Pivot and still be anti-fragile in the coronavirus era

The coronavirus crisis has already begun devastating every economy, stretching out business reserves and threatening the livelihood of some individuals who face furloughs.

For some businesses that are losing most of their mainstream revenue as well as individuals who have to fend for themselves after losing employment, there is the dreadful possibility that they become unscrupulous while recouping investments or compensating lost incomes.

Meanwhile, more organizations and entrepreneurs are pivoting to conduct business activities in a different dimension from their present one – digitalisation. This means having to rely more on technology to support crucial conversations, decision-making and business processes.

Yet when this is all over (maybe in the near future), it is ostensibly real that organizations emerging as survivors of the near annihilation need offer no apologies for being so. Conducting business in a new state of mind will start to show positive outcome, if that was already in place during the Movement Control Order period.

During the MCO period, employees are entrusted to carry on tasks in their area of responsibility with accountability and transparency. It is even more important now that the leadership of a company continues to drive ethics and legal compliance within a virtual organization, and improve all the new processes of doing business that the company has since adapted to in recent times. It is not about innovation, but rather, effectiveness of well-adapted processes has to always show through.

The leadership shall need for managers to have greater responsibility and to be showing up with candour in upstream and downstream communications. The cadence of the leadership’s and managers’ reminder of `business as usual’ will ring through vicariously in every communication, as it is not a time to waive the organization’s obligations to its code of conduct or legal requirements.

Aside of that, companies must ensure that conducting due diligence on newly formed business partnerships remains a core function in their processes. Businesses that were established under the conditions of a crisis, may not be entirely governed by any existing law that requires new regulatory measures, thus exposing companies to compliance vulnerabilities like fraud or corruption. Such legal and ethical glitches need to be addressed with the same importance as other business operations of a company.

The dawn of this new era now and being mindful of our ethical obligations inevitably draws us to becoming antifragile to face challenges of the now and also of a new ecosystem.

Post Tags: Malaysia MCO, leadership's cadence

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