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Weather the Storm of Constant Change by Strengthening 3 Balance Sheets

StrategyDriven Managing Your Finances Article |Balance Sheet|Weather the Storm of Constant Change by Strengthening 3 Balance SheetsThe COVID-19 crisis has put an exclamation point on the idea that we live in a world of perpetual whitewater. Whether caused by a pandemic, an economy in free fall, an unforeseen change in the competitive business environment or a problematic geopolitical issue, the world in which we operate is volatile and unpredictable. Success, even mere survival, hinges on being prepared and nimble enough to adapt to rapidly changing conditions.

Everyone wonders when we will get to the “new normal.” It may be preferable to call it the “next normal.” Whatever becomes normal as we progress through COVID-19 is just temporary — like after 9/11 or the financial crash of 2008, there will be another major disruption following in the not-too-distant future. We need to evolve amidst an on-going sequence of next normals without capsizing.

How do you survive, or even thrive, in a world of continuous turbulence and change? The organizations that have best weathered the COVID-19 storm entered it with strong balance sheets in three functions: Not only do they have a strong financial balance sheet, they also have strong balance sheets with their team members and strong balance sheets with their customers.

Regardless of what the future looks like, to be prepared and to weather the storm of perpetual change, you must prudently steward all three balance sheets. Navigating through the next normal requires that you:

1. Have a plan. The plan must include both your purpose and your strategy.

Purpose creates the True North for the organization — what you aspire to contribute. People want to contribute to something bigger than themselves. Your purpose defines what that something is. Purpose attracts talent and aligns and energizes effort. What is the organization’s higher calling? Why does your organization exist? Why does your organization matter?

Strategy defines how your organization positions itself in the marketplace to create unique value for your target customers. What do you provide or do differently that causes customers to buy from you versus anyone else?

2. Execute your plan. You can’t just have a plan; you have to execute your plan — and most organizations don’t do that well. Some 75 to 80 percent of organizations fail to achieve the results they expect from their strategies.

In a rapidly changing world, execution is critical to survival. It’s vital to maximizing your results and building your triple balance sheet. The ability to execute your organizational strategy smoothly and successfully is what provides the financial, human and reputational capital you need to navigate the next change and to be able to invest in adapting quickly to the next, next normal.

To execute effectively, you must align the actions of everyone in the organization to the purpose and strategy. This means:

  • Having the right people in the right roles with the right capabilities. Think through the performance in each current role, the potential for future roles and the capabilities that need to be developed for both current and future roles. Then, connect that assessment to development efforts that help people build the capabilities you’ll need for success in the future.
  • Aligning your systems, structures, processes and culture to the purpose and strategy. For example, how well do the compensation, rewards and recognition and promotions systems in your organization align with your strategy?
  • Keeping a scorecard that drives performance. Ensure scorecards with quantitative measures of performance, results and trends over time are visible and available to everyone in the organization. This allows them to make adjustments mid-course that can affect the outcome.
  • Following-up and following-through. To both generate learning and create rigorous accountability for performance and for living the values of the organization, schedule regular updates to analyze performance gaps and adjust the plan for moving forward.

3. Just lead, dammit! Leaders deliver results by fully engaging their teams in the effort. They build organizations of people passionate about and wanting to contribute their best to the company every day. In order to build a strong balance sheet with their teams, great leaders forge deep connections to their team members. They:

  • Communicate often and openly. With rapid changes in the environment, leaders need to communicate often and openly. Failure to do so creates a vacuum that people will fill, often by making stuff up. Leaders should convey a realistic picture of the dynamic environment of the market where conditions are likely to change rapidly.
  • Create dialogue, not diatribe: One-way, top down communication stifles the kind of multidirectional communications required to fully understand and adapt to rapidly changing circumstances. As a leader, you can’t possible have all the answers — too many unknowns and even the “knowns” can change. It’s critical to be clear about what you do and what you don’t know.
  • Empathize with their team’s point-of-view. Constant change can put people on edge. Show sensitivity to the emotional and real challenges individuals on the team face. Hear the question behind the question, or the key point behind what team members say.
  • Are authentic. People want their leaders to be real. They appreciate honesty, even if it’s painful or upsetting. Being authentic builds trust, which is vital for ensuring that your organization is strong and resilient. Most importantly, it sets the right example for others to emulate.

4. Build resilience. Mike Tyson famously said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

Regardless of how good your plan is, or how effectively you execute, you’re going to get punched in the mouth! In a world of perpetual whitewater, you have to be prepared for the next punch, the next wave, the next rapid or the next life-threatening obstacle.

Thriving through an endless stream of “next normals” requires that organizations are tough enough to adapt regardless of how difficult the circumstances. Resilient organizations:

  • Have strong, consistent core values. Values like integrity, respect and trust provide stability amidst the upheaval and shape a culture that enables everyone to take action in an environment of uncertainty.
  • Generate trust. Leaders must believe and trust that everyone will act in the best interest of the organization, and team members must trust and believe in their leaders and the organization as a whole. This is critical to enabling the kind of dialogue necessary to lead through uncertain times. With trust, people closest to the challenges are given the responsibility and latitude to act without waiting for direction from above, where leaders often have less information about the conditions on the ground.
  • Constantly learn. Rapid change requires constant experimentation in how to adapt to that change. Instilling responsibility throughout the organization often results in mistakes and errors as people learn what works and what doesn’t. Resilient organizations have a “fail fast, learn fast” mentality that allows them to adapt to change faster than others.
  • Foster accountability. People perform their best in an environment in which results matter. Accountability reinforces whichever results matter. And, there must be accountability for playing within the core values of the organization, or people quickly learn that they don’t matter, which, in turn, erodes the fundamental trust necessary to create success.

Being prepared for the “next normal” requires building your balance sheet financially and with your team and your customers. To do so, you have to have a great plan for success, execute that plan effectively and constantly work to build a resilient organization. None of this is easy in a highly competitive, rapidly changing environment. But the reward for getting it close to right is earning the opportunity to adapt again when the next wave hits.


About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor |Sean RyanSean Ryan is a world-renowned business consultant, speaker, trainer and executive coach. As the founder of Whitewater International Consulting, he has worked internationally with companies such as Disney, Nucor Steel, FedEx and Nestle Waters of North America/Perrier Group of America. With more than two decades of industry experience, Sean is highly regarded for his ability to guide organizations through complex transformational change in what he describes as “a world of perpetual whitewater”. His new book is Get in Gear: Seven Gears that Drive Strategy to Results (Productivity Press, Aug. 20, 2020). Learn more at https://www.wwici.com/get-in-gear.

4 Things You Need To Know Before Pursuing An E2 Visa

StrategyDriven Practices for Professionals Article |E2 Visa|4 Things You Need To Know Before Pursuing An E2 VisaThere are millions of people around the world who choose the make the USA their home every year. Some people will stay in the USA for a year or two before moving on again. However, the allure of living in America and becoming an American draws a lot of investors. Your long-term plans will determine the kind of documentation that you need to obtain to live and work in the USA legally.

What Is The E2 Visa?

For investors who simply want to do business in the USA without committing to a relocation, the E2 visa will permit you to work for a nominated company in the United States. This company can be an existing business or one that you start yourself.

You can save yourself a lot of time and stress by ensuring that you have all your ducks in a row before you start filing paperwork. Let’s take a look at the key requirements for an E2 visa and how you can ensure you meet them.

Make Sure Your Country Qualifies

The first thing that you need to check before you pursue an E2 visa is whether your country has a suitable relationship with the US. To apply for the E2 visa, your home nation (the country that issued your passport) needs to have a treaty with the USA. There are currently around 80 nations that have such an agreement with the USA.
Most of the nations that the USA is closely-aligned with have an E2 agreement in place. However, there are some notable exceptions. For example, neither India nor Brazil has an E2 treaty.

Invest Appropriately

One of the main requirements for applying for an E2 visa is that you have already made a substantial investment in the USA. Ideally, you should aim to invest at least $100,000 in an existing business to show that you are serious. There is no investment threshold that you must meet. However, the less money you have invested, the higher the chance that the authorities will reject your application.

Consider Other Avenues

Before you pull the trigger on any investments or other paperwork that will cost you money, you should make certain that the E2 is for you. Immigration Business Plan is a business that helps immigrant investors to navigate the murky waters of their visa application. As well as helping you to write an e2 visa business plan, Immigration Business Plan can also help you decide if the e-2 visa business plan in the best route for you or not. If there is a better pathway for you to get to America, IBP can help you identify it.

Emigrating to the USA can be a notoriously difficult process. Even if you aren’t aiming for full citizenship, finding the right type of visa and ensuring that you meet all the requirements can be overwhelming. Working with an experienced immigration lawyer can provide invaluable guidance, helping you avoid costly mistakes and improve your chances of a successful application. If you’re in doubt, consulting an expert can help you identify the best pathway and how to move forward.

Why London Businesses Should Think About Making the Switch to Green Cleaning

StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | Why London Businesses Should Think About Making the Switch to Green CleaningAs individuals, we know the importance of being as green as possible. Utilising reusable plastic bottles, avoiding fast fashion and making the investment into electric and hybrid cars. However, it is businesses that are the largest to have negative impacts on our environment and they need to know how and why to make the change.

While paperless offices and carpooling colleagues are becoming the norm, many do not know the importance of green cleaning in the workplace. London is home to thousands of businesses of every size and even if just a fraction made the switch to green commercial cleaning London services, it will be a fantastic start. If all made the switch, we would begin to witness a huge difference to our planet.

Now that keeping a workplace clean is more crucial than ever before, here is an assessment of the benefits of switching to green cleaning within a professional environment to the business, employees and visitors.

Green Cleaning Produces The Same Results

A common misconception is that green cleaning products just don’t work as well as chemical cleaners.

This is usually down to the lack of soap bubbles generated during lathering. In reality, phosphates are added to conventional cleaners to generate these bubbles to give the appearance of better results.

Green cleaning products can produce the same effects and commercial cleaning companies will provide their staff with full training on how to get the best outcome out of these products.

It is also a frequent error that people believe you need harsh chemicals to kill germs and bacteria. Many green cleaning products have been proven to kill the common cold and flu virus, leading to staff and visitors being protected against any bugs going around the office.

It Can Increase Employee Productivity

If helping the planet isn’t a concern of company directors, ensuring top productivity from their staff certainly is.

Chemical cleaners can reduce air quality in the workplace, especially in areas where air conditioning replaces open windows as toxic fumes circulate constantly.

In turn, this can reduce the performance of cognitive tasks among staff members.

It has been revealed that those who worked within a green office space performed these tasks at a rate of 61% higher than those who did not.

Within these green offices, when ventilation was doubled, the results increased to 100%. Making this small switch to a green cleaning supplier can make a massive difference in the work produced by colleagues.

Money-Saving

With an economic crisis just around the corner, it is imperative that cost-saving solutions are found in every area of the business.

Consumable products quickly add up and can be a large factor to the monthly invoices. Swapping paper hand towels for reusable, washable one is just one example.

While this initial cost may be more than their disposable counterpart, this will save costs in the budget which will eradicate the monthly delivery costs of these products.

During the pandemic, staff members are now requesting more cleaning products to use within their personal space, not wanting to wait until the end of each day for commercial cleaners to see their desks, phones and keyboards.

Businesses are under an obligation to provide these and it is generating significant costs. Green cleaning products don’t have to be purchased from a supplier, they can instead be created from common household ingredients. Despite the potentially large expenses, these ingredients will go a long way and will last far longer than the pre-made products.

Looks After Employee Health

Conventional cleaners can be detrimental to the everyday health of colleagues and Monoethanolamine is a chemical that is commonly used in many cleaning products.

If inhaled, this then causes inflammation of the lungs and brings on attacks and even be fatal. For this reason, this ingredient is regulated within schools and hospitals, but there is nothing in place for other workplaces.

Few cleaning products openly declare this on their packaging, which means that staff who are feeling the effects of this may not even know why.

Nowadays, there is no excuse for London businesses to not make the switch to green cleaning, it is cost-effective, protects the health of all those within the workspace and ensures employees are producing the best work possible, also leading to happy clients and potentially higher revenue.

What is Professional Development?

StrategyDriven Professional Development Article |Professional Development|What is Professional Development?Getting a college degree and finding a job relevant to your academic background is not the end-all-be-all to being a professional. You will need to make it a career to be what you are in the professional sense, and for that to be possible, you will have to undergo the process of professional development. Now you may be asking, what is professional development?

The concept of professional development is basically a learning process where one works to earn or maintain their professional credentials through continuing education, research, training courses, attending seminars or conferences, and other learning opportunities that are relevant to one’s professional practice. The process is often said as collaborative and quite intensive; it ideally comes with an evaluation stage in the form of examinations, practical application, and the like.

There is a whole variety of approaches to professional development, but the following are what many of us should be familiar with at this point:

  • Job assignments. Often, the best way to learn and build up on your professional credentials is through work. Specifically, we are referring to those job assignments that practically encourage us to think outside the box in order to overcome various challenges and handle the various responsibilities on hand. New job assignments may be challenging at first, but you can always prepare yourself by discovering the work style that goes best with your new set of duties.
  • Skill-based training. Undergoing training in its various forms — lectures, formal coursework, technical training, and the like — is a very common approach to professional development. Skill-based training, in particular, is a straightforward way to learn new concepts, practices, and technologies that are relevant to your field. It also helps that many such training sessions include an evaluative stage. The great thing about training is that it does not need to be done face-to-face between the participant and the instructor. There are digital courses and training software like this trading simulator that can help give your knowledgebase an upgrade.
  • Building relationships with your peers. Simply interacting with fellow professionals in your field is a great way to gain fresh insights that can help you grow professionally. You and your peers can trade feedback, challenge each other’s point-of-view, or support each other’s professional endeavors.

StrategyDriven Professional Development Article |Professional Development|What is Professional Development?Professional development sure is an investment of time and money for the most part, and it pays off really well.

Its share of benefits includes the following:

  • A broader knowledgebase. Professional development is learning, and what else can learning bring but more knowledge? All that training can easily get you exposed to new ideas and fresh insights that could, eventually, translate to various improvements to the way you do your work.
  • A confidence boost. Professional development will eventually make you an expert in your field. Increasing your knowledge can help build your confidence, which is very helpful when it comes to decision-making and many other aspects of your work.
  • Meeting other professionals and learning from them. You will end up meeting professionals in your field and end up acquiring new knowledge and insights from them. It is also a great way to build your professional network outside of LinkedIn.

A clear direction and foundation for success. The many courses and trainings that you will have to undergo makes for a good preparation towards overcoming challenges and obstacles on your way to success.
Pursuing professional development is a must for any professional looking to achieve growth and success in their line of work. It may take time, but it is always better than stagnation.

4 Post-Pandemic Marketing Tips to Help Your Business

StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article | 4 Post-Pandemic Marketing Tips to Help Your BusinessBusinesses of all sizes have been rocked by the coronavirus pandemic, and many have to figure out a way to survive in an unfamiliar world. Studies show that 62% of small businesses have experienced significant decreases in their revenue stream since COVID-19 first began to affect the nation. Businesses that embraced ingenuity and creativity found ways to serve in a socially-distanced environment, and they have learned how to weather the ups and downs of a supply chain that has been impacted at every turn. For some, the key to survival was calling up venture capitalists like Mark Stevens for a quick influx of cash, but not everyone was able to receive funding assistance. Since you can’t always depend on a financing source to help you out when times get tough, you need to boost your marketing plan and develop loyalty among your customers. The pandemic seems far from over, so here are some tips for marketing your business during COVID-19.

Tip 1: Provide Reassurance to Your Consumers

The entire nation is faced with uncertainty as the pandemic drags on, and your consumers are worried about their health, their safety, their finances, and so much more. It doesn’t matter what kind of service or product you offer, your customers need reassurance that your business is still here for them and there is no danger in continuing to do business together. You can start by reassuring your customers of your response to what is going on. Many states have their own safety mandates and operation protocols, and you need to make your compliance and adaptations public. Use email messages, social media posts, website updates, and signs in your physical location that inform customers of the steps you are taking to keep their wellbeing your priority. If your customers are plagued by uncertainty, it will impact their purchasing habits. Encourage your consumers to contact you with any questions or concerns.

Tip 2: Explore Crazy Ideas

It’s time to be realistic. Life before COVID-19 is completely different from life post-pandemic will be. The marketing strategies you used last year or in times past won’t have the same impact going forward. Right now is the time to get creative and take risks without ideas and tactics. Generally speaking, there isn’t a bad idea going forward. The world has never faced something like this before, so everything is unchartered territory. You aren’t the only business that may be struggling. Your competitors are going to be working just as hard to rebound from the impact of COVID-19. The more unique and memorable your marking strategy, the greater the likelihood of standing out in your industry. Think of products that benefit consumers now, like a DIY care kit to offer when they visit the store. Offer virtual meetings or online classes to ease fears about traveling out. Have fun, and don’t limit yourself in this area.

Tip 3: Add Some Flame to Your Social Media Presence

It’s estimated that around 80% of Americans have at least one social media profile. Long before the pandemic, it was a prime way for companies to communicate, advertise, and leave reviews. The social distancing and shelter-in-place orders only created new demand for interesting and relevant content on social media, as more people and businesses went virtual. With all of the increased traffic online, there is no better time to kick up your social media presence. Use your company’s presence to start or join in on trending conversations. Pay for advertisements or sponsored posts. You can host online contests or surveys, or you can share photos and videos of products in your store or about what the employees at your company are up to. Social media will help you generate new interest and excitement about what’s going with your business, even if customers aren’t physically coming to your store or if clients aren’t meeting you for lunch.

Tip 4: Cultivate Virtual Relationships

Many people think you need to meet with someone in person in order to develop a strong relationship. It is more difficult to cultivate relationships through virtual means, but in light of the pandemic, it may be the only way to get things done. You may have little interest in hosting a Zoom call or going live on social media, but your apprehension or pride may keep you giving your customers what they want. Just because a consumer can’t get out doesn’t mean they have no interest in what is going on. Put yourself in the place of your customers. What would you expect from a business during this time? What have you seen your vendors or competitors do? You need to communicate with your customers on a regular basis, whether its through email, video calls, online presentations, or your social media content. Don’t waste these months and the ability to build strong virtual relationships.

Tip 5: Enhance Your Website

There are a lot of great ways in which you can make improvements to your company’s marketing routine, and the website plays a massive role in this. Since the pandemic hit, companies have had to reevaluate their marketing strategies and the steps they’ve taken in order to try to improve success. This is something that plays a massive role in any future success you might have, so you need to be making the right changes. And it is pretty clear that upgrading and updating your website is one of the best steps you can take to make the most of this.

You have to have a website that looks great, and one that is going to help increase organic traffic and attract customers. Having people visit your website is a big part of the process of being able to take things to the next level. Lead generation is important, but you also have to make sure you convert those leads in the process as well. So, you need to try to look at some of the best ways of doing this. Hiring a web design team could prove to be really decisive with this, and may well help you to revamp your site as much as possible. Work on taking the necessary steps that are going to help you improve your website as much as you can right now.

Economists still have concerns about the future, considering the threat of a second wave of COVID-19 infections. With a few months behind you as experience and with these tips going forward, you can keep your business going strong.