are needed by hiring managers to hire the people needed to help the company grow. People looking for new opportunities are also learning – new technology, new interviewing methods, new ways to understand the company they are considering joining.
All professionals can work on continuing to innovate, whether that is new ways to network and find potential opportunities or working on their personal brand by updating their skills and connections.
Crisis triggers change
During difficult times, we reevaluate who we are, what we do, how we do it, and what we want to be. This forces us to reimagine careers, businesses, and products. By continuing to reevaluate, reimagining, and innovating we can promote the positive change we want to see in our lives and our world.
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