One of the consequences of living in a crisis is that our time horizon gets real short.

It makes sense–the future is uncertain–it’s not clear what part of the things that we’ve adapted to are permanent, and which are temporary. Our clients and prospects are going through the same thing, so it’s not clear how we will serve them in the long term.  What needs to change? We’re not sure yet.

So we default to working on near term priorities, things we know, things we can control.

But if our team is functioning well, those near term priorities are our team’s job. They may need some help adjusting to the “new reality,” but once they are back and productive, they can handle stuff that needs to get done this week and next.

They need you to look beyond that.

Your job is to answer the question, “What do you need to do to get us ready for the rest of 2020?”

Whatever plan you put together last year for 2020 is out the window now. You need to start over and build a new plan quarter by quarter for the rest of this year.

What’s Q2 going to look like? (Q2 starts tomorrow!)

Q2 is still going to have 6 – 8 weeks of shutdown (depending on where you are). So we need to make a plan with that in mind! New business is going to be tough. Our team isn’t going to be functioning at 100%. What does that look like for your business?

Then we’re going to see a transition.

At some point, things are going to start opening up again. What criteria will you use to decide when to make changes to how you’re working? What will your policies and practices be during this timeframe? How will you serve your clients and prospects through this time?

Hopefully, we’ll get back to “normal” sometime this year.

What do you need to do now to be ready for that? What marketing campaigns do you need to build? What relationships need to deepen to catapult your growth when that happens?

It’s time to re-cast your budget and create a point of view on the rest of the year. Your team is counting on your leadership!

What do you see coming? How do you get your firm positioned to thrive in that?