Conquering the organizational challenges of Covid-19
With normal transformation programs, firms are generally in control of the timeframe, but Covid-19 is forcing transformation, with the spread of the disease setting the timeline and driving the agenda.
Conquering the organizational challenges of Covid-19
The current Covid-19 global health crisis is unpredictable and evolving quickly, and businesses worldwide are scrambling to manage the impact not only on people but also on their future. With normal transformation programs, firms are generally in control of the timeframe, but Covid-19 is forcing transformation, with the spread of the disease setting the timeline and driving the agenda. “Just recently somebody sent me a survey asking: ‘Who’s driving your digitalization: One, your CEO; two, your CFO; three, Covid-19’,” said Björn Menden, Managing Partner, Detecon. As well as restructuring client business models for Detecon, Menden is part of a new TM Forum collaboration project called Digital Organizational Transformation (DOT), which helps companies realize the full potential of transformation by addressing organizational and cultural change. The project is instrumental in facilitating organizational and cultural change in companies by using the TM Forum’s Digital Maturity Model (DMM) to set the change agenda, then focusing on the processes and capabilities needed to address issues and implement changes. Key tools include OrgVue’s workforce modelling platform, Detecon’s consultation and integration, and The GC Index® organimetric (organization metric). I spoke to Menden, and two of his project collaborators – Mike Smith, Telco Client Director, OrgVue, and Nathan Ott, Chief Polisher, The GC Index® – about the organizational impact the Covid-19 pandemic is having on businesses. All three were instrumental in developing the DOT project, which has grown out of an incubated Catalyst proof of concept.
Covid-19: Survive before you thrive
“There are two stages, both are going be on the mind of every single CEO,” says Ott, “The first is survival mode: Employees and companies trying to pay bills and stay afloat. Then they move into when and how to become productive, indeed competitive, in the new normal.” In Smith’s conversations with clients, specifically in their response to Covid-19, he describes seeing a similar three-step journey: Menden, Ott and Smith all agree that in line with digital transformation and the DOT project, there are two crucial areas communications service providers (CSPs) should focus on: people and business.
- Emergency response – using data to understand current status and well-being of the workforce
- Crisis management – how to maintain the provision of critical products and services
- Focus on the future – thinking ahead about how to accelerate post-crisis recovery
People: How and where is everyone?
Where people are working disparately and in unusual conditions, companies require an overview of employee data including physical health, mental health, dependencies, location and infrastructure. “There are a myriad of newly formed distributed workforces and remote workers across organizations that are under a new level of stress that can manifest negatively on the wellbeing of our people,” explains Ott, adding that given the sudden forced changes in their workplaces, it is more important than ever before for people to feel connected to and valued by the business by being able to individually and collectively make a contribution.
“Historically, this kind of focus on well-being and mindfulness has been regarded as ‘intangible’ and ‘complex’ by more commercially focused individuals,” Ott says. “But organizations are learning this people-impact data is key in monitoring and enabling a potent workforce during this pandemic.”
When he says “potent” Ott means individuals who are not merely engaged with a company but are making a valued impact: “If you’re not making an impact and you’re not valued, it starts to manifest in different ways, whether it be disengagement, depression, anxiety or however else.” This is where The GC Index® can help by connecting the impact on people to business outcomes, looking into areas such as employee well-being, the environments they’re working in, open communications, whether the right people are doing the right work, if they’re actually energized by that work and if they’re making a contribution.
Business: Providing critical services
This global health emergency has highlighted the important role CSPs play in such scenarios beyond simple connectivity. With this role comes increasing pressures. To address them, operators should focus on providing critical services and products. Specifically they need to: Menden says that to maintain these critical services, CSPs must bear down on the processes that enable them.
- Identify critical functions and roles
- Determining how to keep critical functions running
- Tracking the health status of employees – especially those performing critical functions
“One of the most mission critical infrastructures at the moment is telecommunications,” he explains. “[CSPs] need to digitize their processes, safeguard their processes and take maintenance of those processes into account.”
Propelled by data
All these suggested responses to Covid-19 are essentially data-driven approaches, and they are entirely dependent on whether organizations are geared up to collect the necessary data.
“At the moment, people, businesses and governments are figuring out which way is up,” says Smith. “They’re starting to think about what they do and very much looking at ‘How do we collect data?’.”
He adds that while in the past lack of data and quality concerns have sometimes been a barrier, data is now a necessity and he is encouraged by how ably and quickly businesses are gathering and utilizing the essential information.
“I’m not suggesting people go out on this big data hunt because there’s probably not enough time, but people who have got it are using it,” he says. “The key thing to getting the data they need fast is using the technology they already have, to meet these people and business challenges."
Smith asserts that at the end of the day, the health crisis represents a different set of business challenges, where data is key: “The devil’s in the details, like which roles are critical, who is available to work and so on, and then being able to bring all of that together.”
Looking forward
CSPs and their business customers need to plan for recovery, and the DOT team has suggestions for questions operators should be asking themselves:
- What kind of recovery are we expecting: V shaped, U shaped, W shaped or any other type?
- What are the key measures we will use as scenario indicators and triggers?
- What is the financial impact going to be?
- Where are we overstretched? Where are we quiet? How can we redeploy?
- What will be our ‘new normal’?
- How do we model future business scenarios and corresponding organizations from where we are today?
- How will we manage workforce supply and demand?
- How do we align our people for the positive impact they can all make to this transformational change?
- How are our disparate teams and distributed workforces contributing to the changing demands of the organization?
- How do we ensure that our workforce feels potent in their roles/teams as the changing conditions of the pandemic play out?
The sense of a structure
Emergency response is driving businesses to gather data, implement modelling and make changes because they have to, but according to the DOT team, it’s all a bit ad hoc. They agree that this work could ultimately be more manageable and deliver more strategic ongoing organizational benefits if delivered through a more structured framework.
Says Ott: “I think what I am seeing so far is that organizations have three core streams of activities as they move from survival to new normal to future opportunities (at their own pace for their respective journeys): Business as usual; incremental change like improving working practices; and transformational change such as changing business models that were never previously thought possible.”
With the right data and organizational modelling capability, organizations can best adapt and address each stream either separately or concurrently using a DOT-style approach. First utilizing the Forum’s Digital Maturity Model by assessing the company’s maturity in the area of ‘Culture, People, and Organization’ to identify where transformation or improvement is needed and where focus and investment is required. The project then takes a data-driven and technology-enabled approach to graphically model the ‘as-is’ and ‘to-be’ organizations, their people and costs for various departments and processes, and assesses the impact of any changes. OrgVue’s workforce analytics platform designs the resulting new organizational structure, manages the transition and then propels ongoing organization effectiveness, complemented by the GC Index® which can work out whether the team contains the full range of skills required to be effective and successful. Despite the current crisis, organizations have the power to make their people feel potent and deliver a transformational culture that can adapt and thrive not just when we get back to the ‘new normal’, but in any further uncertain times the future holds.