Preparing Your Business For Coronavirus – What Can You Do Now?

The Unexpected

Hi everyone, the theme of this week is preparing for the unexpected. See, I can make a big thing out of it, you can see the scar on my lip. I was coaching cricket last weekend and a ball hit the pole on the side of the net straight in my face, five stitches later, here I am.

It’s been one of those weeks where the unexpected happens and that’s the theme of the video today. So the theme of the video is there is an impending challenge coming, pandemic coming of a virus that’s gonna seriously or potentially seriously impact your team.

So what do you do to prepare for it, how do you think about it and how do you protect your business during that time so that it keeps running and you know your team, your customers and everyone gets what they need? So I’ve made some notes on my iPad, I’m gonna talk them through, I think this is the one where I really need to be prepared before I do this I think it’s worth saying that there’s a difference between facts and opinions.

If you want medical facts about coronavirus this is not the place for that go to your doctor, go to a proper government source which I know the government is working on right now. I am gonna offer my opinion about what you should do as a business leader, you know your business two million bucks plus, to avoid the potential consequences of this, again it’s my opinion and you can take and use what you want to help you in your business.

Framing Points

Firstly, over the next two or three months, two or three things are likely to occur.

1. You or some of your team members may be put in isolation for up to 14 days.
2. Your customers and all your other stakeholders at the front of your business that you interact with, they may be put in isolation for up to 14 days or contract the virus.
3. On the back end of your business, your supply chain, those people you rely on to produce goods, provide your components for your product or service, the same thing might happen. So there’s those sort of three potential impacts.  

Mindset

Two mindsets that I think are really important during this time and I was talking about it with a coaching group that I’m part of.

• The first mindset is this, I think it’s really important that you have the mindset of that we are open for business, during this whole period of when this virus comes on and then when it peaks and when it comes back. I think it’s really important that we don’t make this worse by exaggerating our response, closing things down that are unnecessary. 
  
• There are ways around this which leads to a second mindset which is it’s your job as a leader of a business, a team leader to think of creative solutions to keep going, to keep the projects going, to keep the momentum going, to keep progress going.

So some specific things that I think will help around that is first to have an isolation plan. So if you have to go into isolation for 14 days, how would you do that? Where would you be? In your own house? And what is your set up going to be like? The way I understand is that you have to isolate yourself in your own room, have your own bathroom. Have you got that set up for your family? But also if you got that set up for you and your business so that you could run it in isolation if you needed to.

So firstly for yourself and secondly for your team. You should be communicating that they think about the same thing so that if that happened in the next three months you would be prepared. So the timeframe in my mind is I would be thinking about – Could you keep your business open and running to the level it was for three months if you have to with these disruptions?

So the first mindset is open for business, the second mindset is to be creative with how you create products and solutions during this time. And our first practical thing is create an isolation plan, one for yourself but also communicate that to your team. Second is your technology set up, this is a big thing for me but obviously with my mindset around “open for business” I can continue my coaching. It doesn’t matter where I am or when I’m home isolated or with a client, I can do it using technology – zoom and other tools, phone calls.

Technology Setup

I think it’s really important that you practice now what that technology setup might be for your team. If people contracted it so that you can continue communicating, so phones, video conferences, Skype, Whatsapp, Whatsapp groups are a great way to continue that. All those things put in place now if you haven’t gotten these ready.

And then the third practical thing is to start right away with those changes so that you’re not waiting until it hits, to have the set up all in place.

This is about preparing for COVID19, as a leader of business I think it’s really important economically and socially and financially that all of us continue to think that we are open for business. I think we need to be creative with how we prepare ourselves  and I think I expect the unexpected but we can prepare now.

1. Have an isolation plan for you and your team. Where would you go? Where would you be? How would you continue your business?
2. Second is make sure your technology set up, Whatsapp, Skype, all the tools so you can continue communicating with your team, with your customers without the need to be face-to-face.
3. Start now with getting everything set up and communicating those practical changes.

Leave me a comment or Get in Touch

Hope that’s been useful. I want to make, I guess, my contribution to this global challenge that you know as my clients’ customers community are prepared. See you soon. Take care. Bye.