What if…?

The news headlines continue to be dominated by Coronavirus (covid – 19). It is a human story and presents a real danger to health.  Businesses are preparing. Although a distraction from the real work of strategy and longer-term planning it would be foolish not to be asking What If?

Last week the CIPD facilitated a really useful Q&A to help HR practitioners think through the real questions they are facing. The questions were good but I was I was left wondering whether anyone had gone to the worst-case scenario and really explored it? Of course, the worst-case scenario is one that may never happen but it is one that allows real preparation for a range of scenarios.

In their estimates, the UK Government is advising business that it is possible that 1 in 5 people will be absent from work in the peak weeks. This will be in addition to the normal sick absence rate.

• How can a business cope with that?

• What are the real risks to business that this presents?

• Can their cashflow cope?

As an HR Director I have experienced 80% absence but this was expected and short lived because of strike action. The lessons from that are relevant here; think about service priorities, identify specialist skills and move those people to the priorities, retrain others in advance and have a great plan for service restoration when there is a return to work. However, there are differences. In that scenario, we knew exactly when it would happen, how long it would last, we could work up and down the supply chain to move production away from the strike and we didn’t pay those who had withdrawn their labour. In this scenario there are many more unknowns.

I asked Murray Cook how scenario planning can help and what leaders could do to organise a meaningful session.

It is human nature to look for patterns, join the dots and see trends and it is also human nature to turn these into stories – the sun rises every day but the story or explanation ancient Greeks gave for this is very different than the one you would get from modern physics.  In the corporate world the stories we tell and trends we anticipate form the official strategy.

Both these stories served their purpose but nowadays we would regard one as being more accurate than the other.   What are we looking for in the case of Covid – 19 – are we looking back to Spanish Flu or SARs or are we actually looking at something different, what is the problem we are grappling with or the stories we are telling about it as this will shape our responses.

The mixture of globalisation, extended supply chains and urbanisation gives rise to classic TUNA conditions (Turbulence, Uncertainty, Novelty and Ambiguity) causing high levels of disturbance in the system and complexity in creating strategy.  How do you respond to Covid – 19 without shutting down global commerce?

Scenario Planning can be used articulate “plausible” futures by taking into account disruption, how it may play out and creating safe spaces for senior teams to consider their present strategy in the light of these plausible futures.  This helps reframe the current strategy and surfaces what sort of weak signals to look for, e.g. population density, export of goods or regulatory oversight.

These scenarios often challenge current business models underpinning strategy and in doing so provoke different conversations about what that model might look like and how best to deal with disruption – one of the key findings in this space is how companies traditionally seen as competitors might have to collaborate to manage disruption and one of the techniques we use is working through Value Creating Systems (VCS).

It is worth asking if you had a scenario for a covid – 19 like situation how quickly would you have spotted it, what you would be now be doing differently and who you would be working with.

It is our view that you need to create capacity for this kind of work. A small team reporting to the CEO and executive team will help. It is important to think about the composition of the team. Diversity of thinking is critical to ensure you challenge the current assumptions. The issue needs to be examined from multiple perspectives, so that outcomes can be imagined and their impact analysed. Above all keep communications strong and remember all wicked problems need a collaborative approach. 

We leave you with a short graphic to assist.

Anne McCarthy is an experienced leader of change and transformation, supporting business with their people strategy.

Murray Cook is experienced at delivering change in complex situations and developing creative solutions to strategic challenges.