Covid-19 has forced a reset at multiple levels across industry categories and consumer behaviours. While we are not out of the woods yet, businesses and its leaders are still trying to ‘fix’ the perceivable impact that this pandemic has caused so far. While the financial and economic effects may take 18 to 24 months to normalise; the mental, emotional and physical effects will remain with us for much longer.
Whether we agree or not - “Business As Usual” (BAU) has been redefined. There is a “New Normal” for businesses. The ways in which we used to look at business, evaluate performance and measure success cannot assist in recovery. While companies measure their success by its EBITDA, Quarter-on-Quarter/ Year-on-Year growth etc; there is one facet of success and performance measurement that business leaders have always turned a blind eye to Consistent Momentum.
In the past, businesses “Rode the Wave”. The highs were high and the lows were stressful (at the least). Business leaders shrugged at these dips as the natural part of business that happened mostly outside of their control. They may have even accepted it as long as the overall annual targets (revenue and profitability) were met.
Almost all businesses are built for the “Grind” because growth was difficult to get. Leaders have to manage top-line and bottom-line. However the measures that improve profitability often held back top-line growth, while measures that drove revenue growth required investments that would drag down profit. Maintaining a balance and breaking free to achieve epic success and growth remained devilishly hard.
It sometimes seemed that all business leaders could do is “Keep Pushing”. Push sales forward; push marketing investments; push employees for productivity; push suppliers and partners for better deals. Pushing is hard work - it’s exhausting, churns through resources and is unsustainable for long periods of time. Business leaders often ignored the pains across the ecosystem in the pursuit of those high peaks. Businesses rewarded those people who delivered high peaks (met their targets) irrespective of organisational morale, performer behaviours that nurtured toxicity and increased marketing and resource expenses. The motto remained "Hit the numbers no matter what".
The “New Normal” for businesses requires rethinking Momentum (i.e. Consistent and Sustainable Momentum). Foregoing the momentary highs for a more sustainable and steady upward path even if it takes a little longer (3 to 4 months) to reach the goals. The rewards of delivering a disproportionately higher growth while building a sustainable eco-system, where the momentum feeds on itself without the need of excessive resources, outweighs the additional time taken to achieve it. In this “New Normal”, progress will be natural, highly efficient and realised with almost frictionless ease.
In the “New Normal”, businesses create consistent momentum and reward employees that play the game for the long haul. Employees who are team players and that ensure morale remains positive; delivered sustainable and incremental growth. Predictability! Quarter on quarter; year on year.
In the “New Normal” for businesses, creating, delivering and sustaining long term value outweighs the waves from the past that were heavily dependent on ‘pushing’ (with money, resources, time, efforts etc). Momentum and Predictability is now part of the “New Normal” for Sustainable Business Growth.
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