Plan For A New Future

Roadmap For Blizzard Conditions

Explicitly name the fundamental assumptions you had about your industry, geography, customers, partners, funding sources, and your team one year ago, and contrast them with new ones. Use these questions as a prompt:

• What was possible that may not be possible for some time?
• What was global or national that may need to be local for an extended time?
• What seemed important that may feel superfluous now?
• What was undervalued that may hold greater value now?
• What “margin” or “lack of margin” was built into organizational or industry norms?

Modify your expectations! If you were anticipating 3-6 months, plan for 9 months to one year. Perhaps you need to decrease your budget more than anticipated. New hires may be postponed. New construction will be delayed. Answering these types of questions about the next year of operations and physical gatherings you are arriving at design insights that you will now incorporate even if your situation proves to be a minimal interruption. As you clarify your assumptions and move them to design and implementation consider the following.

• What role must our organization play locally nationally, or globally?
• What relationships of trust can be built on and strengthened in the next few weeks or months?
• What are our greatest assets assuming this pandemic and economic disruption continues for an extended period of time?
• What will be the long-term changes in society that I would like to be part of bringing about through our organization?

You need both divergence and convergence when it comes to developing new ideas in your organization. Too much divergence creates and endless stream of ideas that make it hard to prioritize and to understand what is most important or urgent. Too much convergence eliminates ideas with an authoritarian approach. This does not give the team members an opportunity to show their possibility.

Do not go it alone! I would encourage communication between the funders, stakeholders and shareholders all of whom have reason they have chosen to partner with you in the first place. COMMUNICATE! COMMUNICATE! COMMUNICATE!