Our Business Was Hit and Puzzled by Covid, and That’s What We Did
If you are lucky enough to keep alive, look forward, and launch new projects asap.
January and February were hectic. Actually, we were coming from a couple of quite busy years, probably the most productive ones since we created our consulting business in 2011. We were reasonably happy with the results, with new developments and a ton of ideas in our heads. And then came covid.
In the beginning, we thought, like many, that it would be one more thing on the news, one of those that never reach your life. The first time I heard about it was at SFO airport, mid-January. At that time, social distancing was not still an issue, not even a concept in the sense we use it today worldwide. If we picture it now, the image would be like an impossible lousy joke: a boarding gate packed with people at the end of a packed corridor. The muted screens at the bar, with breaking news running at the bottom, were like another distant world. One month later, in line to get into another plane, a dog was sniffing the bags inside the finger of the plane, searching for who knows what, while we were still in the “Old Normal.” But then, March arrived. And Italy; and Spain. And Germany and France. And the USA, and the UK, and Brasil, and everywhere. It was not China anymore.
SMEs were going to be much affected by the lockdown. Mostly everything stopped. Our clients put many projects on hold. We started having conversations with other entrepreneurs about how they were thinking about freezing their companies “until everything has passed.” Governments acted quickly, but the measures came with some strange conditions. If you want help, you need to stop, showing that your activity went to zero. Of course, we wanted help, but we didn’t intend to stop, as long as we could.
Forecasts were that the lockdown would last for two to four months. It was “webinar time,” but it was clear that consulting wouldn’t be among the activities to remain untouched. Many were working under the radar, but in general, only remote coaching, and the likes, were working at full steam. As commuting went down, remote work hours went up, together with a problematic “triple balance” between professional life, personal life, and handling a highly distressing situation.
At that time, the decision we made seemed the only possible thing to do. As we deal professionally with strategy, that was probably an advantage, though I’m not sure. But therefore, during the latest three months, we have been focused on the following priorities.
1. Help (as much we can, as you’d like to be helped)
We saw people in despair, or fundamentally wrongly oriented, trying to push the market to sell anything, at any price, at any time. Let’s take advantage of people being in lockdown, usually in front of a screen, and flood them with as many offers as possible. We don’t know whether someone thought this could work, but it seems clear that the only thing you can get is a lot of pissed audiences.
Instead, why not pick up the phone and honestly say, “what can I do for you?”. I know you’re as puzzled as I am, how can I help you? This was not easy, because many of us were not even in the mood to listen. Still, we had dozens of nice chats on Zoom, Teams, or Whatsapp, that we like to think were useful to overcome the bad moment.
And it was not only chats. We started writing about covid situation and about the new reality we were facing. We reactivated our profile here at Medium,(JM Piqué), long sleeping. We have currently published more than forty articles form different perspectives. We shared some tips to survive remote working, of taking advantage of it. All in all, we did our best to do our bit.
2. Invest (not necessarily money, but resources, mostly your time)
When we are fully engaged in projects, we often forget about ourselves, about the need to update and upgrade our skills and competences. And these latest weeks we had many good opportunities to think about it and take some steps. It doesn’t matter whether it is learning a new language, a new skill, or reading books we had postponed or put down. Everyone should invest in himself or herself. We always had this clear, but it became even more obvious during this period if you were lucky enough to be healthy and safe. We probably had the highest density of free quality webinars in years, so it’s time to learn.
3. Start something new (which has ended up being a “3 months, 3 projects”)
The third leg of the strategy has probably been the most difficult to follow, and at the same time, the easiest. We thought it was time to also invest in new projects, in preparing new developments for future conditions and needs. This is something we always did, in one way or another, as we want our business to keep morphing. We don’t usually settle and prefer to spend time in a new but not immediately successful project, instead of repeating once and again business as usual formulas. It may be a virtue or a flaw, but we can’t help it.
The three new projects we are launching will be the subject of other articles, but just to show how they make sense with the rest of our strategy, you have a glimpse of them.
FactoriaP will help those SMEs who cannot have an HR department but need talent, management, or new skills, saving them time and money. This is a spinoff of our The Human Business project, but mainly targeted to the smallest businesses, who cannot usually access this kind of services.
A Moment With, the second project we launched, arises from a will to give voice to many brilliant people we know, who are not in the mass media. And we would like to reach some we still don’t know, too. We plan to have focused conversations with many of them. To put them in the air through a new podcast, that we got it to be already available on the leading platforms (Apple, Spotify, or Google).
Finally, the third project is still cooking, and we want it to be in the market by the beginning of 2021. Once more, we wanted to give a response to the challenges that covid put on our way, and we thought that creating deep bonds between people through mentoring would be a good way to do it. Actually, you can contribute to this project by answering a survey we are spreading worldwide. The project will be born at least in America, Europe, and India from the very beginning.
This is not the end, but the beginning… We keep on going, always under construction. We’ll keep telling you about how we see the world, and how we develop. In the meantime, if we can work together in anything, or you think we may be of help for you, ping us. The 20th Century was the one for competition; in the 21st, the keyword will be cooperation.
