Tag: New Normal

 
 If you want to learn how to successfully move your business to the new normal, learn from China. We talk a lot about digital transformation in the Caribbean, but until recently there was no sense of urgency.
 As a blogger / trend watcher, I went on a little research to find out how China is doing with their strategy and innovation.

 Adapt to uncertain times

 China has been struggling with the pandemic and its consequences for the whole of 2020. But a big difference is that it is not the first epidemic for companies. Sars and the swine fever are still fresh in the memory. And it is certainly not the first disruption in normal business operations.

 Things are changing very fast in China. If it is not the government rules that change again, then hundreds of new competitors will arise or your customers will switch massively, because they are not so loyal. In short, a crisis is almost business as usual. They have learned to adapt quickly in uncertain times.
 They actually operate in that famous "VUCA world" (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous).

 That sense of urgency is still lacking in the Caribbean. The digital transformation in this area is underway but slow. More speed is needed and a real push is necessary to get governments in this region up and running. As a leader, it is therefore very wise to look closely at the flexible strategy and rapid innovation within many Chinese companies.
 However, they operate partly under completely different circumstances.
 
 Here I have at least five lessons from Chinese companies where you as a top board member/leader may get benefits during the corona crisis and after:
 
 1. Seek collaboration
 
 The Chinese are very good at determining what they are best at and what they can do for themselves, and what they can involve from the outside. That goes far beyond what we know as a focus on core business and outsourcing the rest. Chinese companies like to work in a tight-knit ecosystem in which they bridge each other's competences and offer them together to the customer and the rest of the world. This ensures that you can operate very agile and resilient. Such an ecosystem is very opportunistic. It has its tentacles, as it were, in many markets. If an opportunity arises, the companies quickly emerge. 

2. Continue to challenge your way of doing business

  Call it opportunism or agile business: it is very easy for entrepreneurs to radically overhaul the way they do business. They are good at letting go of what they are selling and how they are selling it as conditions change. 

3. Apply the Lemonade Principle

  A third trait of successful Chinese companies that we can mirror is to be summed up as the Lemonade Principle. If you want to supply orange juice but you only have lemons, you make lemonade. That rowing with the oars you have has roots that go back to the times when China lacked everything. But an extremely contemporary example of being creative with what you have provided TikTok and film producer Huanxi Media Group earlier this year. 
 
 4. Embrace technology
 
 Another point in which Chinese companies set an example for us is the eagerness with which they embrace digital technology. Of course, we are now discovering Zoom and other tools here, but the Chinese are trying to get all their business processes digital as much as possible. 

In that respect, they are really miles ahead of other countries. Despite their late start with the internet and mobile telephony, they have skipped a few steps in its development and application. The Chinese government is creating important conditions for this. The government, in particular President Xi Jinping, has a clear agenda that is being pushed forward. 

If it says: we will become a digital society, then the government will play a completely different role than the governments elsewhere in the world. Such a role may also work in the Caribbean. We also think completely differently about conditions such as the privacy of citizens. But there are other factors that are pushing digitization in China. 

For example, research shows that Chinese consumers want to try something new three to four times faster than anywhere else in the world, eager if they take advantage of the relatively recent achievements of the Chinese variant of the free market. For various cultural and historical reasons, the Chinese model works very well in the field of digitization. The way companies use technology there is really fantastic. Western / Caribbean companies can certainly try to imitate that.
 
5. Give your people autonomy

 A rather unique lesson can be learned from Haier, a giant manufacturer that we know from, among other things, his white goods and air conditioners and address electronics products. When companies run into something, it is the literal disruption of their global supply chains in these times. By the summer, not all factories will still be able to run, if only because they don't get that last percent of the parts.

 Haier, on the other hand, came through the lock down in it's own country reasonably well and already turned almost full steam in February. The key turned out to be the way the company is organized: not top-down, but as a swarm of reasonably autonomous, small business units.
 In recent months, this autonomy has shown that teams quickly and creatively looked for solutions to the challenges facing the pandemic. That is a structure that Haier has worked on for ten years, so you can't just copy it. But as a company you can still see whether you can not give your front-line teams, active in sales, production, product development and product management, more freedom and autonomy. 

Even if only temporarily. Form crisis teams, let them make decisions, give them more budget power and confidence.
 Managers will really have to step outside their traditional job description. Yes it will have to happen.

 What awaits the Caribbean as the new normal?

 Optimistic as I am and also following the world trends, I am sure that a new boom of companies will emerge. On the other hand, companies that have emerged during the previous crisis will also fail. Existing successful business models will be slaughtered as well. For companies that will be stuck with various things, it can best become a cold winter. 

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