4 Tips for Leaders in Uncertain Times
entrepreneurship, leadership, reflections, eos
As a leader, you’re up against some uncertain, uncontrollable circumstances right now. Your journey has shifted directions and
you must navigate through uncharted territory. Believe me, I understand what you’re going through right now. However, I encourage you to focus on the certainties. The things within your control. At the top of the list is YOU. Your response, leadership, and clarity are within your control.
Whether you’ve started your EOS® journey or not, there are a number of tools that can help you shift gears, overcome roadblocks and retain control.
Here are a few that I am leveraging in my own business, Guide Studio.
1. Maintain Strong Communication
This most important action you can take as a leader is to maintain, if not increase, communication. Move to daily communication with your team. These quick check-ins can be done via email, quick videos and zoom chats. Let them know you are working on the business, considering their health as well as the health of the company. If you have negative news to share, talk about it. Again, clarity is key.
You may be tempted to skip your weekly Level 10 meetings or Quarterly Planning sessions. Don’t do it. Maintaining a “business as usual” mentality will keep your team connected and confident. If anything, keep the meet ing and change the agenda. Spend more time on your defensive and offensive strategies and Issues List.
What am I doing? I am sending regular notes to my team on Slack and having Visionary/Integrator and Finance Same Page meetings every week.
2. Stay Accountable to Metrics
In troubling times, it’s easy to let emotions guide decisions. Instead, let the facts - your established metrics - be your compass. Here are some suggestions:
Follow your Scorecard. If you already have one, you’re ahead of the game. You can keep an eye on when things are changing – for worse or for better – and pivot accordingly.
Create a Trigger Plan. Decide what your trigger points will be to make tough employee and wage decisions. If those points come to fruition, you can make the changes with facts behind you.
Add new metrics. What do you need to keep a close eye on right now? Maybe these are things that aren’t normally on your radar but need to pay closer attention.
What am I doing? Guide made an extra Crisis Scorecard that we review weekly. It includes a Temperature Gauge to help us capture real and an ecdotal data about our client’s status and performance. We’re also track ing RFP frequency and watching our financial runway.
3. Adjust Your Rocks
For many of you, your Rocks probably need to change. Don’t beat your self up — and I won’t beat you up, either! Instead of focusing on Rocks, get your Strategies in place.
First, focus on Defensive Strategies:
Call in Accounts Receivable and reduce expenses
Apply for SBA loans
Get your technologies and policies straight for effective work-from-home
Next, move to Offensive Strategies. Consider the core competencies of your business that you can leverage now to make the most of this challenging time. Catering businesses are delivering frozen homemade meals. Breweries are making hand sanitizer. Guide Studio is offering to help hospital systems plan for temporary signage in emergency makeshift hospitals. What can you do?
What am I doing? I am offering a FREE 60-minute Offensive Strategy sessions via zoom to all new and existing EOS clients. We can talk about how to best use EOS and your business capabilities so that you emerge from this temporary crisis smarter and stronger than ever.
4. Inhale, exhale. Repeat.
Not so much an EOS tool as a human tool, but breathing is so important right now. Really. As you read this, take a deep breath in. Then a long slow breath out. Spend just 60 seconds on this. Things will become clearer and more manageable within this short, one-minute exercise.
Bring a moment of breath-work, meditation or silence to the first 1-2 minutes of every meeting. Help yourself and your team look at the situation with calm and confidence. Remember, this isn’t just happening to you, your business, your industry or your community. We are all in this together. Worldwide.
What am I doing? Believing. I believe that those of us who bravely lead our teams, families and communities will emerge stronger. Within every crisis lies opportunity. Within ever leader awaits an even better leader. Let that be you.