How can a Future Back Strategy Propel Growth Amid Crisis?

The COVID-19 crisis has turned businesses upside down and most managers are devising strategies that only focus on current business shocks. But will that be enough to deal with the post-crisis world?

After all, there is no playbook to respond in the aftermath of disruption. As leaders continue to scramble with immediate fallout, often, they spurn to prepare for the future. With the present all-consuming and the future bleak, picking a present-forward strategy could be just what you need to look into, right now.

What did visionary leaders like Nelson, Mandela, John Rockefeller, Warren Buffet, and many more stalwarts have in common?

Instead of simply reacting to the looming threats, they used a multi-pronged approach to respond to shifts. That is while mitigating the current setback, they also envisioned a better future post backwash. Visionary leadership works on a future back strategy that uses the future as the starting point and works backward. When the mayhem is global and the disruption systematic, having a clear vision for the post-pandemic future is urgent.

So how does a future-back mindset add value and propel growth amid crisis?

1) Strategic thinking over strategic planning

Although often conflated, strategic thinking and strategic planning are two different techniques. The former involves everyone on board and has a broader focus on long term goals. It also lets you and your team channelize their energy on priority work that will have a greater impact down the road.

Strategic planning, on the other hand, is the traditional road map to achieve business objectives and entails executive and leadership involvement only. As managers like to place safe bets, they focus on the short-term instead of prepping for the long haul. Also, these plans may or may not fit in the dynamic environment, clips creativity and innovation, and isn’t cost-effective.

Leaders can’t afford to conform to a one size fits all plan to combat the present crisis.What works instead, is a strategic mindset that puts you in a position to buy-in your organization’s strategic plan. To become a strategic thinker, you need to think beyond the long term strategic goals.

Take some time off mundane responsibilities and make sure you and your team are tapping into emerging trends. The insights after surfacing relevant trends are beneficial to identify opportunities that your business can benefit from.

2) There is no time like the present to think about the future

The COVID -19 pandemic has taken a global hit, affecting every industry with different magnitudes. Today, surviving the pandemic is everyone’s priority.

What if the survival trends could become future opportunities? Like the internet companies thriving in this crisis from a wider user pool? Should it be a temporary business or provide strategic direction?

As industries are gearing up to resume normalcy, many businesses, especially startups, are giving up office spaces to prepare their workforce for permanent work from home setup. Which means internet service providers are benefitting the most with increased remote workers. Due to the sudden boom, more people are buying internet plans and investing in stocks of such companies. The pandemic has opened doors to new opportunities for internet companies that are thriving on the current survival trends. Now it is up to the leaders if they can spot and jump on the bandwagon of lucrative prospects.

3) Why long-term timelines are a good thing

Approaching long-term risks with short-term solutions attracts entropy.

And most leaders do that. In a bid to conform to linear timelines, employees often get entangled with the tactical retaliations which, over the time, drains the organization’s resources and make them susceptible to disruption. When faced with an imminent fear, most leaders are reluctant to foresee beyond a couple of years from now. Tactical approaches without a long term vision result in lesser controls over the evolution of the business ecosystem.

A relatable example would be how the American newspaper publishers failed to engage in long term planning to survive the digital age. Instead, they resorted to short-term tactical responses like partnering with other media platforms like television sans a clear vision of the industrial revolution. This resulted in closing down 1800 newspapers between 2004 and 2018 which could have been averted by building and testing a robust long term business model in these 14 years.

In another interesting revelation, it was found that when companies engaged in long term planning, they were in favor of timelines that end in the 0’s or 5’s. The reason was simple, yet logical — because the brain calculates a 5 times table faster than 4’s or 7’s. But when crisis strikes, earmarked strategic plans only help address short-term operational goals. So, a long-term deadline may not eradicate future uncertainties, but it surely adds flexibility by providing a buffer to deal with problems as they crop up without rushing through essential tasks.

4) Scenario planning to combat uncertainty

When the future is unpredictable, building a strategic plan is similar to aimlessly throwing darts in the air. Every business decision is a matter of choice made under the looming shadow of uncertainty. Most leaders rely on decisions that are backed by data analysis. Yet, these decisions scramble in the face of crisis. Fortunately, there is a way to uncover disruption opportunities with a future back strategy to make better choices in the short and long run.

Scenario planning is strategic thinking using critical uncertainties a business might face, creating plausible scenarios, and finally discussing the impact and setting goals based on it. Each scenario focuses on having an in-depth assessment to support the likelihood of failure or success of different options.For instance, the what-if analysis, an in-built feature of resource planning software, uses different predictive scenarios based on selective varying outputs. Project managers can level up resource forecasting by changing variables of projects like timelines to evaluate their impact on various reports like cost, utilization, capacity vs demand, and availability report. Examples of some pertinent scenarios are:

> Will the industry and sufficient demand for the product exist?

> How much competition should be anticipated?

> Will new technologies render the product obsolete?

> Who would be the market leader?

Though these scenarios seem intimidating, considering them to plan for the future will help leaders mitigate the most unimaginable crisis in the future. Simple scenario planning used by farmers to predict harvest depending on weather conditions helps them predict sales and future investments. Complex scenario adopted by Military intelligence to plan critical operations juxtaposed with dire uncertainties tantamounts to hairline between life and death. While your organization will not face such grave consequences, with scenario planning you can avert opening doors to increased costs, risks, and missed opportunities.

In the business scenario, we can take the example of Project managers for whom completing projects on time and within budget is of utmost importance. Interestingly, a PwC study on 10,460 projects showed that only 2.5% were able to deliver with 100% success and Gartner reported that 28% IT projects fail due to schedule overruns. Project management software that includes resource management arms leaders with the foresight to navigate a disruptive landscape, with visibility in every sense of the word.

5) Why envisioning the future is worth your time

Roughly estimating, it will probably take another year or two for the pandemic to cease. And the impact might vary across different industries. While medical equipment and video streaming industries continue to thrive in this crisis, the aviation sector is predicted to make a full recovery only by 2022. Going by that time frame, the business environment would be quite different than it was before the crisis. While you can’t predict with certainty, you get more clarity when you imagine what you could and should become, create a plan to live into it, and then get it off the ground.

As an aspiring visionary leader, you should devote 10–20% time from your weekly schedule to envision where you want to see your business post-crisis, which can lead to brighter prospects. For best results, this aspiration should be congruous with your long term vision.

What sets apart these transformational visionaries is their drive to convert their visions into actions. Oftentimes when pressed with urgent demands to meet the crisis, leaders tend to delegate this thinking process to others. However, the C level management and other key stakeholders who partake in crucial business decisions must engage in this envisioning process. Weigh in both threats and opportunities, and pinpoint portfolio elements that are irrelevant and need to be sold off or shut down, as well as possibilities that leverage new growth offerings.

The Takeaway: As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to disrupt lives and economy, visionary leadership is crucial and quite possibly a silver lining amid the grim times. Envisioning and building a strategic path is albeit time-consuming. Leaders who manage everyday obstacles and lead with vision, will emerge from the crisis with stronger and more resilient organizations.