SMEs: Corona Virus Lock Down

Leadership Actions During The COVID-19 Lock Down

Introduction

In many countries we are currently experiencing what is termed as "Lock Down" to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 Corona Virus. This virus is deadly, and is certainly taking its toll in terms of human lives on a global scale. So it is quite understandable that governments have resorted to these measures. Here in South Africa it is no exception. So far we have had only 2 fatalities, but it will most probably rise to a whole lot more (we are currently only on day 4 of the lock down). 

The negative impact that we are experiencing as businesses providing "non-essential" products and services is simply that we had to shut our doors, and that we cannot go to visit clients and carry on with our normal work. And, as the saying goes, "No work, No pay." 

So what can we as leadership in our organizations do during this difficult time to prepare us for the day when we allowed to return to work, and to start picking up the pieces and rebuild our companies?

Planning

Now is a good time to do planning for our organizations. We can start by looking at the business risks and opportunities and our plans to deal with them. We can look at the needs and expectations of interested parties, our business management system scope, and the processes that we use to achieve the goals and objectives of the organization, and how we are dealing with risk and opportunity. We now most probably have more time available to do these things that the ISO standards require us to do. 

Now is also a good time to point out that when we look at risks and opportunities, we should not only concentrate on one 'management system' (financial or quality, health and safety, environmental, etc). Always look at risk and opportunity from the broader perspective, because the so-called different management systems are all impacted to a larger or lesser degree by the identified risks and opportunities. To prove a point: Suppose one of your delivery vehicles is transporting hazardous chemicals to a customer of yours. The vehicles is in an accident. The outcome is that the vehicle is substantially damaged, there is a major chemical spill, the driver ends up in hospital with serious injuries, and the vehicle of a member of the public is also written off. If we start looking at the incident from a risk point of view, several scenarios become clear. The vehicle had to be on the road, it had to be loaded with hazardous chemicals, another vehicle had to be present, etc. If we look at the impact of the incident on the business, we see financial loss (vehicles, chemicals, insurance, driver injury on duty with time booked off from work, customer unhappy because of delay in delivery, replacement of spilled chemicals, etc). We also see a health and safety loss, driver being injured and booked off, driver and passengers in the other vehicle being negatively impacted, etc. The environmental loss in turn is spillage of hazardous chemicals, clean-up costs, potential legal repercussions, etc. 

We thus now have a golden opportunity to plan for the future actions to ensure the survival of our companies.

Company values

We should start by asking ourselves about the value system that we would like our organizations to adhere to. This does not have to be complicated, a few simple rules will do. These values must be something that leadership sees as so important that the organization will stand and fall by it. It helps to shape the culture of the organization in terms of what is allowed and what is not allowed in the company.

As an example, I have a couple of clients (in fact most of my clients) who refuses to have any part in corruption and dishonesty. Some of them have already acknowledged that they are loosing potential income as a result, but, in their own words: "So be it, we will not compromise on this value that we regard as vitally important. 

Think about how supportive the employees of the organization are of these values. Think about how you should communicate them, and how you should incorporate them into the working culture of the organization. Are all employees regarding the values as important?

Context of the organization and interested parties

Revisit the context of the organization. Start by identifying internal and external interested parties, and what their needs and expectations are. Draw up a simple spreadsheet to achieve this:

• Who is the interested party?
• What are the needs and expectations?
• Bias (is the impact of compliance with these needs and expectations positive or negative for the organization?
• Are we currently doing anything to comply with these needs and expectations?

Then go on to look at the context of the organization (external and internal). Use existing tools and methodologies such as:

External context:

• Pestle analysis
• Porter's 5 forces analysis

Internal context:

• Resource audit
• MOST analysis

I will shortly publish a blog on these methods.

Once again, look at bias. The external and internal issues discovered can be positive or negative in terms of your organization. At the end of this part of the exercise, do a SWOT analysis to identify internal strengths (opportunities) and internal weaknesses (risks), as well as external opportunities and external threats (risks) to your organization. 

Objectives, goals and plans

We use the outputs from the SWOT analysis to ensure that we set long term (strategic) and short term (tactical) objectives for the organization to deal with the identified opportunities and risks, from a financial, health and safety and environmental point of view. This ensures that your organization's quality, health and safety and environmental objective are sensible, and that they will contribute to the well-being and future existence of your organization.

Of course then next step will be to plan how these objectives will be achieved, what rules we need to put into place to ensure that these objectives will be achieved (policies). We ensure that the processes for achievement, monitoring, review, etc are planned, and that we include the necessary processes, procedures, instructions, etc, in the management system of the organization.

Other factors

Part of the planning should be to plan for the necessary competence to be available within the organization. What training needs did I identify? What resources do I lack? What resources do I have that I am not utilizing?

Some thoughts on strategic and tactical planning

Differences between strategic planning and tactical planning

• Executives are responsible for strategic plans (3 to 15 years), and it cannot ever be delegated to the lower levels of management
• Tactical planning (short term planning, including processes and procedures) is the domain of lower level managers, because they understand the day-to-day activities of the organization
• Strategic planning is concerned withe the future, which is uncertain, therefore it is planning on a high level
• Tactical planning is concerned with today, which we know much better, thus much more detailed
• Strategic plans are road maps or particular approaches that the company will use to reach future objectives. 
• A tactical plan is the final, critical stage where specific actions and tasks are assigned to departments and employees who need to complete them, and will enable the organization to reach future objectives

Tactical plans breaks the bigger picture goals and strategies down into narrower, actionable tasks. Tactical plans must have specifically stated actions assigned to particular employees with particular deadlines. The management system helps us in this regard.

Strategic planning gives vision, while tactical planning and actions make the plans real.

Conclusion

I hope that the information in this blog is helpful. Take this time to rethink the strategy of your organization, making use of the available tools.

I will publish future blogs on the practical application of determining the context of the organization, risk based thinking and managing risk to the organization.

Feel free to let me know what your thoughts are on this blog, (koosgouws10@gmail.com).

You can also contact me for specific on-line training needs that we may be able to provide during these trying times. I will publish a list of what is available.