Everyone is affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and most organizations are taking a real hit, particularly with human capital. Lay-off, furloughs, and scale-backs are a serious problem for everyone because successful recovery might be contingent on poorly documented best practices. Were people with critical knowledge casualties of the 2020 virus war?
Chances are that unless we’ve paid careful attention to knowledge-transfer issues, succession planning, and process standardization we might find ourselves in the difficult position of trying to spring back unprepared when the world reopens. In the midst of an unprecedented disaster such as this where time is of the essence, critical personnel are often misidentified and let go before their job functions are understood or adequately redistributed. As such, valuable process-related information is lost on the front end and unavailable later when recovery is underway. Additionally, the skills and experience of the former (presumably proficient) employee has vanished and the new employee is faced with the unreasonable task of discovering the breadth of the role usually without any guidance or aid.
But let’s be honest with each other and take it all up a notch. In times of rapid expansion we not only expect people to learn their new jobs themselves, but we also use these relatively new and naive people to teach others around them “the ropes” regarding roles of which they have no first-hand expertise. The blind have now started to lead the blind, and this comes at the expense of personal productivity while they jointly work the uncertainties of the job.
And we wonder why recovery takes so long.
This approach is typical, but it certainly isn’t scalable. If it describes your organization, take heart. There is still hope. You still have some time and need not be scrambling like your competition to reconstitute your business. It’s time to be sure your HR group and executive team have a written game-plan for the recovery in place. The whole organization needs to be in on it. Communication is key to good execution.
I would recommend help on this front. A good consultant can help you identify key functional roles and assist in the standardization and documentation of the processes for training. The 80/20 rule firmly applies here. If you prepare well, the new-hire acclimation process will be effective and the learning curve brief. Productivity doesn’t necessarily have to suffer during the growth period. Let your competition struggle with that.
You can lead the pack or you can spend the next few years playing catch-up. Louis Pasteur famously said “Fortune favors the prepared.” Take a deep breath and spend some valuable time envisioning and planning for the eventually recovery. Scrambling is not scalable and has ever-diminishing results. Remember, things will look much different on the other side of this, but they can be better than before if we form a solid plan and stick to it.
- Resist the urge to shed critical personnel that will be nearly impossible to replace during the upswing frenzy.
- Have a practical plan for recovery and over-communicate it to the remaining organization.
- Have your key functions well-defined, well documented, and training already prepared so others won’t be distracted during ramp-up.
- Look for opportunities to reform or reorganize the organization for optimal performance in expectation of the recovery.
When it comes to launching yourself successfully out of the gate you need to have a cogent plan that everyone left can execute. Keep it clean and simple. Keep it aligned with your vision and with your values. We’re going to get through this soon enough. Be ready to out-perform the other guys when the whistle blows.
Lean in and Lean on.