(re)Starting with a clean sheet

Tuesday 12 May 2020

Article

As many businesses try to plot their way out of the Covid 19 nightmare, they are focusing on the practicalities of how to reopen, deliver on customer promise and expectations, navigate government support schemes and manage the all important cashflow throughout.

Understandably, this complex puzzle is occupying a huge amount of time, energy and scarce resource.

The risk, however, is that businesses are not facing into the more profound challenge of what life post-Covid might look like and how their businesses need to be fundamentally reconfigured for this new reality.

Instead of just staring into the Covid valley and trying to plot the most effective route out leaders need to be looking across the peaks of 2019 - 2021 and beyond and asking what do I really need for life on the other side.

Of course this is a balancing act, but the most progressive businesses are carefully dividing their efforts between these two time horizons; horizon 2 (0-6 months) and horizon 3 (6-24 months).

As we look to horizon 3, it's clear that not only has the shape of demand likely changed (material recessionary effects, more online, more local, huge demographic variations, lower human contact throughout) but so have the potential working models to deliver on this demand.

Necessity is the mother of invention - but there is something more unique than just necessity in this crisis. We are experiencing a once in a lifetime episode of incredible human adaptability and this period creates the conditions for fundamental evolution of the ways we imagine and construct our business models.

The most forward looking will recognise this period as a critical evolutionary moment and relish the opportunity to design an advantaged business model for the next decade.