Welcome along to a new mini-series designed to help you steer your business through the uncertainty of the COVID-19 situation: Keep Your Boat Afloat: A Business Survival Guide In COVID-19 Times.

In the second part of this invaluable series, Gavin talks to Jonathan Hemus of Insignia, a crisis management and communications specialist who's here to discuss the importance of effective planning and pivoting in the now unfamiliar business landscape, where adapting and strategising as quickly as possible have fast become key skills.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Jonathan's drive and focus has been born out of his own dissatisfaction at seeing businesses damage themselves and the interests of stakeholders through poor planning and decision-making.
• The first mistake businesses make when a crisis occurs, is to jump the gun and start “doing things” without information or resources. Taking a step back at this moment is crucial. Don't jump the gun and start implementing practices without thinking. Patience and thought are imperative.
• Define your strategic intent as soon as possible - Decide where you want the business to be in six/twelve months' time. A common intent is to emerge from the current situation as quickly and strongly as possible while remaining true to core values, and without jeopardising our true vision.
• Instead of concentrating your energy on numerous tasks designed to help you in the short term, instead focus efforts on the few core strategies that will benefit you in the long term. 
• Determine which working strategies will work best during a moment of crisis, and focus attention on seeing to it that these areas have the most resources available. For many, this will be ensuring that work can be carried out at home during isolation.
• Work purposefully as a team, and keep a track of events between yourselves. Implement the systems that will allow you to collectively capture, log and share all elements in order to realise the highest level of efficiency.
• The real purpose of powerful communication between teams is to ensure that we are collectively managing today's crisis, and not yesterday's crisis.
• Risk assessment is best done between yourself and a handful of carefully selected team members, instead of on a company-wide scale. This keeps reactionary instincts low, and ensures that only the most pressing of concerns are presented to the team in order to find solutions.
• It's important to remember that your business relationships, as well as your relationships with your workforce, will be forever impacted by your behaviour during this time. A high priority should be maintaining trust, and a deep sense of empathy with stakeholders.
• The worst thing any company can do right now is to start making promises they can't keep. Setting realistic expectations, and keeping your customers informed, will mark you out as a reliable voice during this time. Even going so far as to recommend competitors during this period, will make people see that you're about solutions rather than profits.
• It may seem as though adversity is overwhelming right now, but opportunities are everywhere. We need to remember that despite the odds, our creativity and imagination, both individually and as a team, are there to harness and wield. This is a time for our creativity to thrive and explode in wonderful ways.
• The world of business will change for the better in countless ways. Practices, products and services will emerge from this crisis that will forever alter the way business works, and which will be founded upon the imagination and ingenuity of visionaries.

BEST MOMENTS

‘I hate to see good businesses damage themselves'

'Thinking is really important in this situation'

'Strategic intent is a unifying force for your management team'

‘You need to have everyone pointing in the same direction, and focussing on the same goals'

‘What does life look like for my customer right now?'

‘It's about collaboration over competition'

‘Out of crisis comes opportunity'

'There will be silver linings in the enormous cloud we are enduring at this moment'

VALUABLE RESOURCES

The Business Mastermind Podcast 

Complete Success - https://www.completesuccess.co.uk

Get your free copy of Gavin Preston's invaluable guide now - 'Keep Your Boat Afloat: Business Survival Guide For COVID-19 Times' at: Bit.ly/keepyourboatafloat

Insignia - https://insigniacrisis.com/

Jonathan Hemus LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanhemus/?originalSubdomain=uk

Jonathan Hemus Twitter - https://twitter.com/jhemusinsignia

To contact Gavin about how he can help you and your business, email gavin@gavinpreston.com

ABOUT THE HOST

Gavin Preston

Gavin is an inspirational Speaker, Business Strategist, Business Growth Mentor, Trainer and

high-performance Coach.  He works with Business Owners and Entrepreneurs and has a strong track record in creating creative strategies to accelerate the growth of their business. He has helped hundreds of SME business owners and leaders improve their performance and that of their business and a comparable number of executives and employees in blue-chip corporates over the last 20 years.

Gavin's energetic, insightful and yet down to earth and practical talks, workshops and coaching is in demand with high growth business between £250,000 and £30 million revenue and with multi-national organisations at all levels from Board to frontline

Managers. He is an expert in Business Growth Strategies, Peak Performance

Mindset, Persuasion & Engagement, Marketing, Productivity, Leadership

Development, Team Development & Motivation, Leading Change, Stakeholder

Management, Personal Effectiveness and Behavioural Change.

CONTACT METHOD

Gavin Preston Website

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Gavin Preston Twitter

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