How to rebound when your sector takes a hit: Part three

When you are in a time of crisis, or coming out of one, it is a good time to take stock and look at what you can do to insulate yourself from future market disruptions. There are four steps to this. In part one we looked at how to prepare ahead for hard times. In part two, we looked at understanding your environment. In this instalment, we will examine how to stay flexible and be ready to make changes.

The key to this is you need to build flexibility into every aspect of your organization.

Operational: Do you receive real-time insights from the market? Are you able to move quickly from insight to action? You need to make sure the processes within your company are agile enough to be adjusted when disruption occurs in times of crisis.

Organizational: Are people held accountable and rewarded consistently? Are there clear performance goals for teams and individuals? We consistently see that companies that align people’s purpose and incentives with those of the organization are the ones that are more able to set a new course when it becomes necessary. This means you need to establish a reward and accountability process that enables people to be willing to embark on big changes.

Portfolio: Are you balancing commitment and flexibility in your bets? Bets in this case are defined as our strategic initiatives. We must be aware that it’s not possible to bet big on all aspects of our strategies. We need to experiment, but we must also have a few strategic initiatives that are close to being a sure win. This essentially means you must be able to allocate your resources wisely, and then be able to reallocate them quickly when necessary.