At Curzon, we have decided to share what we can learn from the Covid-19 crisis as it impacts business and communication strategy. We discuss the 4 tips when creating a strategy to build a resilient organisation that can face unexpected changes that shake your industry to the core.

Introduction

What the Covid-19 crisis has shown is that no sector is immune to unpredictable change.

Sharing economy companies that were valued at billions of dollars like Airbnb, Lyft, and Uber were all of a sudden brought to the ground. Airbnb, which was expecting to go public, ended up firing 25% of the staff.

A lot of whether your industry and business survives or thrives during a change depends on factors outside of your control. Even the impact of coronavirus on companies in the same sector but in different countries was different. While the e-commerce sector in the US saw a jump in their revenue, and small businesses were threatened, in India, it was a different story.

Amazon India was the worst hit amongst all its international branches since the government allowed delivery of only essential services like groceries, that too after a while. Meanwhile, Kirana stores (retail stores selling groceries) that have been facing tough competition from malls and online retailers until now became the go-to for buying groceries as the government restricted movement of delivery men.

At the same time, companies in China invented a new model in the sharing economy to stay afloat: Corporate employee sharing. Supermarkets and retail shops in China like Alibaba’s grocery branch that saw a surge in orders, borrowed workers from restaurants that were forced to shut down. It helped the restaurant workers have a source of income when their original employers could not pay them while filling the need for labour due to the high demand for orders.

The learning behind this is that given the unpredictability of future events and how it will affect your industry, businesses need to be nimble and flexible — so that they can easily adapt to changing environments that they operate in.

The Black Swan Theory

A black swan event is a highly unpredictable event with high impact.

While it is possible to consider Coronavirus as a black swan event, many people from Bill Gates to Anthony Fauci had predicted this. Not just this, countries in Asia where the virus was late to arrive had a lot of time to prepare — but they didn’t. Even in the US, if people started wearing masks in January itself — the spread would have been contained, according to the founder of the black swan theory Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Regardless of how things would have turned out if governments had taken the predictions seriously, the Black Swan theory is less about predicting change, and more about turning potential Black Swans into White Swans. I.e. “building political structures so that societies will be better able to cope with mounting, random events,” according to Bernard Avishai.

That is exactly what you need to keep in mind when creating a strategy for your business or corporate communications — a strategy that is able to cope with the impact of unexpected changes that might come up in the future. Because they will. While there are some controversies, it is generally believed that black swan events are increasing in frequency due to more connected global systems.

Strategy Lessons Learnt From Covid-19  

While you cannot future-proof your business completely, there are still various things you can do to minimize the impact of an unpredictable event.

1. Include all stakeholders when creating a strategy

Research shows that companies with strong execution of strategies give power to the ones executing them: by taking their suggestions early on in the strategy formulation phase, having clear roles and responsibilities, by trusting their decisions, and communicating the bottom-line impact of their work.

This is because people are more likely to follow on and execute a plan if they were a part of creating it. So when creating a strategy, take views from as many stakeholders as possible — from employees to customers via surveys, focus groups, and interviews.

Sharing the mission behind your work and business model helps employees feel a part of the plan, and keep them motivated to keep going when times are tough.

3. Set short-term strategies

Set strategies for 2-3 years instead of the long term 5 years or more.

This would help update your business models according to changing environments and be better prepared if an unexpected event happens.

Also, having a culture of improving or revising systems before it becomes a necessity creates a resilient organisational culture, allowing you lots of practice to improve and change tactics when the black swan event actually does strike.

Your stakeholders would also become skilled in adapting to change within the company at short periods of time.

3.Be flexible

Yuval Noah Harari writes in Wired that people should prepare for the future to be unknown. And for that, it would be important to “deal with change” and “reinvent yourself again and again”.

This advice applies both to organisations as well as employees.

Don’t set strategies in concrete.

Don’t be too emotionally attached to the strategy so you can make a change and adapt when needed.

And in order for those changes in strategy to be accepted, adapted, and executed by the employees, it is also important to invest in teaching employees to harness the ability to learn new skills, as well as mental resilience.

For example, companies like IBM, GM, and Ford have all created spin-off companies to allow the flexibility that they needed and break away from big corporations, to disrupt the markets in their respective changing industries.

4. Create a new strategy for the new normal

When creating a strategy that works for the changes brought on by an unexpected event,

• Categorise the changes into the three categories:

1. Initial changes, like quarantine.

When businesses had to communicate the constantly evolving information on the virus as well what they are doing for their employees in these times.

2. Long-term changes, like social distancing.

3. Pre-existing trends, like remote work, which existed before but only its adoption has been accelerated now.

For example, a new communication strategy for this new normal would undoubtedly involve an improvised internal communications strategy that takes into account communication via social channels instead of face-to-face.

• Look for opportunities and avenues to reach the same results or goals as before, but through methods that are more effective and appropriate now.

For example, we at Curzon PR are planning to start new webcasts and podcasts in addition to our current communication tools as opposed to traditional events since a reduced number of people will be attending events outside of their homes.

• Adapt your strategy by being conscious of social sentiment.

 As such, ethical PR takes precedence over marketing — since nobody wants to be sold to during the times of crisis and uncertainty impacting health and jobs.

For example, perfume companies that started producing hand sanitisers; and Virgin and Tesla creating ventilators worked as good PR, as well as helped the companies continue employing their workers — who would have otherwise become unemployed when the sale of perfumes, cars, and air travel was on a decline.

Conclusion

The best way to fare well in the future is through the distribution of power and being flexible and agile, in essence, building “a system that could survive random stresses”.

Curzon PR is a London-based PR firm working with clients globally. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact our Business Development Team [email protected]