Focus Four™ covers a lot of ground, but its modular design offers a great deal of versatility. Here’s how to use a few of its tools during times of crisis:
- Do a short-term cash forecast. During times of crisis, cash becomes more valuable than gold. Use the Focus Four™ Field Kit’s Daily Flash Report to monitor and manage your uses and sources of cash.
- Re-communicate your company’s Core Ideology. Aside from ensuring there’s enough cash flow to survive, few things are more important during times of crisis than communication. Call an “all hands” meeting, pull out your Company Compass and highlight your company’s “Core Ideology” – it’s Core Purpose and Core Values. In good times and bad, Core Ideology is the glue that binds an organization. Employees of companies with a strong Core Ideology are more motivated, more resilient, more adaptable, and more effective at rallying around a cause.
- Revisit your Strategy. 2020 will undoubtedly be known as the year of the “pivot”. Pivoting is all about using your company’s current strengths (core competencies) to seize on new opportunities (i.e., to develop new products and services or to find new channels of distribution for existing products and services). Use the SWOT worksheet to revisit your company’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats and identify potential pivot points.
- Compress the goal-setting and goal-getting timeline. Shift your goal-getting focus from weeks and quarters to days and weeks. Grab a blank Goal Tracking worksheet and rename the first column “Weekly Commitments” and the second column “Daily Commitments”. Also, instead of holding weekly progress checks, institute a 10 – 15 minute “daily huddle” to track your progress and adjust your goals as circumstances dictate.
Once the crisis subsides, take a step back and audit your overall performance. Is your company’s Core Purpose still applicable despite your Pivot? Is the Pivot sustainable? Have you developed new processes which now need to be documented and communicated?
If you’re able to answer “yes, yes and yes”, you may find that your post-crisis company is actually stronger than it was pre-crisis!
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