Well, maybe not as SIMPLE as A,B,C and D but I am certain that these letters stand for four key skills and attributes in the reset, re-establish and re-generation activities we spoke of a few weeks ago.
Let’s step through them one at a time …
A is for adventurous
We have been chatting for weeks about the need for businesses to not just step out of their comfort zone. They really need to take a flying leap out of their comfort zone. We have never seen anything like the impact caused by the global pandemic and we hope that we never do again. This is it. This is the time, if ever there was one, to be adventurous. That doesn’t mean reckless. It means exploring. It means finding your way through uncharted territory. It means travelling along roads that few if any have travelled along before you.
B is for brave
Closely associated with adventurous is brave. It takes some guts to step off the beaten track, the tried and tested path. But these circumstances do two things for you – (1) permission to do things that you have never done before and (2) expectations from employees, customers and suppliers to do things radically differently. If you don’t do it now, when will you do it? Be brave. Do things that you never thought possible.
C is for creative
I was going to go with courageous here but it seemed too close to adventurous and brave, to be honest. And so, I have gone for creative.
In many organisations, creativity has been crushed by what I call corporate inertia – the inability for some businesses to start the process of transformation because of history, legacy systems and processes, unimaginative leadership and many other reasons. Some of these reasons are legitimate, particularly those that relate to legislative and regulatory requirements. But many of these inertial blockers are not legitimate and they lead to doing the same thing over and over again. Think about senior recruitment – does your organisation typically recruit from within or from your direct competitors? How is that ever going to allow creativity to play a part?
Creativity is a must in the post-COVID world … don’t place road blocks in its path.
D is for determined
There are some who can be adventurous, brave and creative but without determination, sadly, many of those people displaying attributes A, B and C are going to be stopped, blocked and bumped out of the way by those who don’t. Determination to push through and contribute to TRUE transformation is going to be, in some ways, even more critical than A, B and C.
The people who held the keys to success in the pre-COVID world were those who had the attributes outlined in the post I published last week. In the post-COVID world, are you prepared to let the people with this new list of skills and attributes come to the fore?
