Under Pressure
One day your firm is riding high on the crest of a wave. Sales have doubled over the past year and everything appears to be running smoothly, and then the next day a pandemic rears its ugly head, triggering a macroeconomic, political event, or some other circumstance beyond your control, and you are plunged into the mother of all crises, at no fault of your own. Myriad thoughts go through your head; you remember all the expansion plans you had, the projects for enlarging the workshop and hiring more staff. From boom to bust in a matter of days.
Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. The important thing in any case is to stay on track both in the good times, when everything is going well, and in the bad times, when everything seems to be going wrong. To do so, you need to be able to empathise without letting your feelings run astray. This is where emotional agility comes into play, a state that enables you to make the right decisions even when you are under enormous pressure.
Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. The important thing in any case is to stay on track both in the good times, when everything is going well, and in the bad times, when everything seems to be going wrong.
This renders it essential to stay focused. Having the right software will provide you with data for objectively assessing what is happening in your firm. This helps to pre-empt possible non-compliances that may cause a problem during those boom times when everything seems to be working perfectly, as well as identify those areas that need support when the firm is not doing so well. This enables you to focus on decision-making, avoiding having to dedicate part of your own time to data-gathering.
If we use the analogy of a car, this would be the same as when you are driving along a straight stretch of road, everything appears to be fine, you can accelerate confidently, and it does not really matter what car you are driving. You suddenly realise there is a tight bend ahead and you begin to worry whether your car will be able to respond to avoid an accident, whether you will be capable of taking the bend safely and continuing along the next straight. The brakes, the tyres and all the car’s other components in a firm would be the machinery, the software and your partners. Being better equipped may make the difference when rounding the bend and continuing along the next stretch of road.
Over the past few months, you are certain to have heard it said on numerous occasions that only those firms that manage to transform themselves into truly digital plants would successfully adapt to these new times. I believe that those with a clear understanding of their differential features and how to exploit them will be the ones that will manage to adapt. Within this process, digitisation constitutes a bonus that will enable them to make the best possible use of the opportunities forthcoming within these scenarios of uncertainty.
