The 5Cs - Top Skills Required to Manage the New Normal

1.Curiosity: Triggering the ‘Out of the Box’ strategies

Do you agree that curiosity also like necessity can be a mother of invention? Indeed it is. We are all curious about how this new vulnerable world will reboot and open a door of hope for the businesses to stand firm again.

During this kind of uncertain time, our intuition is to dig the history to churn out how mankind had combated during the earlier pandemics. Also, we need to study how the world is prepping up or how much we are ready to fight this unknown and invisible global enemy. Keeping an eye on competitor strategies to check on how they have adopted to deal with a similar crisis and stay updated about the evolution of the pandemic to predict its course are among the smartest act to steer business accordingly.

You would need to be constantly exploring and evolving new ways and means to get one step ahead! What about scheduling a video conference meeting with the team members to discuss “think outside of the box” strategies that may help you manage the new normal? After analyzing and synthesizing the human-centered problems, evoke new ideas, and think about alternative ways to evaluate the problems. Brainstorming new ideas and then presenting them from every end of the spectrum could possibly help you to drive leads and also to retain your clients.

2.Compassion: Prioritizing ‘Humanity’ in Human Resource

This pandemic has shown how important it is to be caring, understanding, and show compassion to embrace humanity— and that holds true for business organizations, too. During the first phase, Organizations assured their associate’s’ physical safety with the sanction of remote working measures and sanitization of the work stations (where working from the office is essential) and shifted operating modes—for example, adopting contactless delivery.

How businesses respond and treat the associates and patrons will have a lasting impact on productivity and loyalty. Well-being, job security, and financial stability are top concerns for employees in this current circumstance, and industries should help to address those insecurities and fears in meaningful ways. Some companies have communicated with their employees frequently using honest approaches with a human touch; like using video call instead of just written communication, instituting a regular coffee time, or spare a few minutes simply on happy chitchatting.

It’s tough for the leader to lead when things are going volatile in this uncertain time. Compassionate brands across the globe are stepping up. Many organizations are meeting COVID-19 challenges with a big heart where the CEOs are lowering or foregoing their salaries to financially support their frontline employees, there are also many other uplifting examples:

An American Fashion company, who inspires the dream of a better fashion world, has mobilized supplier relationships to manufacture gowns and masks for the front-line healthcare workers.

The largest coffeehouse in the world, headquartered in Washington, is serving free tall iced or hot coffee to all front line health care workers, police officers, paramedics, firefighters, and other hospitals or medical staff.

A hosting company headquartered in San Francisco announced $25 million in relief to help bars and local restaurants, in the form of free advertising, waived advertising fees, and products and services.

3.Conviction: Bootstrapping or Reconstructing the Future of the “New Normal”

Even when lockdown restrictions will be over, businesses need to figure out how to conduct their operations in new ways. In a nutshell, they must have the resiliency to absorb a shock and overcome it more strongly with a conviction to rely on the data available. Conviction is the key to survival and long-term prosperity.

The resilient companies had stronger balance sheets even before the crisis hit and capable of taking effective action during the pandemic by curbing the operating costs. Of course, the organizations should be headed by great leaders with problem-solving minds and great analytical skills, who are swift at making revolutionary decisions based on facts.

The decisions made during and post-pandemic period could either lead to less prosperity, and slower growth, or it could lead to a burst of productivity and innovation, more resilient industries, and the emergence of a reconnected world.

Let’s see how few companies are getting back to business just by tweaking their operations a little bit

• America's one of the fastest-growing truck parking and travel guidance service providers recently partnered with urgent care travel centers so that their drivers have access to on-demand doctors and provide them pick-ups while on the road.
• An independent digital rail and coach ticketing platform has set up a dedicated wiki page to help customers navigate through the uncertain times. Travel is one of the worst affected sectors to be impacted by COVID so it’s a great move to guide the customers in canceling tickets, getting refunds, and planning their next journeys.

With a proactive plan, get ahead of the concerns before they turn into a problem

Proactively reach out to your clients, your buyers, your supply chain, and your top contacts. Put yourself in a position to understand how coronavirus is affecting them. This gives you the opportunity to think about how you could provide more value at this time with a new service or a new way. Reach out to those people that are already in the buying process and give them more confidence where there's uncertainty.

4.Creativity: Re-invent your digital presence

In a global health crisis, it is inevitable to experience rapid alteration in businesses. Hence, constant reassessment of creative collaterals, ad campaigns, and even marketing guidelines is needed to keep the digital presence of your company updated.

Optimize your website-

This is a high time to look at your analytics and use that information to make changes to your home pages and your landing pages. Dig deeper on- 

• How are the requirements of your customers changing?
• What are they mostly searching for?
• What are the trends looking like?
• How are your buyers using your website?

Look at the data compared to three or six months ago. Make changes quickly. 

Creative considerations

Companies need to carefully evaluate their creative marketing-from the tone, visual imagery, copy, and media placements. For instance, slapstick humor or meme in marketing campaigns won’t be appropriate amidst the health crisis and give a deaf-tone message among your followers.

Carefully choose graphics and use phrases

Avoid posting images of people working together in the office or participating in the social gathering which does not promote social distancing. Rephrase marketing messages that connote close interactions such as “get in touch” or “work hand-in-hand”. These call-to-action phrases may be scrutinized by consumers.

Emphasize how your brand can help

Tell a story on how your brand can share its potential value in times of crisis. Even if your brand does not directly help the sick or those in quarantine, you can still create immersive content that can educate, entertain, and inspire those ailing.

5.Communication: Leverage your network during the Global crisis

Communications shouldn’t stop once the crisis has passed. Offering an optimistic, realistic outlook can have a powerful effect on employees and other stakeholders, inspiring them to support the company’s recovery. We can't go to events, attend seminars and workshops right now. Therefore, we have to shift the mode of communication. Proactively reach out to your top vendors, supply chain, and communicate with them more with a personalized note. First, you need to prepare a database of all your top A-list contacts and prospects in your social network and LinkedIn connections. Find ways to proactively reach out, get on a conference call, and convince them how and where you can add more value, address their pain points, ask them how they are managing this challenging time, and thus staying on top-of-the-mind for them.

Curiosity, Compassion, Conviction, Creativity, and Communication-these five qualities are needed more than ever, as leaders to make the decisions that will reshape your brand to stand strong in the ‘New Normal Future’.

Do you agree with us? We are open to consultation about honing these five required skills to re-shape your business in the “Normal World”

Email us or talk to us at +91-98367-81929

Email us or Talk to us at +91-98367-81929 or Simply Contact Us through the website.