What tool will help to turn the despair and fear caused by COVID-19 into the energy of the company's profit growth?

Governments take large-scale measures to resist the coronavirus, companies are trying to quickly adapt to the changing needs of their employees, the consumers’ and suppliers’ expectations, while solving their financial and operational problems. With each industry, function, or region affected by the virus, the number of potential changes to consider can grow enormously. The coronavirus pandemic can change entire industries — patterns of behavior of companies and consumers. Switching to online and shifting employees to remote work can be a long-term trend. All this will certainly affect companies and their activities.

Not everyone is ready for new challenges and has already begun to experience certain problems that are very important to deal with in time for the company to emerge with benefits from the crisis. Sure, the challenge appeared to be tougher for companies that were not ready to work remotely. In Deloitte’s report 2021 Global Human Capital Trends “The social enterprise in a world disrupted”, they provided the data on a survey of business activities in a crisis. The results show that managers of large companies faced many obstacles that they have to overcome in the process of reorganizing their work.

What are these challenges? Many priorities that conflict with each other (57% in the world and 41% in Ukraine), insufficient level of readiness for that (43 % in the world and 71% in Ukraine), lack of vision for future development (27% in the world and 12% in Ukraine), limited financial opportunities (20% in the world and 23% in Ukraine). Only 17% of global managers and 11% of Ukrainian managers reported the full readiness of their organizations to adapt and retrain employees to perform new functions.

Each team overcomes crisis stages during its development. In my opinion, it is impossible to develop without crises, and a team cannot always be “friendly” and “cohesive”. When there is a crisis in a team, employees stop hearing each other (especially now, when people work remotely), and management loses vigilance and control. This is the moment when a company comes across a difficult time. It is essential not to miss this moment and to have enough time to reformat the company’s work in light of new global challenges.

A manager sets goals and objectives that their company should have. However, employees can’t understand that, consequently, the relationship “manager-employee” is interrupted. So, there is a misunderstanding between them, which negatively affects the company and its business performance. A crisis is a natural process of transformation. Only if the team is successful, everything can come into place again. The company’s employees will begin to understand each other and work together for achieving common goals and results. After all, to successfully pass through the turbulent times of crisis and achieve a financial result, it is necessary that the management and the team work in great harmony.

However, if the crisis phase lasts and is not resolved in time, the team may lose some valuable employees. This will lead to the loss of market share or planned profits, or even to the closure of promising areas and specific projects due to improper transformation of the company. To help the company overcome the crisis effectively and as quickly as possible, there is a system facilitator who facilitates organizations, business and business processes.

People often confuse facilitators with business coaches or coaches, but they have different roles and tasks. A trainer helps employees develop new skills and gain knowledge on a specific topic. A coach helps the staff achieve goals in the given directions. A facilitator helps an owner (CEO) look at the whole business system in general and from the outside. The main facilitator’s task is to identify systemic violations and contradictions, find the shortcuts to solving issues, and achieve the ultimate goal with minimal losses. Unlike coaching sessions, facilitation is never the same for different companies, as each organization (as well as a person) is always unique, and has its processes, tasks, and goals.

How can we benefit from the facilitation process, especially now, when the country and the world are in crisis? Everything is very simple. Facilitation is a preventive measure. It is better to prevent a crisis than to dive into its depths and perhaps not be able to emerge from it. A facilitator reveals recurring problems for an owner (CEO) and explains why they occur or recur. A wise leader, who realizes that the external environment has changed dramatically, will analyze it and begin to look for new tools to start managing the process again. They will be the master of the situation, not its hostage. Large companies and governments in many countries have been using business facilitation as a tool to address the most complex crises for decades. To remain a leader during the crisis, to receive the planned profit, it is crucial to reorganize your team, reformat your business goals and objectives, to notice and use new opportunities for financial growth.

During facilitation, unique conditions are created, under which managers can not only present their vision of the company’s development but also make a significant contribution to the joint solution of crisis problems. Facilitation makes it possible to eliminate internal conflicts within the team and direct it to achieve a common result.

Facilitation is an effective tool for solving team tasks. This is a method of professionals, and in the crisis period, its scope has only expanded. Facilitation, among other things, is the shortest way to the goal!

This year, S&P Agency Investment Risk Management has expanded its practice and opened a direction of facilitation of businesses and business processes. Oksana Korolovych heads this direction. She is a partner of S&P Agency, a certified systemic therapist, facilitator, and advisor. Oksana Korolovych carries out complex facilitation of businesses and business processes of the companies, solving many difficult problems in the shortest possible time.