Eight actions for turning disruptions into tidal waves of success
By Eliska S. Padilla
January 12, 2021
Who ever thought we would see our churches empty at Easter. Shelves at every grocery store devoid of toilet paper. Bars vacated. Businesses closed. Homeschooling the norm. Universities vacant. To say that COVID-19 caused a major disruption to business… any and every business, would be an understatement.
Disruptions take us off balance, they are like a stick jammed into the spoke of a wheel. They stop forward progress as we know it, and require immediate intervention. During disruptions, organizations need to first wake up and ensure they’re not caught with their head in the sand… how many times did we hear “this won’t last long” in March 2020? Organizations must first identify that there is a disruption, recognize the threat and identify opportunities. Imagining solutions and making adjustments for changes that maximize success restores balance to the organization, or in some cases create balance where chaos had once been.
A friend of mine owns a printing and marketing solutions company that was already experiencing its own set of struggles when COVID hit. The owner, Drew Hargrove, recognized it was a make or break moment. He was up late one night scrolling through Facebook pondering what could be done to keep his doors open and his team employed, when his eye was caught by a friend’s post. This friend, a health care worker, was prepping for surgery with a makeshift face shield created from an old-fashioned transparency film.
Knowing he had the knowledge and resources to provide better protective shields, he sketched a design and went to work. Within three days of providing face shields for his health care friend, orders started pouring in. 500. 1000. Tens of thousands. He had the resources on hand, and made agreements with suppliers to purchase their entire supply of clear plastic and polyethylene to ensure he could continue supplying face shields for health care workers throughout the pandemic and beyond.
The tidal wave of COVID-19 was a disruptive force that called for radical change. Within 24 hours, Hargrove partnered to create a touchless ordering system and payment process, streamlining a process that had bogged down the company for years. He ensured everyone was assigned a clear role — gone were the days of assuming someone would pick up the ball and assume responsibility. And for the first time, his employees started caring more for their customers, resulting in vastly improved quality assurance. Despite long hours, job fulfillment was at an all-time high. Looking back, Hargrove realizes he didn’t refer back to his mission to figure out how sell to the product. He used his mission to motivate and inspire his employees. They all heard the fear in doctor’s voices. It was enough to light the humanitarian fire in their hearts and provide bold direction and momentum for the business that was sorely needed.
In 2020, we saw distilleries retool to producing hand sanitizers, fast food chains providing grocery products direct to customers, car manufacturers making ventilators. Restaurants, nail salons, comedians, film and TV crews all had to flex in order to survive.
Fortunately, not every disruption is a hyper disruption that affects all aspects of our society at once. But we can use COVID-19 as a reminder for our organizations to identify disruptions and thrive in the future by using some lessons learned:
1. Keep a pulse on the horizon.
Disruptions by definition are not expected and sudden. Leaders should be vigilant to look outside at market and environmental changes that can create opportunities. Disruptive changes are non-localized future changes that are unchangeable and affects all or a portion of an industry. This can be caused by changes in market trends causing a shift in the mode of production to fit the customer demands. Think of Netflix and how they disrupted Blockbuster. Their original disruption was mailing DVDs to your home on demand. They disrupted the marketplace norm of driving to a storefront to check out a movie, and the rest is history.
2. Love your customers.
You have to care more about the needs of your customers than being committed to always doing things the way you’ve always done them. Let their need, drive your company to innovate and meet that need.
3. Decide, don’t deny.
When disruptions are identified, recognize them. Don’t deny their existence. Decide to innovate and find new ways of adapting to achieve success. Now is not the time to take a wait and see attitude by focusing only on core business, conserving cash, minimizing risk, and remaining only in known spaces. A decision must be made to radically shift to meet new customer needs (think of online food ordering during COVID-19, contactless ordering, patio seating, packaging produce for home cooking). During a disruptive paradigm shift, the competitive framework resets to zero. Industry mavericks are back to zero. Those that survive and thrive during the disruption will be those who decided to make innovative decisions in order to remain competitive in an entirely new environment.
4. Catalog your resources.
Consider the resources you have in terms of technologies, equipment, human capital, funds, customers, knowledge, public relations, suppliers, products designs and brands. How might these resources be retooled for the new environment? Think of how plastics can become face shields. Think of how manufacturing lines began creating ventilators instead of vacuums and vehicles.
5. Make the marginal profitable.
Consider projects and product lines that have experienced a slow adoption rate. Colleges and schools transformed to online delivery overnight. Working from home and long-term isolation has created a global adoption of video conferencing and Zoom has become the “Kleenex” or “Xerox” for an entire product line. Now might be the time to go strong with your products that have achieved only marginal success to date.
6. Look for partnerships.
You don’t have to be able to do it all. Be bold and seek partners in your supply chain. During COVID-19 we saw fast food restaurants serving as bread, and fresh produce suppliers and in my friend’s case, plastics suppliers partnering with a printing company for volume pricing for face shields.
7. Use mirrors and windows.
Looking out the window to the environment and opportunities outside of the organization is critical. No less critical is looking in a mirror to see the organization as it is and taking steps to re-organize and re-align it for the new normal. Consider the current processes for sales, hiring and onboarding, collaboration, communication, performance management and decision-making – how might the environmental shift necessitate changes to these internal processes and systems?
8. Go forward boldly and gracefully.
Now that you’ve decided to play in the new playground the disruption created, and you have a grasp on your resources that can take you to the new normal, you’ve identified partnerships and processes you can implement… GO! Be bold, brave and audacious. But do so gracefully – meaning don’t just stomp and romp. Measure performance, hold teams accountable to make tough decisions and changes. Communicate clearly. Encourage healthy conflict. Build high-performing teams that collaborate and execute effectively.
It’s true. Disruptions take us off balance. But when we look at them as an essential impetus to change, they can become a tidal wave of success.