At the end of March 2020 the UK economy was thrown into a crisis – the country was “lockdown” and there wasn’t a business that didn’t need to act fast to minimise the impact and think not just about the “bottom line” but the teams and people that made the business a success before lockdown.

6 Months later stories of hardships but also innovative successes.

– How businesses had managed to set up the virtual office and keep the business driving forwards.

– How businesses that supplied the restaurant sector with a B2B business model had shifted to B2C, delivering fresh bread, fruit, fish and organic chicken to the residential curbsides.

– How the lazy spa and pump up paddle board business scaled up supply and distribution to satisfy the unexpected demand as the lockdown and the UK weather surprised us all.

– How companies were including well being and considering how to adapt and flex working practises to accommodate home schooling and manage the work / life balance of the home office.

The “crisis” like any “crisis” that came before it lead to businesses moving fast and considering new ways of working that would have been dismissed weeks before lockdown – businesses would have listened more to the “nah” sayers and maybe fallen into the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” mindset. The crisis though drove change at a pace that many were surprised by and no doubt created better levels of team work.

So what do I take from this and how does a “burning platform” help drive change

1. A crisis brings “acute clarity” of the issue – without a crisis, the problem/issue has a larger ratio of subjectivity and time is often spent challenging the assumptions; really wanting to know what the problem/opportunity is and challenging the recommended response.

2. A crisis brings the need to respond at pace. Decisions need to be made quickly and maybe the 80:20 rule shines through – you may only need 20% of the time to get to 80% of the recommendation and you have to go with it and respond to the knock on issues as they occur

3. A crisis does mean that a larger percentage of people are more likely to be committed and prepared to explore the new ways of responding as the issue is clear and the implications of not responding are better understood there are less people in denial and less resistors to change .

So absolutely creating the “burning platform is critical” being able to bring clarity to the problem, being able to provide a robust recommendation that generates confidence in executives to make the decisive step and then considering how to drive a higher percentage of those that need to change into the committed and exploratory aspects of change rather than being in denial and being resistant is all needed to get results in business, crisis or not.

What’s your view ?