There’s always going to be a storm. It’s just the size and severity of it that will fluctuate. Over the past few years, we’ve experienced multiple global crises as businesses, organisations, and individuals are trying to determine the best ways to navigate them.
As we see the other side of the global pandemic, an ongoing political crisis – the Russia-Ukraine conflict – will continue to have worldwide economic implications for us all, especially in Africa.
As we have witnessed, the conflict is already directly impacting African economies, and experts warn that the knock-on effects will continue to increase food security issues and poverty across the continent. In Southern Africa, we’re likely to experience a sudden increase in commodity prices and a shortage of investment capital, which puts many organisations and businesses on edge. Instinctively, business leaders think that the easiest way to handle this is to consider shrinking talent pools or clamping down on developing their capabilities to cut costs. But as we’ve seen over the past two years, as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, organisations that doubled down and invested in developing internal capabilities thrived during the pandemic.
A recent study titled “COVID-19 and business failures: The paradoxes of experience, scale, and scope for theory and practice” showed that it was not simply smaller resource pools for small and medium enterprises but rather diminished “capabilities, faulty routines and processes” that led to an organisational shutdown. Many corporate leaders freeze when faced with a crisis, often pausing development and change to wait out the storm.
We saw it at the beginning of the pandemic: when the world is less predictable, the last thing we want to do is implement change. But fast-forward two years. Businesses around the globe realise that implementing new processes (digital and otherwise) will be vital to remaining competitive. From hybrid working environments to building new customer experiences, the capability to implement change is becoming even more valuable.
Organisations with internal change capability are the most well-equipped to handle a crisis – or at the very least, the effects of a crisis. They also typically can quickly implement robust, sustainable new systems. It is essential to understand that people are responsible for these capabilities, so they need to be at the centre of your crisis plans.
Regardless of the current global political and economic climate, change is inevitable. But we’ve seen that the world, and all of us, are more adaptable than we think. We proved this during the pandemic, with many discovering we had capabilities we didn’t know we had. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt about crises, they have the potential to bring out the best in us all.
Picture: Tom Marsicano
Tom Marsicano is the founder and Director of and Change, and a Master Certified Prosci® Instructor. His extensive background, especially in financial services and IT systems, and his love for research make him a widely respected facilitator and speaker. Write to him at tom@andchange.com.