Manage the Corona Impact

Clear and decisive governance is an essential success factor during turbulent times. It helps to set direction and enables quick and transparent decisions. Furthermore, it provides orientation and structure in the short-term, as well as a means for coordinating strategic measures required to reset the course after the crisis.

In the short run, business leaders need to ensure the ability to act. This includes:

• Setting up a cross-functional crisis response task force
• Speeding up decision-making processes
• Modeling crisis impact scenarios
• Monitoring crucial performance indicators
• Quickly establishing adequate communication channels

In the mid-term, focus needs to shift towards stabilization and the time after the crisis. This includes:

• Planning, prioritizing, and structuring improvement programs
• Identifying quick win improvements
• Orchestrating improvement measures for all corporate functions
• Continuing to model future scenarios
• Updating steering principles

When implementing new governance principles, business leaders need to act fast and keep the following success factors in mind:

• Employ a top-down approach for topics that need to be centrally coordinated
• Nominate cross-functional representatives for crisis response and program management
• Empower managers to make quick and bold decisions during implementation
• Bundle all improvement and transformation measures across functions
• Communicate (new) steering and decision principles openly