Avoid These 10 Extremely Common Mistakes, or Risk Your Organization's Next Normal

Call it the Next Normal or the New Normal, but every organization today is trying to rapidly find a way around the threats posed by the novel coronavirus. The absence of a potent cure had a ripple effect on economic, social and moral well being of people around the world. And, while we all try to execute a proper plan to ensure business continuity and return to work, many theories, or stages, or phases are strongly influencing businesses.

After speaking to many Sr. Management, C-Level and key officials over the past few months, two key thought processes are prevailing which are giving a sense of comfort and assurance that the organizations will soon find their feet in these uncertain times.

1. Resolve, Return and Reform
2. Test, Trace and Treat

However, when you drill deeper to understand how these stages are getting executed, there was no clear path or answer, and it was primarily because majority of these organizations were not expecting this virus outbreak. But there were definitely some organizations which had an existing backup plan for emergencies and easily maneuvered most of these threats. The only difference is, that they were not expecting an emergency with the name, Covid19.

So, the key problem solver was this crisis preparedness by these organizations. But, are they completely unscathed? No, not at all. The only difference between organizations that were prepared and those who were not, is the extent of impact or damage faced.

Hence organizations should not focus on returning with resilience, but to Treat, Tweak and Transform (will cover these phases separately). Unfortunately, most of the organizations in their rush to reach the so called normal, are either overlooking a few factors or making common mistakes which will stop them from managing the rapid changes or to improve their business. These are:

1. Lack of data or inadequate data centralization

Management of data is an age old problem and many organizations are still managing data in silos across different departments, or tools & IT systems. As a result data analysis is manual and takes weeks/ months to find relevant methods to eliminate gaps or unnecessary steps to benefit the customers. The more time you take to reach your customers, the lower the revenues, lengthier the struggle and even more complicated performances measures in these times.

2. Unclear information of internal authority and accountability

A lot of organizations today might know what that needs to be done, but when you need to make urgent changes, having a lack of clarity about all those who will get impacted by critical decisions is a huge problem and such lack of awareness across multiple touch points can lead to incorrect information getting shared with the customers or incorrect prioritization of efforts within the organizations, hence delayed recovery.

3. Improper management of change history

Managing changes and change history should be a top priority for organizations, with each day passing, the new ways of performing or the new scenarios of dealing with day to day problems should be accounted for. Remember the decisions we all will take, for instance, in July 2021 would also require us to look into what we were doing and how were doing things in Jan 2020 and July 2020, in order to take the right decisions and establish accurate standards. Unclear track of history can lead to pauses and doubts before recovery

4. Habits or tenure is not equal to the most optimized process

There are employees in organizations who are working from many months or years. But, there are always instances where someone was able to improvise a better and faster way of working, but that improved method is not known to others, or , there are instances where someone thinks they know the most up to date process of working, but they are following older ways instead. Hence having variances in work methodology can lead to customer confusion, or can even lead to increased financial damages.

5. Consider information sharing as collaboration

Organizations need to understand that a shared drives, shared structures etc. doesn't mean there is a collaborative environment existing in the organization. Collaboration is never about sharing information with employees. It is not a one way street. A true collaboration is about sharing and receiving, is about adopting methodologies that can help everyone share ideas for improvements. Once there is this real collaboration, you can aim for customer success, and it would not make any difference to any strategy, if employees are working from home or from office. Remember, customer success is about getting product teams to get the customer analytics they need, accounting feedback from customers, and then jointly aligning on future roadmap. This can only happen with real collaboration.

6. Existence of multiple IT Systems for similar purposes

Many organizations had a norm of letting each department select the IT system, tools or technology they want. Also, there are many tools and software that perform similar functions with a few distinctions here & there. This leads to organizations trying to incorporate the entire life cycle around and across these applications. Many organizations are even utilizing advanced cloud software, but they then fall back on to things like excels, powerpoint etc. for their next steps. So, why spend millions of dollars on cloud software And now, because of the pandemic, every IT system or software in the organization is being re-looked at, in order to reduce the sheer volume of such applications sitting in the organization for no reason. This is an opportunity for organizations to invest in applications that are either end-to-end or can help in automation, digital transformation, digitization and improvement in a much organized and complete way. Needs smarter decision making, instead of looking for short and mid term gains only.

7. No clear cut R.O.I of required/ proposed changes

While organization are trying to manage changes and working on various projects to support the movement towards the next normal, there is lack of analytical data that can help establish the real justification of change, before changes are made in real. Hence it is at times impossible for the specialized teams to execute strategies that can better efficiencies or reduce operating expenses. This leads to multiple other problems in the organization as they have to find ways to benefit customers without incurring a lot of cost.

8. C-level's lack of commitment to changes by being ultra risk averse

Yes, there are CEOs, CFOs, COOs etc. who want to make changes for the better, but the idea of being completely risk averse is not at all valid currently. This is a time to take some calculated risks, maybe make mistakes or take a serious leap of faith, and as a result the future will be golden again. We all understand that in business, profits are the real rewards you get out of taking a few risks. If we had not taken those risks in our early days, we would not be at a level that requires us to take strategic decisions, impacting entire organization along with our connected business ecosystem. But, being ultra risk averse is not the required attitude at all.

9. Resistance to changes from employees

This is a human nature problem. You have shuttles, but you'd walk to office, or there are a lot of other changes required to adjust to working from home and office, but suddenly either the productivity would increase or there will be no clue on what's going on. There has to be a reason why suddenly a lot of leaves in organizations are no longer the sick-leaves. I know everyone is suffering a lot, but a little calm can make it a better tomorrow. If too many people would try to cross the same bridge in a rush, it would only result in traffic, not social distancing, and its not even good for health.

10. Cutting salaries or jobs, before operating expenses

There are special teams or members within the organizations who are famous for analyzing business performance and reducing operating expenses or indirect costs for the organization. The current times require that if your organization is suffering a loss of 1 million dollar, one should aim to reduce 1 million dollar from operating expenses. This would be a key to maintaining sanity, security and will create a balance that counter strikes these direct losses. Now we all know reducing operating expenses is not going to happen in a day, however cutting salaries and removing jobs, is way faster and is a compelling decision. But, before you take such drastic steps, reduce operating expenses faster by utilizing all your existing staff, instead of making them redundant. But you need to know how to execute this strategy faster, else you will try-fail-try-fail and then give up because of wasting a lot of time.

So how to avoid these mistakes? What can be done to rebound?

Every lock has its own key and every organization has an answer to this hidden within the organization only. But to find the right answer, you can rely on the following steps

1. If you are observing one, two or all of these mistakes happening in your organization, comment below and I'll help find the key to your lock with you.
2. If you are observing one, two or all of these mistakes happening in your friend's organization, share this article, and they will be able to comment below to find a right fit solution.
3. If you are observing any other common mistake or problem, apart from the ones above, add it as a comment and let us all know.

As mentioned right at the start of this article, I have just put my conclusion based on discussions with Sr. Management, C-Level and key officials. I am still open to more and more discussions. But before that let's make sure that this gets to all the right people on time before they continue down the same path, kill a lot of jobs globally or with one of the above point existing in their organization, degrade the speed of recovering

These current times require us all to contribute, support proper decision making and, to do this in today's crisis times, is more important then ever before.

Cheers

Take care, stay safe and talk soon.

Ash Zutshi