Four Business Defining Statements from COVID -19

FOUR BUSINESS DEFINING STATEMENTS FROM COVID-19

Here are four powerful statements I have picked up on our journey through this “impossible” season that will stay with us for a long time.

“To make a change something has to die or reach a dead end!”

The realization of the need to change may be understood and acknowledged for a long time. But is only when what you rely on is broken, lost or removed from your control that you begin to look for something else to take its place. Indeed, you have to finish college before you start thinking seriously about moving out of home. You may have to lose a job before you realize that you needed to upscale your skills to become more relevant and remain employable. No, COVID did not do this to us, it only served to bring it up.

“Re-invent yourself and make yourself relevant irrespective of what happens”

The fact that things are changing around you and that you are getting older and that the skills you learned long ago are getting out of date are a wake-up call for all of us to keep growing changing and becoming better at what we do. Enterprises know this and invest huge resources in developing business approaches and strategies to keep moving. Indeed, the market leaders always have several new products lined up for whatever season lies ahead. How much time do we take to re-invent ourselves, re-position ourselves in the market and adapt to changing conditions around us?  

“Professionals need to deconstruct what they know”

Many professionals have high qualifications and impressive certificates and can analyse anything in their field to the point of paralysis. Nonetheless, very few of them are able to deconstruct what they know into usable products, services and skill sets that can be consumed by the market or improve the society and environment in which they live. We call those special kind of people “innovators”, but they are really just professionals with the courage to apply what they know.

“reconnect with your customers”

COVID 19 has created a social distance between business and its customers. It was a self-serving relationship of needs and wants that was taken for granted. Now the relationship is being informed by “you simply cannot have it”. It is easy to say that this can be rectified by short dose “good” customer service. Nonetheless, you can be sure that it will not be business as usual in the days ahead. The customer is changing and making decisions about his relationship with business in the days ahead. But how can you reconnect with people you don’t even know. The struggle businesses will have in the long term is to show that they really cared for their customers when things were not so rosy and glossy.

Allan Bukusi