Scarcely a week passes without something being stated to as a crises. Every individual or corporate or nation…we all face multiple crisis at different times and if we consider the current scenario globally we are in the middle of COVID-19 crisis, which is affecting physically, economically, emotionally and mentally. You would agree with me that it is imperative that we run into a crisis rather than run away from it.
In its essence crises are moments of truth when leaders ruminate progressively and others just follow the suit or many people don’t or say can’t do much about the difficult situation. They are the chance to shine and to accelerate your growth: you succeed fast or fail fast.
Every crisis unfolds over an arc of time where there is a beginning, middle and an end. It might be useful to reason what distinguishes what was, is and will be. There was a past of relative stability and predictability. There is now chaos and disruption, a state of confusion and nobody knows what to do. There will be…a different state…a new and advanced reality which otherwise would have taken years to reach.
Once the crisis is in motion, converting it into an opportunity often requires a fresh way of visualising, thinking and responding by taking action.
For instance, during the current medical emergency, we observed adaptation of businesses to meet the market demands like switching the business to provide essentials to consumers, mass production of masks, hand sanitizer, PPE Kits etc, with more focused approach few businesses have grown drastically like virtual gaming, fast track growth in certain pre-existing sectors like online education and development of new business segments like virtual events.
Interestingly, crisis brings change…which is not an option anymore. We simply adapt to survive. Like work from home, online education, wearing masks, social distancing, virtual meetings/ conferences etc are going to be a new norm. Many Indian companies and government departments are shifting to the new work culture. As per media reports, the IT sector has already requested the government to amend the labour and taxation law benefitting both the employee and employer. This might lead to afresh work-from-policy introduced in India. Similarly, the education sector and many other sectors also call for a paradigm shift in the way things have been working out before the lockdown.
Often crisis has the habit of getting out of control. Timely preparation and action might help to minimize the human and economic loss. Recently, when Cyclone Amphan hit Western India, the situation was certainly unavoidable but sounding timely alert would have helped individuals to save their lives.
Crisis brings people together. The solution to handle a crisis lies in uniting people in their efforts and goals as valued members of an integrated team. In corporate life, very often we do meetings with key stakeholders to come together before taking any big stance which could be coming up with a new product, holding an event, select a new CEO in an organization etc consensus of all the leaders is taken. Similarly, when it comes to personal life be it pursuing one’s education, passion, job, marriage…family comes and act together.
By taking an action or any action during a crisis helps you cement your control over the issue, you build and even direct the momentum. Remember to analyse the crisis situation, prepare to handle, stay open to change and adapt and let people help you. Above all, believe that a crisis of any magnitude can be solved. The moment we learn to appreciate crisis, we will be able to turn crisis into opportunities.