In this guest post, director at The Leach Partnership Sangeeta Leach (pictured) discusses why now is the time to plan for being bold…
This time of year is usually reserved for away days, strategic thinking and planning the next 1, 3 or 5 years in a business lifecycle. Radical, Re-invent, Re-imagine are some of the R’s thrown about with great passion and fervor and some wonderful bold ideas emerge. Then slowly another R kicks in – Reality.
Radical ideas get watered down, the re-invention becomes a slight change and the re-imagine turns into a revisit when there are fewer constraints. The most common reason for this is fear.
Fear of being the odd one out- this is the way the system works.
Fear of forcing too much change in the business- will clients and staff accept this?
Fear of making the wrong decision- what if it doesn’t work?
Fear of taking a financial hit – what will the impact on the bottom line be?
Fear of short term pain – will it destroy our culture/will clients leave/ will it be a distraction?
Fear of the rocking the boat, in short.
But the boat is well and truly rocked already. In a few short weeks, the world has changed. Undeniably, irrevocably and conclusively. Everything we thought we knew is having to be re-imagined and re-invented. Radically.
In this lies the circuit breaker opportunity for all of us. Whether in life or in business. It’s a chance to emerge out of this isolated bubble better than when we went in – brighter, bolder, bigger.
Time to plan for Bold.
Sure there is a lot of firefighting that needs to be done now. We also need to take a moment to breathe, adjust to our alternate and very strange reality. Put some energy into looking after ourselves. But in a little while, when we are less panicked, more rested and dare I say bored of zoom drinks and house parties – we might be in a position to turn our brains to the important task of what we are all going to when this is all over.
“There are decades where nothing happen. And there are weeks in which decades happen” –Vladimir Ilyiich Lenin
We have weeks. We can overturn the problems of decades. Some of the most common areas we have found that agencies struggle to change.
1. Generic value propositions. Commoditised services. Poor client relationships. Slippery slides in fees.
2 .Structures unsuited for change. Not agile. Feeding the beast becomes a priority.
4. Archaic compensation models. Being paid for the number of people working a set number of hours rather than business outcomes.
5. A tired agency model. Hierarachical, linear, siloed, rigid.
5. Working conditions from another time. Inflexible working.Technology more a barrier than an enabler.
If we go back to life as it was pre Covid-19, the problems we had before will be the same and the cracks in our models will be the same. A wasted opportunity. Instead put some energy into emerging with a bold plan. Address the problems in your model or structure, don’t paper over the cracks. Make a wish list. Play the “what if” game. And then welcome the best R of all: Re-set.
