Accra, Ghana, August 17, 2020//-The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of MTN Ghana CEO, Selorm Adadevoh has offered five strategies which could address the impacts of COVID-19 crisis and other crises if businesses implement them religiously.
These strategies he mentioned are first: acceptance and acknowledge the uncertain; find the certain within the uncertainty.
Second, demonstrate the right dose of empathy. Third, absolute transparency; fourth, humility: listen to others, give them a voice.
Fifth, passing the rest of leadership, you need strategic patience, stamina, and resilience.
Remain calm
Mr Adadevoh also advised business leaders to remain calm, separate the certainties from the uncertainties, boost worker confidence rather than demoralizing them with layoffs and pay cuts as some have done and take advantage of the boom in the digital space.
“This is the time for leaders to show their workers that we are indeed a team and we need each other to fight the crisis together and also prepares to minimize our losses as life to return to the new normal,” he said.
Mr Adadevoh made these known when he spoke on the topic: ‘Leadership in Unconventional Times’ on Springboard Virtual University in Accra.
3 levels of disruptions
According to him, the devastating COVID-19 pandemic has triggered three levels of disruptions, resulting in some uncertainties going forward.
Mr Adadevoh noted that the pandemic had disrupted the plans of businesses for 2020 and changed their direction of investments and operations.
He added that the impact of the pandemic on the national economy and on the international community also presents uncertainties for all businesses going into 2021.
The new normal
The new normal, as COVID-19 has revealed would be heavily driven by digitization and that is where business and national leaders must focus going forward, because that is where the opportunities are for both big and small businesses, according to him.
In his words: “Beside big businesses moving most of their operations unto digital platforms to support the working-from-home system, small corner shops, churches, education, health delivery, legal/judicial services and even domestic activities have gone digital and that will continue to grow”
Mr Adadevoh was quick to add that even homes have assumed added functions as business locations on the back of digital.
Businesses must focus on equipping homes to improve on their new function, while maintaining their traditional purpose as homes, he stressed.
There is a heightened focus on personal health which presents opportunities for businesses in that sector to strategize and meet that need, the CEO observed.
He urged businesses not to lose sight of the fact that life is gradually returning to normal and that will give rise to what he called “normalization risks”.
“It is important that business leaders direct their teams to strategize towards minimizing the normalization risks while they are dealing with the current COVID-19 crisis”.
The chances for business leaders to focus on effectively containing the COVID-19 pandemic and overlooking the need to strategize to avoid the normalization risks is very high, so this should be a wakeup call to start preparing as things return to normal, Mr Adadevoh advised.
In the past, many businesses have managed to survive very serious crisis, but a few years after the crisis they collapsed because they were not able to contain the risks that came with things returning to normalcy.
“Of what gain is a strategy to scale and survive a crisis only to fail after a few years because you were not ready for the risks associated with the return to normalcy?” he asked, adding, “a good leader would always have an eye on how to contain the future normalization risks, while dealing with the crisis in the now.”
What MTN is doing
Mr Adadevoh said: “At MTN we are confident that even though it is not very clear what exactly the new normal will look like, our strategy of calmness in the face of the crisis and the heavy focus on digital in both our own operations and in terms of our investments to serve our customers is a winner”.
He continued: “While businesses were laying off workers we chose to assure our staff that no one was going home and that brought calmness and the will to fight.
Again, we have since been very rapid with our focus on delivering on our digital strategy and we will continue to investment more in that area to meet customer needs”.
African Eye Report
