The most exciting part of the year for any business leader is planning for the organisation’s future. In other words, setting the Business Plans for the next few years.
This is a process which takes about a couple of months atleast in every organisation. And there are different methods that each one follows. Fact is everyone in the company is busy forecasting, building, learning, relearning, underbudgeting or over estimating. All of these go through multiple iterations and then it is locked when people agree it is the best aspiration with the just about right amount of stretch and the promise of YOY growth that will improve the company’s profits & profitability and value at the stock exchange.
And then a global disaster like covid strikes. So the next learning and actionable.
Re-evaluating the Business Plan is a critical need. All the wisdom and experiences of business leaders may not have prepared business leaders for such global uncertainty that too for an uncertain period of time, as we are witnessing today.
This calls for recasting of the business plan. Definition of short term and long term planning will be fluid.
The think tank of companies will look at the shortfall vs budget for the financial year 19-20 where in Q4 has been gobbled up by the pandemic, the topline and bottom line has dipped if not tanked or gone negative respectively, but middle line is fairly in place. And even before one thinks of how to salvage the year 2019-20, plans for April – June quarter of 20-21 looks bad already. The business paradox of current times is, one can neither plan forward not work backward, because the key variable of time is unknown.
So I see two kinds of planning that will need to be worked upon, parallelly. One is Survival Strategy, and the other is Growth Strategy, both linked carefully to each other. The former was not such a big question mark or critical variable, until now. So this focus has to get into the plans.
Survival strategy will be short term measures to keep the business running. Reaching out, improving cash flows, working now to build future business, staying connected to customers. Could also be pulling out new ancillary business verticals or new processes like going online that adds to revenues in these times.
The Growth strategy will work on planning to be profitable in 20-21 and the next 4 years. Here is where creative and innovative thinking is imperative. A reset zero based planning that takes into account what new launches to go to the market with, timing of these, spotting new opportunities, not being rigid about what was planned earlier, but rather re-evaluating them objectively.
Analysing the impact of changes in consumer behaviour post covid that will affect your business, factoring that into your plans. Remember frugality may stick on for more time. For some industries like infra, e-commerce, food, entertainment, transport, business will bounce back the day lock down is over. But other business will have a lead time that needs to be factored into the plans.
Success is about good strategy executed well. Dynamic planning that combines Survival strategy and Growth strategy, executed well through agile leadership will help businesses survive, sail through and grow well, post covid.
BusinessSustainabilityBusiness lessons from Covid & the Kitchen Part II
