Recession Proofing Part 2 - Assess Current Reality

In part 2 of this series, "Recession Proofing Your Organization", we will focus on assessing your current reality. What do I mean by that? Assessing :

• Current capabilities
• Resources available
• The state of your people (talent, skills, engagement, capacity)
• Leadership bandwidth
• Productivity
• Margins and profit
• Revenue generation
• Pivot points (new directions you could go immediately)

To prepare for economic downturn, we have to have good information on what we can do right now, how well can we do it, and what does that mean for our long-term viability.

As our world becomes more complex, and the pace of change continues to increase, gaining relevant insight into where you and your organization are today becomes a top priority.

Assess

Assess means many things to many people. For our focus, it is defined as using a tool to gather good data that can bring clarity and focus which empowers better decisions and actions. Assessments come in a variety of forms:

• Validated assessments (psychological, scientific)
• Observation by someone with relevant experience and expertise
• Surveys that have a rating system
• Deep dive into your current data sources (are they giving you the information you need)

Assessing can be done on an organizational level, a team level, or an individual level. Macro to micro.

To start, here is a free assessment that will bring clarity to people challenges and opportunities in your organization: Take the assessment

Opportunity Focus

In keeping with our focus on opportunities during a recession (whenever a recession might come), people will have the biggest influence on results and success. So, how can we assess the people side of our organization to get the clarity that we need, to create the best path forward? We start by assessing:

1. Culture & Engagement - these two go hand in hand. The better the culture, the greater the engagement. But what is a good culture? One that unlocks ideas, innovation, open and honest conversations, shared purpose, shared values, collaboration, accountability, personal ownership, and excellence in customer service (both internal and external customers).
2. Skills & Experience Inventory - knowing what skills and experience you have in your people and what may be missing. You can have an excellent culture and high engagement but if people do not have the skills they need, you will get enthusiastic incompetence (people wanting to do the right thing but not equipped to be successful).
3. Leadership - are leaders equipped to lead? What does their current leadership impact look like? How much leadership bandwidth is available? How are leadership efforts impacting culture and engagement? All of these questions are critical to getting the results desired. Leadership is important all the time. During a recession, it is absolutely critical!
4. Vitality & Climate - Vitality is the energy that an individual, team, and organization has to put toward the effort. The best way to describe this is to talk about the "Energy Exchange". When you wake up in the morning, you have 100% of your energy to spend that day. Then something happens. All of the things we are dealing with internally comes into focus. As a result, energy is diverted internally to manage all of those issues. What is left over is available to go to external efforts. This is why it is critical to identify internal challenges and remove as many roadblocks as possible, freeing up time, focus , and energy for getting important things done. Back to Vitality and Climate. Not just any "Climate Survey" will give you what you truly need...actionable data.  Have you done a climate survey recently. I have seen many in working with my clients. They all have one thing in common, TONS of data, but very little "how to improve" step by step guidance. What good is data if you don't have a clear pathway to make the needed changes? We use what I have found to be the best "assessment" for these important measures, the Vital Signs assessments by Six Seconds. For more on this, check out our blog on Team Vitality here. There are also assessments for leaders and for an entire organization. You can also check out the Workplace Vitality Report 2022 by Six Seconds.

If all you do is focus on these four areas to assess right now, you will gain valuable insight into what is working well, what needs to be improved, and what is missing on the people side of your business. That is a very proactive approach to preparing for whatever comes next. Prepare then grow. This is a simple but profound method to achieve success. But to prepare, you must know how to prepare, and that comes from a good assessment process.

Assess - Equip - Align - Succeed

Assess is the first step in our proven process. It should be yours as well. Better data leads to better decisions. Don't guess - assess.

 For more, check out our other resources:

EQFIT® YouTube Channel

EQFIT® Blog

EQFIT® Podcast

 Copyright © 2023 EQFIT® - Author: Steven Goodner. All rights reserved. No portion of this material may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact: [email protected]