COVID-19: Merlin’s offer of help
While our fantastic medical professionals take on the huge challenge of saving lives, it is Merlin’s opinion that our business community has a lead role in tackling ‘head on’ the task of resurrecting our economy as soon as is practically possible.
We at Merlin think our role in all of this is to help, where we can, Business Leaders make the best decisions to manage the impact of COVID-19 and adapt Operating Models to set up for success.
We have now been living with the COVID-19 pandemic for longer than anyone anticipated and are seeing what it means for our businesses and our economy. We have also experienced several ‘lock-downs’ and the stop/start implications of those, what works, what doesn’t, and so on.
With light at the end of this long, arduous tunnel now coming into view with vaccinations being rolled out, it is time to reset our businesses to what we now see as a ‘new normal’.
At Merlin, we have a team well experienced in leading and supporting business owners and leadership teams through significant change and transformation.
Post-COVID recovery plan
Core areas that Businesses Leaders need to consider in relation to post COVID-19 recovery are summarised in the image below. These need to be tailored to each individual context to avoid needless complexity and over-design / planning. The organisational approach needs to be fast, flexible and evolve over the recovery phase. Integration is key, however Team Leads need enough autonomy of action to work through bottlenecks and keep the response moving.
In these unprecedented times we provide guidance and support to Business Leaders who need to make these decisions.
Our experience tells us that these areas are worth attention when focusing on recovery, regrowth or transformation.
COVID-19 impact on your business – a robust, pragmatic and honest SWOT analysis and review of the impact of this external stimulus on your business, inkling the STOP/START impact of lockdowns.
- Based on 1) above, YOUR impact on your business – adapting and using ‘Failure Modes and Effect Analysis’ (FMEA) to develop and ‘stress-test’ your Crisis Recovery Strategy. To ensure rapid and sustainable recovery, it is now time to move from tactical to strategic decision making.
- What is the new Normal? – using Target Operating Model (TOM) methodology in its simplest form to determine what you may have to change to adapt your business to set up for success.
- Post-COVID-19 Project Plan – Having understood, per above, what needs to be done, ‘Plan for Success’ and coalesce all your staff around a well thought through, rapid post-COVID Project Plan.
We have many practical tools and techniques that you may find useful for the above, do not hesitate to contact one of the team if you’d like to chat through the application of these in your context.