MAY/JUNE 2020 LEADERSHIP
Strong and clear
leadership will
embed loyalty
amongst your staff
Look for help if you need it
It’s also important to recognise
that you may not have all the
answers and that at times it’s
appropriate to seek support.
The government has provided
some generous packages which
will help many companies.
However, there are many
other organisations offering
support and advice. Between
2008 and 2012, I sought support
from some great organisations
and schemes such as the
Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small
Businesses programme and the
GrowthAccelerator scheme,
which was a governmentbacked
initiative. Many of these
organisations offer free support
and can be invaluable. I still
work with as many as I can. For
example, key organisations in
our industry such as the SMMT
offer advice and support. There
are also many relevant
webinars
available online – many
of them free. There’s no
excuse for failing to keep your
knowledge up-to-date and
relevant – and now more than
ever, connections, knowledge
and inspiration are important.
Remember your customers
It’s also important to keep
communicating with customers
and your target markets. The
companies who have kept in
touch with clients throughout
will be in a much stronger
position as the economy opens
up. Throughout lockdown we
continued to hold sales meetings
via online platforms and keep
our sales pipeline open – this
has meant that as we steadily
re-open, we have orders to fulfil.
Ultimately, in a recession it’s
crucial to keep marketing so your
customers know you are still
there for them, ready to solve
their problems and provide what
they need – whenever they are
able to order again.
We have spent time taking
a fresh look at our website.
The crisis offers the perfect
opportunity to review and
evaluate how well it is (or isn’t)
working for you, to explore
new channels of connecting
with your target market and to
identify where new customers
and sales leads come
from.
If you haven’t
already done so (and you
really should have), ramp up
your social media presence and
PR activity – anything to get the
message out that you are open
for orders and raring to go.
No one knows what the
economy will look like in three
months’ time, six months or a
year. We can’t even be sure what
the world will look like. This is
a challenge that is in some ways
unlike any other that has come
before. But if we keep our heads
and apply principles of great
leadership and good practice,
we can continue leading our
businesses through this crisis
and into the world beyond.
things differently – maybe to see opportunities that
we may have overlooked or to identify new (and
possibly better) ways of doing things. For example,
when writing our business plan during the 2008
recession, we identified an over-exposure in the
UK automotive market and decided to dilute our
dependence on one market and/or customer. As a
result, we decided to repeat the core business in
overseas markets with much success, as well as
diversifying into other markets such as flooring.
In the current situation, we have quickly
adapted our factory at Interflex to be able to make
much-needed PPE. This ensures we are keeping
some elements of production going, which has
enabled us to bring back more staff from
furlough as well as contributing in a small
way to help those on the frontline. In
fact, this diversification has added
a potentially lucrative income
stream which ultimately
strengthens us as a
company.
Plan for the best and the worst
Of course, the situation is still unfolding and
there are many questions that we don’t yet know
the answer to. All the signs point to an economic
recession, which will hopefully prove to be
short-term. The support from the government
has been unprecedented and it’s probable that
some companies will actually emerge stronger
from the lockdown. At Interflex, we are working
towards this outcome, but we have plans in place
for both best and worst case scenarios as being
prepared for different eventualities enables us to
be proactive rather than reactive.
Cashflow is king
If one of the advantages of a crisis is the fact that
it forces us to take a fresh look at our businesses,
one of the greatest challenges is cashflow. It’s
important at all times to ensure that you have
all the information you need to provide a full
and balanced picture of the company’s position
including orders, financial information and
projections. But this becomes even more crucial
during a crisis. Build a good cashflow plan, spend
time analysing it, then break it! After that, work
on how you can plug the gap.
Ideally, you should have robust quarterly
cashflows updated and investigated weekly
with forward planning over a two or three year
period to provide a clear vision of any potential
problems. Of course, very few people will have
predicted the current situation but having
realistic cashflow plans in place will have helped
businesses deal with the COVID crisis more
successfully.
“One of the advantages of a
crisis is that it forces us to
look at things differently.”
Jim Griffin, managing director, Interflex
www.manufacturingmanagement.co.uk 31
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