Leadership is the science and the art of managing and implementing change with minimal social turbulence. In the wake of the challenges posed by COVID-19 and given the numerous challenges posed by the incumbent economic scenario, it becomes imperative for business leaders around the world to adapt their leadership style and approach to the next normal.

Change management and digital transformation are two key imperatives of this next normal. With remote work and social distancing being the norms of the day, a cloud-based CRM such as Salesforce.com can help your enterprise tide over the gap between the old and the new normal.  We take a look at how leaders can adapt their approach to the next normal and guide their organizations towards business continuity and growth.

1. Be receptive towards the changed needs of your employees: While appraisals, increments and promotions can wait till the next year, your employees seek continuity of their employment and engagement within it from you as a leader. They seek to learn new skills and acquire new capabilities and competencies to make themselves stay professionally relevant amidst the dynamism of the current scenario. While working from home and embracing all necessary precautions to beat the pandemic, they need to stay busy and engaged in relevant work responsibilities to stay on top of the feelings of potential anxiety and panic that could arise within them. The least you can do as a leader is to assuage their apprehensions and bring digital transformation throughout the organization through a CRM-driven streamlining and automation of key processes and operations.
2. Be prepared to address changed customer expectations: Your customers are not unaffected by the pandemic-inflicted dynamism and crisis. Once you take cognizance of this fact along with the business need to serve the customers amidst their evolved needs and expectations from you as their service provider, you as a leader would start arriving at the right set of decisions for your business. Know that the old ways of working may no longer be relevant, and both you and your business would need to rediscover your key responsibilities and priorities, given the demand of the situation. Your customers give business, and they’d continue to do so only when your customer service takes cognizance of and addresses evolved customer expectations. Your role as a leader thus turns out to be of paramount importance as far as serving and servicing the customer is concerned.
3. Choose the right digital platform for your business: Innovation need not always be restricted to your products and processes. They could well extend to include your choices regarding technology and quality. Salesforce.com could be the answer to many of the challenges your organization might be currently facing, as you go on to decide whether your business needs to implement and adopt an enterprise or a function-level cloud. Doing so won’t just eliminate teething bottlenecks from your processes and operations, but would also elevate them to a higher level of agility, quality and innovation. And cloud forms an ideal platform for your business to embrace practices such as remote work and social distancing, while keeping your operations stable, steady and secure. You as a leader need to make the right choice as far as change management and digital transformation are concerned.
4. Find the right consulting partner for your business: You as a leader need to search for the right business consultant, who’d diagnose your existing business situation, gather your functional requirements, translate them in to technical equivalent, advise you on custom CRM implementation and perform and support it with post-implementation measures. The role of your consulting partner becomes important for you to spot the right business areas needing change and improvement, and transform those areas in a planned and phased manner. Your consultant doesn’t just play a one-time role; he is there to ensure that your entire organization successfully takes the leap of digital transformation and reap desired benefits out of it. An ideal consultant for your business would be a trusted Salesforce partner, who’d ensure a thorough implementation of the custom cloud and top it up with periodic upgradations and integrations. You as a leader therefore need to partner with the right party and your job is half done. The other half is to leverage upon the partnership to bring external perspective and other desired benefits for your organization.
5. Inspire and motivate everyone with your actions: As a business leader, know that you’re a role model and your actions and behaviour make or break others around you. You need to walk the talk and set the right example by being pro-active in your work actions and business decisions. It’s your business wisdom and mental tenacity that get thoroughly tested during such challenging times. As a leader, you need to ensure that your organization successfully leaps from the old ways of working to the next normal. And it’s your duty to ensure that your business does so with minimal collateral damage and maximized leverage. It could well mean doing business the smarter way and looking for profitability ahead of revenue as far as priorities are concerned. You’d do well to focus on retaining your existing customers and employees instead of trying to add new ones, though it may not be always the case and depends on your specific business situation.

All in all, when your transform your leadership to suit the new normal, your entire organization would follow suit. Salesforce.com is a premier CRM software and solutions builder and enabler for businesses across industries, geographies and verticals. Embracing Salesforce as the fresh way of business could only mean that you’ve successfully crossed the continuum into the new normal.

ABSYZ is a trusted Salesforce partner that has been helping business transform themselves digitally for over a decade now. As a capable business consultant, we are there for you to help your business, leadership and technology adapt to the new normal.

To know more about the service capabilities and the inherent solutions offered by ABSYZ, contact us.