No matter what industry you are in, whether you are working in small or globally known companies, the truth is, you have been affected by the ongoing pandemic. Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, imparted important growth opportunity advice which can help you survive and thrive amidst the present situations.
Sustaining intellectual humility
Company leaders should be humble to admit that the strategies worked before are not applicable anymore with the situation right now. Keep in mind that a company that can innovate obtains a secure place in the future.
There’s nothing wrong revealing how companies feel about the strange reality brought about by COVID-19. Identifying what you feel and the struggles that the company is currently facing is beneficial in order to come up with vital solutions.
Make quality decisions quickly
Having said that, when the company already determined its present struggles, it is important to make quality decisions quickly.
Bezos highlighted to based decisions according to the facts provided by stakeholders and most importantly, by the customers.
“While you may not have clear answers to how your firm can compete during the pandemic, you should use your knowledge of your customers evolving needs to focus your brainstorming process. Try out the ideas that top your list, get feedback, build on what works and fix what doesn’t,” as Peter Cohan described in the report of Inc.
Obsess over customer
Another growth opportunity advice from Bezos is to obsess over customers. What does that mean? Today, businesses, and even your competitors are doing trial and error to determine what’s the best business model to adopt in today’s new normal.
However, Bezos shared that it is important to focus on customer’s feedback. It is important to learn about their behavior nowadays because consumers will be never satisfied. Customers will always seek for better products and services.
Company leaders should learn to capture information about how to captivate their customers to cope up with pandemic.
Fight bureaucracy
Layers of business processes might be hurtful to your company, especially today that immediate responses are needed to thrive. Practices and processes may have been applicable to your company before, but again, there are things from the past that will no longer be beneficial for today.
Assess your business processes today so that you will know if these hinder your company to respond to the needs of your customers. By this, you can eliminate unnecessary operations and come up with better ones.
Sometimes elimination is the key to optimization.
Embrace external trends
“Leaders should position their companies to turn strong trends outside the company into tailwinds that propel a company’s growth,” Bezos stated.
Covid-19 is the new strong trends outside the company. But unlike the other trends before, Covid-19 and its externalities are challenges that are difficult to convert into growth opportunities for businesses.
This will remain a challenge to companies on how to offer products and services that customers will value in today’s new normal.