Adapting Quickly Can Save Your Business

If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

I think the importance of agility is evident more than ever. Reacting and creating solutions quickly with medical, government, social life, and even your business. Especially for small businesses. Here, I want to give some ideas and ways to adjust and make sure your business survives this pandemic. If this helps you or you know anyone else that can benefit, please share this.

The reason why I put that quote is that as bad as the situation is, there are still different ways to look at it. Certain pressures are being put on society right now that can cause a lot of good to come out of it. Right now, COVID-19 can rapidly spread. Everyone that can is issuing rapid responses to try and get ahead of the virus. It is a great thing, to be honest. No pressure, no diamond.

I want to note how being in a time of uncertainty can test us. Being able to react fast is going to greatly benefit you, your family, and your business during this pandemic.

The reason why I mention business is that I work mainly with businesses on strategy, positioning, and design. Small businesses are the backbone of our economy. If they fail to react and adapt, they can go under very easily as they don't have the resources large companies do.

Here are some tips to help adjust as we have here and with our sister company, Avant Innovations and Desyn. The beginning of the week was business as usual. Tuesday is where it got crazy fast. By noon, we shut down all of our conference rooms. Usually, we meet face to face. I quickly trained the team on how to adjust to meeting virtually and using what we already have to keep clients engaged and happy. We also put extra effort into project management to be able to work remotely to keep our employees safe. Some were already sick and getting sick so we focused on their health first. It is now Friday at the time of writing this and we are almost all virtual now. This pressure forced us to work out kinks that needed to be worked out in the first place.

People don't like change. If we didn't have to, we wouldn't change and fix things that didn't need to be fixed. Project management always needed to be improved as we aren't perfect. Now, it is worlds better. Our online communication is way better as well.

Enough about us, here are some things to help you adjust.

First, determine what is real and fake news.
This is important because ignoring something real can have negative effects. For example, here in Corpus Christi, we have a rule that any gathering of 10 people is fined. This led me to help my church get started fast on streaming and get their online presence together. The timeline was a lot longer before this happened.

Have a contingency
That leads me to have a contingency plan. Just like my church adopted streaming immediately and the office switched all of our clients to virtual meetings, you should have a backup plan, too.

Look at your cash flow rapidly.
As a small business, I am sure you do already. But now more than ever, make plans on how to stretch the cash flow out. Figure out how to improve your marketing to be more efficient. Maybe you are paying for software you don't need.

New Door Can Open
The best result of this can be finding a new revenue stream. If you take anything from this, it is to take action. Take action on your plan to stay safe and keep the company afloat. If you have been working on an idea that would be relevant now that we are going to be online or at home more than ever, act on it. Maybe you have been wanting to release a course to teach your customers. Maybe your restaurant has been needing to get into delivery. Just act on it. Done is better than perfect. Especially if it provides value to people.

Use methods like the Lighting Decision Jam or even the Design Sprint that we run here ourselves to take on some bigger tasks.

If you can, use online channels to communicate with your team.
Things like Slack, Basecamp, email, or Monday can all have great uses to your company now more than ever.

Hopefully, some of these tips help you get started on adapting quickly. Stay safe everyone.

Also, there are sure to be grammatical errors in this. Please, note that just like I advised to take action, I am doing the same and wanted to get something out there to help everyone else.

Check out my previous posts here, or shoot me an email about something you want some expansion on! I read my emails and reply!