Pandemic. Crisis. Black Swan event.
For very obvious reasons, there are only few other topics on the news right now.
With entire countries, businesses, industries grinding to a halt, many business owners are struggling to maneuver their businesses and their employees through this time of anxiety and uncertainty. Demand plummeted, so it is responsible and natural to be very cautious regarding the cash flow; obviously all unnecessary expenses had to be stopped and cut immediately.
Silence.
Over the last couple of days, I’ve talked to businesses who seem to already have gone past a stage of initial trauma, and are now actively making the most of the lockdown. “Silence is a source of great strength” – this quote is attributed to philosopher Lao Tzu. For many business owners, managers, employees forced to working from home, a time of inner reflection started, which seems to be an unexpected opportunity to focus.
While some of my clients are just completing the weatherproofing of their operations, a handful is already actively looking forward. In several conversations, I was consulted for ways to paying off Technical Debt. Technical debt, a term coined by Ward Cunningham, is described as “the pain you feel every time you want to add a new feature”. We used to be in a constant debate if it was better to pay off technical debt, i.e. invest in infrastructure, refactoring, learning – or rather build shiny new features!?
But now, given the dozens, sometimes 100s of employees who are happy for anything useful to do during lockdown, might be the perfect time to look forward.
I fully agree, cutting unnecessary expenses in times of crises is important – it ensures the short-term survival of the business. But in the long run, investing in learning and paying off technical debt seems to be an optimal strategy to outperform the competition later.
Go ahead and reconsider what the “unnecessary expenses” are for your business. Is learning and improvement really among them?
Because by definition, just in case we forgot – a crisis is of limited duration.