The COVID-19 global health crisis has forced businesses to pivot faster than ever, especially in the hospitality and event industries. We went from industries of abundance to industries of drought, almost overnight. The reality is that most businesses in our industries will no longer have the luxury of access to the resources, talent and budgets that were available just a few months ago.
The ability to shift into a lean and agile culture can make or break a business during this time. Businesses must stay lean from a financial and resource standpoint during economic downturns, but the lean we are suggesting is related to process—the process of accelerating the feedback loop by adapting to change, embracing new models and taking bold action.
Creating an Agile Culture
Until recently, business agility was something companies strived for to gain a competitive advantage. Today, for many organizations, it is a necessity for survival. Business agility is the capacity and willingness of an organization to adapt to, create and leverage change to create enterprise value.
For leaders in the midst of the current disruption, it is important to keep your eyes on the horizon, anticipate what’s next after the storm passes and position your organization to thrive.
People drive results. Our ability to thrive moving forward is completely dependent on our people, and we need to have a people strategy for pivoting to an agile culture. The following leadership actions are imperative in any people strategy.
Sharpen Focus
High performance requires a clear vision and strategy that everyone understands, has bought into and can articulate. We need to give our people a common purpose and direction to align their work around.
Changes are happening really fast right now, and it can feel overwhelming. But the faster you’re moving, the more important it is to have a very clear focus.
Align Leadership
Leadership sets the example and tone for the entire organization. What the leadership models, the organization follows. A high-functioning leadership team is a cohesive group of highly skilled leaders with a culture of trust, candor, open dissent and accountability. To thrive moving forward, it is imperative that your leadership team is aligned.
Elevate Talent
An organization can’t outperform its talent. To rise to the next level, it is necessary to raise the bar on talent. There are three primary ways an organization can elevate its talent level: HIRE. DEVELOP. LIBERATE.
Hiring is more complicated now than it was even two months ago. An abundance of full-time resources is no longer a viable option for most companies, which places emphasis on the need to develop the employees we have. But there are limitations. We can teach skills that allow employees to wear more hats, but we still need to provide the highest level of expertise to our clients—and it’s impossible to cram 10,000 hours of experience into a training program.
Jim Collins captured the importance of elevating talent in his book, Good to Great. The key to elevating talent is getting the right people in the right position.
Coronavirus Resources: FREE Education from the MPI Academy
“Leaders of companies that go from good to great start not with ‘where’ but with ‘who.’ They start by getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus and the right people in the right seats. And they stick with that discipline—first the people, then the direction—no matter how dire the circumstances,”Collins wrote.
For many organizations, the answer to getting the right people on the bus and in the right seats can be found with freelancers.
Implementing Lean Processes
While agility is about people, staying lean is about process.
A silver lining of the coronavirus crisis is that it is giving the hospitality and event industries the opportunity to experiment. The reality is that our business is going to change—and that doesn’t have to be a negative thing.
This is a time for our industry to think differently. We are no longer expected to be perfect. We are in a time where admiration goes to those who are willing to embrace and leverage change—thus driving our industry forward.
Our challenge to the hospitality and event industries is to use this time to be bold. Take risks that you would not have taken before. Test ideas you did not have time to test in the past. You have an accepting and engaged audience who needs the positivity and energy you can bring.
Use a Lean Methodology
Entrepreneur Eric Reis’ Lean Start-Up methodology has been a compass for Soundings Connect as we have grown and pivoted our business over the past two years. This methodology is what has allowed us to build the expertise and experience to help companies thrive in the current economic situation.
Key components of this methodology are:
● Fail fast and fail cheap.
● Ask “Should this product or service be built?” not “Can this product or service be built”—and consider if you can build a sustainable business around it.
● Develop your Minimum Viable Product and start testing it—build, measure, learn—then pivot or keep course.
MVP in Real Life: Hospitality & Events Fight Back
In response to the COVID-19 crisis, we have been working with the team at Syzygy Cities on aligning government, business and community to assist with the healthcare crisis we are facing. We have been using the Lean Start-Up methodology to vet and act on our ideas. We were even lucky enough to have Eric Reis on one of our calls!
One of our MVPs is a centralized Hospitality + Events COVID Response Hotline to connect hotels, city, state and local governments to vetted suppliers who can offer logistics support and resources to assist with hotel to treatment facility conversions, housing for medical workers, temporary testing centers, food banks and more.
We are excited about the impact we are already having, and we know, together, our industries can convert vacant hotels and event facilities to treatment facilities, create jobs and business opportunities for meeting and event professionals and save lives by ensuring access to healthcare.
Join our coalition. Experience our MVP. Let us know what services you can provide—or which ones you need—and let’s pivot our industries together! Learn more here.
Howard Cleveland, people and culture strategist and co-founder of PeopleCap, co-wrote this article. Judge and Cleveland’s Global Meetings Industry Day presentation, “Pivoting to a Lean & Agile Culture,” was part of MPI’s virtual broadcast and will be available for free soon at mpi.org/TrustedResource. Visit now to check our educational opportunities, which are FREE on-demand.
Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash
