How to Navigate Uncertainty In Your Business

May 14th, 2020 | 5 minute read

In a time where change and uncertainty is going to be on the horizon for many months to come, how your team flex through the flux of uncertainty will determine your long-term success, how prepared are each layer of your business to navigate uncertainty?

Most businesses are busy looking at their strategy, but it can be difficult to know where to focus, and what to focus on. We recommend looking at your business in three layers:

Business Level

Business continuity is key. To drive the changes needed for your business to survive, detailed behavioural insight into your most vulnerable areas is critical to execute change quickly & efficiently.

Some of the common questions we’re being asked about business continuity are: 

  • How do we bring some stability and normality back to the business? 
  • How do we cut costs in a sensitive way, without causing long term damage to our business and culture?
  • How do we balance the short term business critical whilst still driving the long term vision of the business?
  • This crisis has made it clear we need to make some operational changes and drive up efficiencies, but what is the best way to do this?

Leadership & Management Level

Resilience requires strong leadership. Your leaders & managers ultimately determine whether teams fall apart, or come together, but they need a toolkit to best manage the change & uncertainty.

Some of the common questions we’re being asked about business continuity are: 

  • How do we communicate honestly and transparently so people don’t create their own stories and feed fear?
  • We’ve got inexperienced managers handling difficult changes virtually, how do we support them?
  • How do we work with our leaders and managers on increasing their emotional intelligence to better connect and support their team during this time?
  • How do we gain visibility of the management practices across our business, in order to drive consistency and accountability?

Employee Level

Change is personal. To really address change at an organisational level, you must understand how your individual employees are really feeling, and what they need to feel comfortable with the needed business changes.

Some of the common questions we’re being asked about business continuity are: 

  • We have transitioned to remote working, but how do we get our team working as productively as they used to? 
  • We’re already seeing the signs of stress and anxiety in our people, they may be managing now but I’m worried how they will cope a month from now – what can we put in place to enhance wellbeing?
  • There is a lot of fear in our team around leaving the safety of working from home – how can we create an environment where people feel safe to come to work? 
  • We know that uncertainty will be with us for a while, how do we help the team be able to flex and adapt better to this?

So what can you do? In this video we outline some of the key strategies we are working with our clients on, and you can read more in our “A Flex and Flux Strategy” resource.

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