What can business leaders learn from the COVID-19 pandemic?

The global pandemic has highlighted many heart-warming and positive stories of grit, resilience, kindness and collaboration from across the planet. Multi-national corporations are doing their bit too by either donating to government welfare funds or starting their own campaigns. One thing that the pandemic has taught us is that humanity can survive the worst circumstances by acting as a single unit.

As the situation slowly crawls back to normalcy in some countries, businesses are starting to consider the valuable lessons in strategic planning that the pandemic has taught us. Doing so can make it easier to sustain business failures in the future.

Whether you are a business professional or a student, reading this blog can help you learn some tips for business growth that you can assimilate into your professional life and increase the longevity of your company. Read the top business lessons that can be learned from these unprecedented times.

More thought to risk management

The pre-coronavirus world had many organisations treating risk management as a mere formality. The advent of the pandemic has made it clear that businesses were not prepared for an event of this magnitude. Aggressive risk management and business management sessions would have revealed the cracks in the system as well as the possibility of a black-swan event like the present. Companies would have been better prepared to handle the crisis and potentially have suffered less damage.

However, businesses must start acting on better risk management strategies once they emerge from this crisis. Well-thought out contingency plans should be put in place to protect the company cash flows which in turn would save many jobs.

A green signal to interdependency

The pandemic has proved that companies are all interdependent and cannot survive without each other. With so much emphasis being placed on raising the bar of the market competition and moving ahead of the competitors, the need for collaborative solutions was overlooked.

The pandemic has brought forth several commendable instances where emergencies were handled by world leaders coming together and putting aside their differences. Effective collaborations can establish a fair market, reduce the prices of essential technologies and create an environment where valuable information that can spark future research is shared.

Adopting Futures Thinking

Apart from effective risk management, having a strong business visualisation or Futures Thinking team can also help companies become more resilient and sustainable. Futures Thinking is a method that can help businesses and their partners to come up with different future scenarios. From this, businesses can develop plans and policies to create desirable outcomes in those scenarios.

As of now, Futures Thinking remains an academic exercise limited to only a few companies. However, making it the norm in the business domain can help organisations make profitable policies based on reasonably accurate predictions. This in turn can insulate the market from severe fluctuations and help the global economy move forward despite events such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sparing a thought for these lessons is essential for every company in order to find a socially and economically viable path to normalcy. Hence, making relevant adjustments to the company’s long-term strategy might be the only way to diminish the impact of coronavirus and truly emerge from this crisis.

If you want to become a business leader and make smart long-term decisions for your company, you can consider pursuing business leadership programmes. The Leadership Development programme offered by the London School of Business and Finance is one of the good alternatives in the market. With the programme, you can develop your leadership skills and make a real impact in the business domain.

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This article is written by Sweha Hazari and edited by Emma Chadwick.