Prior to COVID-19, your organization may have had long-term transformation plans that are likely no longer applicable in the current environment. Rather than pushing through with an irrelevant strategy, you’ll need to revisit or alter your approach based on the changes brought on by these uncertain times. Regardless of the industry, refining your organization’s business strategy will require comprehensive data about the current state and careful planning for the future.

When refining your organization’s business strategy during these changing times, foresight should be a key component. Your organization should analyze both past and current trends to forecast future scenarios and prepare applicable plans. Foresight must be contextualized with empathy to become actionable. It's important to keep in mind how these trends affect your employees and customers, and how to reposition them to benefit your organization.

To adapt your organization’s business strategy during COVID-19, or if your organization did not enable transformation plans prior to the pandemic, building a future-state model is the best place to start. A future-state model organizes your strategy visually, identifies the critical capabilities needed to execute the strategy and analyze the impact on operations, employees and consumers. Simplistically, it is your organization reimagined in detail as it will operate post-COVID-19. Having a singular, end-to-end view of your business strategy will help you mitigate the risk of unintended complications, ensure the right team members are engaged and maximize value. When building your future-state model, focus on keeping it active, meaning continuous strategy refinement is critical.

By evaluating and refining your organization’s business strategy, you will enable your organization to achieve long-term market advantages such as greater liquidity through fiscal discipline, higher productivity and workforce flexibility to quickly scale up. If your organization previously invested in improvements, examine how those improvements are aligned with the new strategy. If enhancements were made to boost operational efficiencies, for example, determine whether you should keep prices low or even reduce prices, to garner a greater share of the available market. Looking at previous internal investments and applying those to your strategy can help move the refining process along. Once coming to consensus on the goals of your refined business strategy, translate those into sustainable leverage over the competition.

For more information about refining your business strategy post-COVID-19, read the Resilience Playbook for strategies to implement and combat these uncertain times.