WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED?

As the world shut down back in March of 2020 we did an office pool around how many weeks or months the lockdown would continue.  I don’t remember the exact numbers, but the longest, most pessimistic view was three months.  

The longest we could imagine lockdowns continuing was three months and most of us (including me) thought it wouldn’t come close to that long.  As I write this, the world, for better or worse, is opening up and it’s been two full years. 

The Stoic philosopher Seneca said, “Nothing happens to the wise man contrary to his own expectations.”

In this case, I think none of us was very wise and we could not imagine two years of restrictions and remote/hybrid work.  

I would ask us all, what did we learn?  

1. We need to be prepared for remote work at all times.
2. Redundancy is non-negotiable.
3. We need financial resources to weather significant storms.

 
How can we be more prepared for the next “unforeseen event” in our businesses?  Let’s break down each of these areas and see where we and how we can improve. 

Being prepared for remote work

Does every staff member have:

• Secure Wi-Fi at home?
• A place to work at home with appropriate furniture?
• A laptop computer and printer/scanner?
• Video conferencing technology?

Do your systems work well remotely?

• Is your phone system location non-specific (VOIP)?
• Are your client files electronic?
• Are your office files cloud-based?
• Do you have DocuSign or similar technology?

Testing your redundancy

What happens when…

• Internet goes down in the office?  Revert to cell phone hotspots and/or remote work.
• A computer fails?  Pull out your spare computer and ensure everyone is using cloud-based office/client files.
• A key person is out?  Identify the team member to pick up responsibilities with documented processes to follow. 
• Team members can’t get to the office?  Revert to remote work. 

Verifying Financial Resources

• What is your business’ monthly burn rate?
• Do you have the business savings to pay your whole team for 3, 6, 9, or 12 months?
• Is your recurring revenue enough to cover your burn rate if you can’t “sell” anything new?
• Do you have enough buffer in your recurring revenue to weather a 15%, 20%, and 30% down market?

In the case of the pandemic, it was lovely that the government mobilized and offered stimulus checks and PPP loans.  But what would have happened if they hadn’t?  

As financial PLANNERS, shouldn’t we have both the systems and financials to weather storms and keep our teams safe and employed during challenging times?

Now is the time to do an After Action Review with your team and look for areas of improvement.  

In our case, we found that our phone system was not as flexible as we would like and we recently upgraded to Voice Over IP (Internet phone system) in order to improve our functionality.

We also identified that with an office move and B/D change, many of our processes are out of date.  Our team is actively working to refresh and improve our process documentation.

What did you learn from the past two years?  What can you improve now for the next unexpected event?

I encourage you to do the Stoic exercise for Premeditatio Malorum, negative visualization.   Imagine the worst so that you can be prepared for it!  Premeditatio Malorum YouTube video

With Purpose,

-Lucila