Communications, Planning & Agile Working In Uncertain Times
We really are living in uncertain times and having an agile methodology has become increasingly a necessity. Have you come across the acronym VUCA? It’s a term, first coined by the US military, used to describe the world we currently live in: volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. All the things the human mind has difficulty dealing with. So how does VUCA relate to agile methodology?
Time for a different VUCA?
In order to cope with this situation, we need another VUCA: vision, understanding, collaboration, and agility.
Vision: have a clear vision for your business and how you communicate with clients, suppliers, and staff
Understanding: clearly disseminate news of the latest updates to keep people informed, and demonstrate an understanding of others’ points of view, as well as the problems we’re trying to fix.
Community: encourage and support working together and collaboration to find the best solutions.
Agility: respond quickly to change, enable your business to allow agile working
Support And Guidance
We are here to support you if you need any help moving more of your trade online, or if you need advice on marketing your business and communicating with your customers, while priorities have shifted so far from just ‘normal life’. Agile working enables your business to become more adaptable and flexible with its plans.
As people, we all continue to have needs, continue to consume, continue to discover new depths in our relationships, continue to develop new skills (or hone old ones), and continue to explore different perspectives in our work-life balance.
There are still opportunities for organisations in certain sectors or those that adapt quickly and adopt an agile methodology. But these are exceptional times and ‘business as normal’ is not normal.
If you genuinely have something that can help your customers, improve their situations, or help them improve other people’s lives, reaching out in an appropriate and timely manner is key. If not, pause, reflect and review.
Business as normal is not normal
Agile Working Adapting Your Business
Many who follow the world of digital start ups will be familiar the term to ‘pivot’. It means to change direction, often radically, when an initial idea fails to get traction, but the underlying business concept is still viable in a different format. This can either be another target market, changing the method of delivery, or switching up how users interact and communicate with your product or services.
All of which is applicable to many businesses right now. The Government had previously laid out some guidance on agile working which you can find here.
A tap may have been turned off on your traditional way of trading, but for some, there may be new opportunities out there. If you haven’t really explored online channels, click & collect, or new platforms, now could be your time to pivot.
The beauty of digital is that it’s relatively easy to get something up and running quickly, at minimal cost, to test an idea. And it’s a way of working that we are quite used to. So if you want to pivot and trade your way out of this, what’s holding you back? Talk to us & maybe we can help you quickly get things moving.
Agile Methodology, Remote Working Advice
Most people are now getting to grips with remote communications, but managing a team and making longer-term plans in a creative and coordinated way can be more of a challenge.
We’re experts in running agile projects, remote working, communications and planning, and are used to working remotely as a team, in different countries around the world, using video conferencing, collaborative online spaces and liaising with our clients via messaging apps. If you need any advice on how to do this effectively for your business, please just ask.
If you are working from home and not used to this, maybe we can help.
We are used to working remotely as a team in different locations and countries, with the help of some really useful tools for video conferencing, collaborative online spaces and liaising with our clients via messaging apps, so if you need any advice on how to do this effectively, please just ask!
We’ll keep you up to date about any other changes.
