On the 21st of January 2020, like many CEO’s, I stood in front of our whole business and talked about the year just gone and the year ahead. 2019 had been a very successful year for Paybyphone, solely down to the efforts of the team who had worked their socks off to make it a record breaking year. As we looked ahead to 2020 I shared what the likely challenges would be. We talk about the competitive landscape and upcoming political changes, such as the small matter of Brexit. At that point we were all blissfully unaware that less than 2 months later, my predications about the future would be as outdated and irrelevant as the then headlines about Alistair Stewart having to step down from ITN after an ill-judged tweet.
Running a small business is much like being on a rollercoaster; soaring highs, deep lows and a general uncertainty of what lurks around the next corner. And so 2020 has been no different to normal in that respect. Having said that, there are some leadership lessons that I have learned since we have had to embrace COVID-19.
You can’t predict the future.
This is unlikely to be earth shattering news to anyone. Unfortunately, I have met a number of CEO’s who seem so confident to know what will happen tomorrow, only to have their own rollercoaster take a dip far more dramatic than they expected. As a business I like to think we are organised and have a robust strategy in place, but the brutal reality is that in April 2020 our revenues dropped 95% in 72 hours. Thankfully things have recovered quite incredibly since and we are more or less “back on track”, but I probably won’t be quite as confident in my predictions during our 2021 kick off. Perhaps more important is that we invest in ensuring we’re a business that is resilient, in all senses of the word.
The COVID-19 challenge is a personal one
We made the transition from working predominantly in the office, to working wholly remotely in about 24 hours. And it was fine. No dramas, no fuss, no major technology disasters, only a well-executed plan. However for most of us, the challenges set in after the first couple of weeks passed. For some, those challenges were loneliness and the feeling of isolation. Being stuck in the same four walls, no physical interaction with fellow human beings, ending the day with a real sense of being very bored and very alone. For others, the challenge was different. Many in our business were home schooling, trying to effectively do a day job, run the home, teach a child or children and process the fact that there was seemingly no end in sight. Those in the latter camp craved that alone time, time to reflect and process without being prodded, shouted at, or nagged by a little person.
The difficulty this presents is that as leaders we often like cookie cutter solutions. If the masses have a problem with X we want to do Y to solve it for everyone, or at least the 90%. In the case of COVID-19, we couldn’t do that. I’m fortunate to have a diverse leadership team and so we ended up doing a combination of things, none of which were uniformly popular with everyone (well, maybe sending our PayByPhone branded brownies were, for which my EA can take full credit) but each solution did something different. We had a PayByPhone music club where we would share Spotify lists, Zoom quizzes, employee engagement surveys, individual coaching support and more. The diversity of thought within our leadership team understood that not every problem is a nail and therefore not every solution will be a hammer. As one very fond of the hammer approach, I have learned to try and listen more to those who see things differently, often with a more considered view.
Maybe Ed was right all along
When we transitioned from working in the office to all working remotely, as a leadership team we met daily (virtually) to share what was working well and what we needed to improve. At this time COVID-19 was changing daily, Number 10’s daily briefings at that stage were sharing meaningful information which was helping us navigate the business through uncertain times. Those daily meetings as a team became much more than just the practicalities of understanding what the furlough scheme was and what we would do about it, they also became a vehicle for pastoral care between the members of the team. And so we’ve never dropped them from our calendar. As a leadership team we meet now 3 times a week instead of 5 and it has become a staple part of the weekly cadence of our business. My good friend Ed Epply first introduced me to the idea of these and I was reticent at first. There’s nothing quite like a global pandemic to prove your older and wiser friend was right all along.