The Business Revival USA and Canada’s Recovery Strategy

 Last week, I ordered a single light bulb for my fridge to be sent to my house. I thought that since home deliveries go through my neighborhood every day, this probably wasn't an optimization problem for them. At first, it felt wrong, maybe even decadent.

I was behind the times when it came to home delivery

A year ago, my fridge would have been empty for a week and a half until I could get to the hardware shop on a Saturday afternoon. That sounds really old-fashioned now, like a story my dad used to tell about the 1950s.

Every one of us has had at least one event like this. People were inspired by these personal examples of how fast technology has changed over the past year, and they became popular topics of conversation. Soon, executives learned that "burning platforms" could now be sent straight to people's homes.

This only took a few weeks for most of our clients. When the outbreak started, their main goals were to keep their cash on hand, keep their operations running smoothly, and be as efficient as possible. But as they caught their breath and looked around, they saw that many parts of their organizations needed to be completely re-thought.

Digital technologies are having a moment right now, and many chances to change things are becoming clear. Firms and roles that mostly act as middle-men are thinking about where, how, and sometimes even if digital technology can best improve the value they provide, or if something more radical is on the way.

Over the next few blog posts, we'll talk about how we're helping our clients plan their way out of the pandemic, through a rebirth, and into their next normal. It will be broken up into four parts

Plan your pandemic exit by scenario. Set some "focal questions" and come up with relevant scenarios, data-driven analytics (to see if the situation is solid or changing), and specific choices for how to use resources. Get ready for change or to move ahead of it. There will be less "management retreat" and more "situation room."

Putting flexibility first in revival. In line with your scenario plan, set priorities for the operational and market-facing strategies you can use as suppliers and clients get back to the way things were before the pandemic. This could mean new ways of getting materials, making things, and getting them to market.

Putting re-invention into action. Even though trying new things and being flexible are important, planning and carrying out the big change with success is still more important, especially when the world is changing.

Re-invention should be a key skill. We know that things are always changing and that it's getting faster. We've also shown that we can handle it. Now we need to make learning a way of life so that our teams and groups continue to do well.

As the pandemic ends, we'll all be glad to get back to our next normal, whatever that is. But we can't undo the lessons we learned from rushing headfirst into digitally helped lives, and the ways we dealt with big changes in the past need to be updated. When organizations set goals, they need to be both bold and careful about what they do.

As I did with the lightbulb order, I'm rethinking how I frame and react to events. This is also true at the corporate level. Drucker said that what puts us at risk is not the chaos itself, but how we react to it using old ideas.

Keep an eye on this space for more information about how EY's employees work together to solve problems. Download our paper on Business Revival

How you can plan with confidence for the unknown to learn more about these ideas. Then, get in touch with our experts to talk about how you can take these concepts even further.

This series looks at our Business Revival solution, which offers customized methods to help businesses find their way forward and make strong plans for business survival.

Getting your business back on track: how to confidently plan for the unknown

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It's best to make changes when everything else has already been changed. After a year, the global outbreak has changed how we work, learn, and talk to each other for good. Use this experience to look at your business, decide what's most important, and start over so it can do well in a digital world. We were moving toward digital transformation before COVID-19, but the disaster made businesses rethink how they did things and make plans for now, tomorrow, and beyond.