How To Set Your Business Up For Success In The Post-COVID World?
By: Jan Wokittel
Tags: Business Strategy, Digitalization, Corona, Entrepreneur, Digital Transformation

If the current pandemic has taught us anything, it is the importance of digitality. The possibilities are not new — many have simply failed to actively address them and to introduce the necessary processes in the company. As a result, they are being left behind by old and new competitors.

We are not just talking about online stores and home offices. Rather, digitization is taking hold all levels of the company — from communications and collaboration, information management, and the product itself.

For me, digitization is the key to future viability, and that is as an interplay of the following levels:

Digital Offering Digital Work Digital Competences

This is about much more than just managing a crisis: It is about dealing with permanent change and the ever-changing demands that companies face today. Based on my daily experience with small, medium-sized, and large companies, let’s take a look together at the individual keys to success, their possibilities, and also the reality experienced.

Product Offering (Source: Undraw.co)

Digital Offering

For me, the winners from the current pandemic fall into three categories:

a) Suppliers whose core businesses are the tools to address this very crisis (e.g. hygiene, pharmaceuticals). They were lucky because against a financial crisis surgical masks and medicines would not have helped much.

b) Companies that fundamentally have a business model that is in times of contact restrictions and business closures, automatically flourish many times than otherwise (e.g. amazon or delivery services).

c) Companies that recognized early on that needs and the market were changing and realigned at a rapid pace. For example, a study of around 1,200 entrepreneurs and SMEs showed that 56% had changed their existing business model as a direct result of COVID-19.

In summary, the winners of the crisis are primarily companies that offer digital products and distribution channels with little face-to-face customer contact and that can adapt their capacities and internal processes quickly and flexibly to the new conditions.

Vision

We constantly put our offerings to the test in terms of future viability and find ways to raise our offerings to such a flexible level that they can be adapted to the latest requirements at any time.

We are constantly rethinking our future customers and developing today the products of (beyond) tomorrow. We then launch these on the market as soon as the time is right — or even earlier, if we are true visionaries.

We do not question the need for digitality, but take it as a matter of course and as a (necessary) means of pushing the boundaries of what is possible for the customer’s interests.

Reality

According to a study by the digital association bitkom, only 46% of the companies surveyed are using digitization to open up new areas of business. I have been involved on a voluntary basis for many years in a number of associations operating nationwide.

One pillar of many associations is training opportunities: Continuing education and information events in face-to-face form — all of which were no longer possible during the pandemic. Important income fell away and the associations had to reorganize.

Some recognized the opportunity to digitize the entire life of the association as far as possible in order to better appeal to young members. But other stakeholders did not see this immediate need for change, preferring to simply wait until times changed again and they could continue as they had before the pandemic. “No one needs webinars, online workshops, or web meetings”, was a slogan I heard sometimes.

In the end, the realization that the offering was not digital enough to be sustainable prevailed, and it was expanded. But things often turn out differently, and this example is definitely not an isolated case. “Don’t change a running system” is just one of the popular killer phrases that companies and organizations use to block change, both analog and digital. The reasons are usually insecurity or fear, a lack of experience, and a lack of competence.

Collaboration (Source: Undraw.co)

Digital Work

We are still familiar with everyone sitting in their offices, grouped into departments, and the manager having at least a rough overview of who does what when, and with whom. But thanks to Corona, the home office finally became seasonable after many years of being the privilege of a few. However, anyone who believes that home office and online meetings already make up the digital work of the future is thinking far too briefly.

Vision

When people around the world are connected online via various communication channels, network organization becomes increasingly important. We work at flexible times in different locations in interdisciplinary teams that are formed on a project basis and far away from dusty hierarchies.

This makes the meeting culture more open, creative, and flexible. All important information and existing know-how is available across the company and can be accessed, expanded, and updated digitally around the clock. The Paper was yesterday — it doesn’t scale! Every process is checked for its digital checked.

All of this also requires a new kind of leadership: It needs a shared understanding of the vision and a unified focus on a goal. And it requires empowerment that enables employees to make important decisions themselves, without having to ask for permission every time or having to justify them afterward. Decisions are made by the company’s rank and file; management only sets the framework conditions.

Reality

Fixed structures, clear rules, and responsibilities give people security. But they also create bottlenecks, slow down processes and patronize employees. “Departmental silos hoard their knowledge and information like the holy grail, deliberately cultivating internal dependencies. We cling just as passionately to our paper files as if digitization were the enemy. And in meetings, we’d much rather just talk about the issues instead of creating results.

On the positive side, the home office worked amazingly well when, after some teething problems, the infrastructure was eventually in place, so that after initial skepticism, more and more people are now even politically demanding the right to home office even for the time after Corona.

Digital signature processes and reporting as well as automated workflows also took hold. It is worth noting that the majority of the new solutions now being implemented by necessity had already been on the market for some time, but it was not until the pandemic that people felt the pressure to use them.

Companies realized through the use of digital tools that they were unnecessarily employing human resources who did nothing but type in paper-bound information — be it time-sheets, payroll entries, or other reporting. Processes suddenly became transparent and measurable because people no longer ran into each other in the office every day.

But let’s not fool ourselves: There is still a lack of commitment from everyone to embrace the long-overdue change and try new things. Corona has once again proven that the old forms of collaboration no longer work and are too cumbersome to adapt. In this respect, the pandemic was a fire accelerator for necessary overdue changes.

New Sills and competences (Source: Undraw.io)

Digital competence

54% of participants in the bitkom study mentioned at the beginning of this article complained above all about the lack of expertise needed to break new digital ground in the first place.

To return to the example of the associations: It quickly became clear to me that it was the discomfort in dealing with the required digital tools and methods that led to the rejection. But which competencies are needed here and how do we disseminate them in companies and organizations?

Vision

Change management becomes the basic knowledge for dealing with change. All employees are involved in change processes at an early stage. As part of organizational development, skills deficits are permanently counteracted with the help of a proactive digital training program. All those affected are prepared individually and specifically for future requirements in order to reduce uncertainty.

Interactive knowledge and competence management invites people to share know-how and empower each other. Anyone can access digitally stored knowledge, and information can be retrieved and verified quickly and easily.

Reality

Many still have beads of sweat on their foreheads when they are asked to organize or participate in an interactive online workshop. We are often unfamiliar with the possibilities offered by digital tools, such as working simultaneously on the same file, tagging information, or interactively linking contact persons.

The demographic constellation in companies also plays a role here: age is often used as an excuse for not having to deal with digital media. But you don’t need “digital natives,” you just need a healthy degree of openness and curiosity as well as a good dose of team spirit to learn how to use new technologies, which are often very intuitive.

An international technology company also learned this: employees who were required to be present in the office were divided into two teams — red and blue. After a few weeks, it was noticed that team blue performed the same work faster than team red. The reasons were manifold: be it the willingness to adapt one’s own processes instead of obsessively pursuing them, the openness to new digital tools, or the general team culture, which coped better with the situation (interdisciplinarity).

Summary

As a result of the pandemic, most people have understood that change processes in companies can no longer be stopped or explained away. But as long as every individual is not prepared to consistently question his or her work and adapt to new requirements, we will lag behind progress — and thus behind entrepreneurial success.

“Reset ourselves to zero.”

Christoph Keese, one of the leading experts on digitization, recommends that we “reset ourselves to zero” again and again. He encourages us to consciously confront the situation in which our own work is no longer possible or no longer needed from one day to the next. Even if this thought frightens many of us, the Corona pandemic has shown that it is by no means absurd, as the following illustration contrasts:

Comparison of needed Pre- and Post-Corona alignment

In order to continue to be successful in the future, it is the responsibility of every individual to embrace digitization and build up the necessary skills. Digitization is not something that is yet to come — it has long been underway and is ubiquitous. It is up to us whether we react fearfully and angrily to the changes or whether we actively and courageously take advantage of the new opportunities they offer us. What do you think about that?