Something will go wrong. It’s not a question of ‘if’ it’s a question of ‘when’ and ‘what’. We can’t predict the future, but we can certainly prepare for it so that it lessens the burden when it arrives. This is what we mean by being agile and it’s how you can succeed as best as possible under exigent circumstances, i.e. when something extreme and out of the ordinary takes place be that the death of a monarch or a pandemic.
Where do you start?
Preparation over panic starts with asking yourself, what can you know? Could you have known that someday you’d need an action plan for when HM The Queen passed away? Yes, many businesses didn’t want to tempt fate for much longer and put an action plan in motion, months in advance, just in case. Remember, whilst it’s a sad moment, it is an inevitable outcome. Marks & Spencer is a great example, where stores across the country displayed tributes to the Queen the day after her passing.
Do you think there’ll ever be a time when you’ve got technical difficulties or a time when you may need to close your offices unexpectedly? Will you need to make use of an announcement bar on your website in a similar fashion to the Covid-19 outbreak? It’s time to get your thinking caps on and prepare for the unexpected.
Not just for crises
You don’t have to be preparing for doomsday to be agile. You can take the concept of agility into other aspects of your business.
For example, if you’re a residential property developer, you could set up triggers in your typical cycle to ensure things run smoothly. In this case, you could prepare a communications template (emails, social media, advertisements) for typical events that take place such as ‘Last plots remaining’ or ‘Show home now open’.
In the example above, you are predicting these events and preparing for the inevitable actions that will need to take place. Instead of scrambling to get an email out at 4pm on a Friday for those last remaining plots, you can have it ready well in advance. Then, all you have to do is hit the send button.
We’ll help you think more carefully about a plan for your business in our workshops.
Want more insights tailored to your individual needs? Sign up for a free workshop.
With clients across the property and place industry, DS.Emotion are uniquely positioned to offer valuable and actionable insights. We encounter scenarios relating to ESG, supply, placemaking and support and therefore see the trends and troubles that pose issues for everyone.
With this in mind, we’ve launched a new service that’s free to all of our clients. Benefit from a free 2-hour workshop* where our strategy team will sit down with you and help you tackle the issues affecting almost everyone in the industry. Then, we’ll share our findings, unique to you, to help get them under control. It’s a great way to get ahead of the game and it’s completely free.
Workshop topics this year include:
- Simplifying marketing strategy
- Data-led decision making
- Being agile without being reactive [the subject of this article]
- Keeping it consistent
- Seasonal preparation
Interested? Simply let us know some times that work for you and we’ll do the rest.