The lifeboat — A tool to keep your company afloat in times of turmoil and uncertainty.

Method: Lifeboat

Time: 60–120 Minutes

Roles: 1 Facilitator

Participants: 2–10

Materials: Whiteboard or Flipchart, Markers, Post-It’s

Description:

The lifeboat is a metaphorical method to reflect on the full scale of a crisis situation and take decisive action. Imagine your boat just crashed. Unfortunately, this is the reality for most companies at the moment. You find yourself in uncharted waters and you’re paddling in a lifeboat with your team and some resources. But how long will you last? And how far is it to reach safe waters? Let’s find out!

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Steps:

1. Resources — How long will we last?

Let’s jump into the first challenging question. How long will you last? It’s time to look at the cash in your bank account, signed off revenue and make a quick inventory of all your assets. Contact your customers and see if there are any delays in projects and do your best to assess the impact of the crisis on your cashflow. Ultimately you want to know your runway given the current state. Is it weeks or months? The more accurate the information, the better you’ll be able to plan and make decisions.

A few points to consider:

• Show compassion to your customers. How are they doing? How can you help? If they are struggling there is no point in squeezing cash out of them and ruining a relationship. Be creative and see if you can find other arrangements that will benefit you or re-assess your terms of payment.
• Cut expenses not investments. Do you need that expensive office? Do you need all these memberships? How much will you save in travel costs currently? While this is the time to question and drastically cut your expenses, you want to cut investments last. There’s nothing worse than surviving the crisis but having to start over again. You want to come out of this crisis skyrocketing.
• This is not a time to sell, it’s your time to support your community. Give first and offer your help where possible. Talk to potential customers as much as you can, there’s never been a better time to reach out to people. Understand their problems and see how you can become part of the solution! If you build many new relationships now, you’ll be rewarded later and come out of this crisis much stronger.
• As a quick side note here. We just started a program Innovation against COVID-19: If your business is heavily affected by the Corona crisis reach out to us and we will support 2 selected companies per month with a free workshop. Please fill out this form.

A few points to consider:

• Show compassion to your customers. How are they doing? How can you help? If they are struggling there is no point in squeezing cash out of them and ruining a relationship. Be creative and see if you can find other arrangements that will benefit you or re-assess your terms of payment.
• Cut expenses not investments. Do you need that expensive office? Do you need all these memberships? How much will you save in travel costs currently? While this is the time to question and drastically cut your expenses, you want to cut investments last. There’s nothing worse than surviving the crisis but having to start over again. You want to come out of this crisis skyrocketing.
• This is not a time to sell, it’s your time to support your community. Give first and offer your help where possible. Talk to potential customers as much as you can, there’s never been a better time to reach out to people. Understand their problems and see how you can become part of the solution! If you build many new relationships now, you’ll be rewarded later and come out of this crisis much stronger.
• As a quick side note here. We just started a program Innovation against COVID-19: If your business is heavily affected by the Corona crisis reach out to us and we will support 2 selected companies per month with a free workshop. Please fill out this form

2. Passengers — Who’s on board?

Next thing, take a look at your team. Who’s currently on board? In crisis situations how you deal with the people in your team is one of the key factors for your survival.

The first thing to do is be critical about any new hires, be honest with your applicants and only hire for strategically critical situations. Even if the workload is still high at the moment you rather want to play it safe and take on more with your existing team than struggle to keep your people busy a few months down the road.

Now let’s focus on your team. The number one rule here is transparency. You don’t want to leave people with job uncertainty for a long time, it will not only kill their motivation but also damage your brand in the long run. Always remember to balance goodwill with your people and the survival of the business as best as you possibly can. React fast, take decisive action and talk to your whole team.

Be realistic about your financial situation. You’ll need to be certain you can pay salaries for the next 2 months, at least. If that’s not the case, here’s what you can do:

• Given that you have a strong company culture, gather your whole team and announce and discuss a companywide reduction in salaries. And don’t promise that it will be made up in the future if you cannot guarantee it. Be very transparent about the situation and the reasons. This is the moment a great culture pays off!
• If even a reduction in salaries isn’t going to assure your survival over the next 2 months then the tough reality is to let people go. Always consider the impact unemployment will have on their life, but at the same time consider which roles you can outsource or take on yourself. Think about what you can offer your people, whether that’s real support with finding a new job, gifting them a laptop or anything that comes to your mind. The best thing you can do is to show empathy and imagine you will run into this person again in six months and hug.

3. Survival — How far is it to reach safe waters?

What does it take to survive this crisis? How long will it last until we reach a stable economic situation? Is this a short-term situation (months) or a long- term problem (a year or longer)? This is the big unknown!

There are many opinions out there right now but the reality is, the world hasn’t faced such a situation for the past 100 years, so it’s impossible to fully predict. This is why you need to prepare for both short- and long-term scenarios.

Short-term (months):

• Make decisions about your team for the next few months (see Step 1)
• Review your resources and cut expenses where possible (see Step 2)

Long-term (a year or longer):

If this crisis is a long-term problem that lasts a year or longer (this would likely be the case for many companies if they continue doing what they’ve been doing). But what if you could head into an entirely different direction to reach safe waters of which you aren’t aware?

Here are two things to consider:

• All your assumptions about your customers, your business model, sales cycles, and revenue are no longer true. The world today is already a completely different one than it was a month ago. If your business model will look the same as it did before the crisis, you’re in denial — and possibly soon out of business. But in every change, there’s an opportunity. Now is the time for innovation. Go out there, understand what has changed, understand the needs of your customers, identify new customers, develop ideas and quickly prototype them. There’s never been a better time to rise.
• Take on the right mindset. Promise yourself to come out of this crisis stronger. This goal in itself will shift your mindset from defense to offense, from negative to positive. Tackle all challenges with dignity and goodwill, prepare yourself for setbacks but never lose faith that you will come out on the other side!

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