How leaders are re-imagining their businesses and adapting to the ‘new normal’
Moon Executive Search has an excellent relationship with the Grant Thornton UK LLP team locally.
This week, their Growth 365 team hosted a virtual round table with CEO’s to discuss how the leaders are re-imagining their businesses and adapting to the ‘new normal’. With the wealth of information out there, we saw this and wanted to share it as a reflection of the CEO agenda during this time.
The following article is comprised of a collection of two releases by Megan Gibson-Jones who leads the Growth 365 team across the South West & Wales. The idea was to create connections and bring innovative thinkers together to solve problems and find opportunities.
‘In the second in our series of virtual round table discussions, we brought together leaders, innovators and entrepreneurs from across the UK as part of our Growth 365 service. Below I share the first three of the eight key takeaways about how leaders are re-imagining their businesses and adapting to the ‘new normal’.
Our aim was to give them space to breathe, reflect and share the benefit of their mutual experiences. We debated, listened and learnt from each other - here’s what we heard.
Re-imagining hierarchy and realigning teams
• We have been able to observe how our teams practically interact, seeing how information and responsibilities really flow without imposed structure.
• This has been a valuable learning exercise and has led us to redefine structure and realign teams around how things actually work best, rather than ‘bolting-on’ to the way things have always been done.
Opportunity to reset
• This is the chance to take some of the difficult decisions that have been on our shoulders for a while e.g.
• Streamline product offerings and focus on core competences
• Commit to new investment projects which strengthen our resilience and future prospects
• Reconsider our brand, message and marketing strategies
• Reassess the talent pools we can access and identify skills gaps within our teams.
• We expect there to be a re-balancing of some over-saturated markets, with inefficient operators leaving and a burst of activity both from surviving incumbents and new entrants ready to act swiftly.
Access to decision makers – a rare glimpse
• We’ve spent time reaching out to our customers and have been able to access key decision makers who’d previously been elusive.
• This has allowed us to better understand our stakeholders and develop more informed ainsights about how we should interact with them.
• These strengthened relationships will drive strategy and benefit us in the future.
Values – walking the walk
• We cannot operate a BAU mindset within our sales and marketing functions. Complacency around our market position and brand reputation could easily cause damage.
• Whilst there are abundant market opportunities for some products and services, we must get the balance right between what is ethically right and what is logical commercially.
• With strong values and beliefs within our organisations, we instinctively know what is right.
• What has worked before in our go-to-market approach is no longer appropriate, we must challenge our teams to connect with and support our customers in a manner befitting to the circumstances.
Successfully driving change
• People and organisations have a strong external motivation to change, making it easier to drive rapid progress and adopt new and better ways of working.
• Habits and inertia which made progress more difficult have been temporarily removed.
• We are seizing the moment to reconsider what we do and how we do it.
Change in customer behaviours - will this continue?
• We have innovated to access new channels to market, and are keen to maintain the growth through new channels, alongside the recovery our core customer segments.
• We therefore need to reconsider our resourcing and use of technology, to sustainably deliver to both without unnecessary disruption and cost.
• We are unsure whether consumers will become accustomed enough to new patterns of behaviour to permanently change (e.g. online ordering and shopping closer to home) and whether we should commit to new operating models.’