Doing What Works in Troubled Times

Everyone is struggling to understand what they should be doing in these very difficult times. We are struggling to understand what works, whether it’s how we lead our people, how we work on a daily basis, how we engage our customers, how we move forward.

The crisis has created a heightened sense of urgency around “what do we need to do differently, how do we figure out what works?”There are some things that are profoundly different. Physical distancing, working from home, and other thing focused on keeping people safe and healthy are critical and different. Learning how to work, engaged, and engage others requires us to rapidly learn and adapt.

Stick to the Fundamentals

But we are also learning that what works is the fundamentals. The basic principles of great leadership, great selling, creating value with our people and our customers, come to the forefront of “what works.”

Success and moving forward in the best way possible, has less to do with figuring out what we need to be doing differently, but everything to do with what we should have been doing all the time. It’s just that tragedies like that we currently face make problems and bad practices, that have always existed, more painful and more visible.

Creating Value Never Goes Away

The highest performing organizations already know this. While they are certainly making adjustments to the current circumstances, as I speak with leaders in these organizations, they are moving forward, in some cases thriving because they have always been focused on how they create value with their people and with their customers. And their people and customers are responding, working together to address shared problems.

So as we look for solutions, as we look at doing what works, we already know the answers. We just have to have the courage and discipline to do what we have always known we should be doing.

It’s that simple.