Looking For Opportunities In Unprecedented Times: Is Your Tech Serving You?
As a businessman, I am neither “glass is half-full” nor “glass is half-empty.” I am in the camp of “the glass is still solid and it can be refilled.” My vessel is sound, so I’m not going to waste a moment pondering the fill level. I’m going to turn instead to finding ways to use that good vessel to continue to serve my needs and meet my goals. I spend time every day looking for opportunities in unprecedented times and I am leveraging my technology to squeeze every drop of productivity I can.
I wasn’t born this way and I’m not just by good fortune wired this way. I learned some things, I suspect, from business classes and history classes at Hillsdale College. I’ve learned a lot of things from just being in business. The School of Life. My generation of business men and women, though, has a distinct advantage over the generation before us: technology.
Are You Practicing The 5 Cs?
Okay, I can hear the eyes rolling. Let me give an example. I am hearing that productivity from our home workers has started to slow. Employers are seeing evidence of lower results, hearing of communications gaps that can mean some home workers are not staying in touch with key customers of the business. So are you, as the owner or manager, practicing the 5 Cs? They are command (as in taking the leadership role), containment, communications, coordination, and control (in its most protective meaning.) You can use your technology to stay in front of your employees. You can use your network and set up video conferencing programs like Zoom or Microsoft Teams, where you can see your employees’ faces and their body language. I hold a Microsoft Teams huddle with my staff twice a day. We help each other measure our daily productivity, just as if we were in the office together. I do it because it’s something that I can control when I can’t control other ravages of a global pandemic. I don’t want my employees to lose momentum, or work-identity, or their investment in our company goals. I want us as a company to stay tight and to take this frightening and too often fatal disruption in our lives on a day-by-day calibration. I want them to be able to see my face and to read the cautious self-confidence in my body language. What else can we do but what we already know how to do and what we think we might be able to do? And I believe: let’s continue to do it together as a company by using our technology.
We Are In This Together
I don’t want you to lose any time by worrying about your technology. Use that worry time to learn how to keep moving forward, even if it is inch by inch. Do every possible thing you can do to keep your business alive until the most dangerous threats recede. Also begin to think about how your business can thrive in the future because this too shall pass. It’s a hot topic for me right now. You can give me a call and we can brainstorm survival tactics.
Jason Newburg, 260.243.5100, ext 2101, is the founder and owner of Aptica LLC. This IT management and support company has been serving small to medium-sized businesses for 19 years in the region that includes Angola, South Bend, and Fort Wayne, IN, Battle Creek, MI, and Toledo OH.