Dealing with Epidemics
One of the first tasks I was set in one of my roles was to prepare our office’s “Bird Flu” plan. At the time, this virus was moving quickly thanks to its transmission by members of the avian community. This increased the challenge as, unlike people, you can’t test birds flying over your borders for infection.
When planning how to deal with an epidemic, there are certain steps I found one could (and should) take:
Understand it - information includes (but is not limited to):
- How/where does/did it arise (e.g. unsafe animal husbandry practices)?
- What are the symptoms?
- How is it transmitted?
- When are carriers infectious (before or when they show symptoms)?
- How easy is it to check for the virus (e.g. temperature checking, or is specialist equipment needed)?
- What is the infection rate?
- How is it transmitted (air, bodily contact, touching objects)?
- What happens to those found to be carrying it (simple medication, isolation)?
- Who is most at risk?
From this, we can start to develop our ideas and strategies. For example:
What will be the impact on our own business?
- How will it impact delivery of vital goods/services by suppliers?
- What are their plans?
- What could be the impact on our colleagues/staff?
- What happens if (say) 50% caught the virus/had to care for family members who had caught it?
- Would local medical facilities be able to cope with a surge in infected victims?
- What legal implications (if any) do we face if people become infected on our premises?
How can we protect ourselves, our colleagues, their families and our business?
- Isolation methods (masks, increased hygiene, increase frequency and intensity of cleaning, quarantine)?
- What protocols do we have for isolation, communication, safety?
- Work from home?
- Avoid public areas as much as possible?
- Halt all business travel?
Local authorities:
- What guidelines (if any) have they given?
- What immediate action is needed/can be taken?
- What do we need to report to them?
- What support can we expect from them?
- Whom should we turn to for advice and support?
Contingency plans:
- At what point (if any) do we close the business temporarily?
- Which customers could be impacted the most?
- What are the likely costs (e.g. lost business, litigation, reputation)?
- How soon can we resume “Business as Usual”?
- Do we have the finances to support a long period of closure?
The what why when how where who questions come into their own when it comes to this sort of thing. One hopes that the plan remains “on the shelf” and never has to be used.
I have spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With more than 20 years in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email. My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services. For strategic questions that you should be asking yourself, follow me at @wkm610.
Labels: Crisis Management, Customer Care, Leadership, Strategy, Teamwork
Focus or Diversify?
The current COVID-19 (coronavirus) epidemic sweeping China has resulted in over 75,000 cases of infection and, sadly, over 2,000 deaths as at the time of writing this article.
The difference between this outbreak and that of SARS in 2003 seems to be a higher infection rate but (at least so far) a mercifully lower fatality rate. Recovery rates also seem to be higher, with fatalities mainly confined to those with weaker immune systems or breathing problems.
One of the main causes of the higher rate of spread in the case of COVID-19 was that it struck just as people were preparing to leave the city of Wuhan (“ground zero”) for their Lunar New Year holidays. This is a time when Chinese traditionally return to their families, so the rate of infection was bound to increase.
Among the other impacts of the epidemic was the closure of factories to prevent healthy workers being infected by those who were. This has resulted in stoppages in and/or lower rates of production for companies such as Apple, who are likely to see lower sales of new devices and hence lower revenues.
On the consumer side, goods produced in China may be in shorter supply and/or prices may increase. This means that production across the world may also slow down to lack of components manufactured in China.
Due to the US’ “trade war” and the resulting tariffs imposed on China-made goods, some manufacturers had already looked into and indeed started shifting production to other countries in Asia. The COVID-19 epidemic has resulted in more looking to do this, and accelerated plans amongst others.
China has become the world’s factory owing to:
- An abundant supply of cheap labour
- Reasonably well-educated (or at least trainable) workers
- Improving quality standards
- A weak currency
Many may now be realising that they have put their eggs into the proverbial single basket.
Tempting as it is to concentrate supply in the cheapest area (after all, that increases our profit margins and keeps the shareholders happy), it also means that our supply lines can be subject to unforeseen shocks, whether legislative (the US/China “trade war”), natural (earthquakes, tsunamis, epidemics) or man-made (wars or civil insurrection). An alternative would be to maintain supply in several areas, with perhaps one being the “main” source, whilst others could be scaled up quickly in the event of problems arising.
Perhaps diversification is still a sensible way to go…
I have spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With more than 20 years in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email. My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services. For strategic questions that you should be asking yourself, follow me at @wkm610.
Missing Making Money
I had a salutory learning experience in a local restaurant recently. We had taken our office team out to lunch to celebrate various milestones, so everyone was looking forward to a good meal.
We were a party of six, so that promised to add up to a “healthy bill” for the restaurant. Sadly, they missed a few tricks.
The first was to make sure that we all ordered as much as possible (more orders = more money = more revenues for the restaurant). Several of us weren’t asked “Are you sure you don’t want a starter?” or “Would you like a starter as well?”.
In my case certainly, I wasn’t asked this, nor was I asked, “Would you like to order a drink as well?” (or similar). I didn’t actually want a drink as there was already water on the table with which I was happy.
So, two opportunities missed with me (at least).
The third issue was that the ingredients for one of the desserts ordered (they also didn’t ask if I wanted to order dessert when they took my order) weren’t actually available. However, we weren’t told until those who had ordered desserts asked why that particular dessert didn’t appear…. They did ask if we’d like to order something else, but we were then thinking about getting back to the office, so we cancelled.
Question, were they aware that that dessert “wasn’t available” but forgot to tell us, or did chef forget to tell them?
Our last laugh came when we were told the coffee machine had broken down and hadn’t been repaired. That restaurant was not having a good day…
It made me ask myself how many opportunities I’ve missed to sell an extra service through lack of awareness or concentration. We all have our “off days” and maybe this was one for that particular restaurant. The question is, how do we go about fixing this?
I’m a great believer in training - the more the better. For staff working in restaurants, it should be automatic to ask diners if they want to order each course (if the say no, fine), and if they want to order drinks or extra drinks.
How would it work in your business? How would you make sure you got “more orders = more money = more revenues”?
I've spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With more than 20 years in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email. My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services. For strategic questions that you should be asking yourself, follow me at @wkm610.
Labels: Customer Care, Selling
