Uncertain Times Require Diverse Viewpoints
story by: Ralph de la Vega
One day, once this crisis is over, we’re going to look back and marvel at the impressive juggling act senior business leaders are executing during these difficult times.
Lockdowns. Declining revenues. Moving operations to the cloud. Employees working from home and changing how work is done.
All of that while operating in a highly sensitive environment: an election taking place in a polarized nation further strained by issues of social justice.
What revenues?
There have been only a few times in business history when companies have faced a more difficult environment to forecast revenues.
How can they possibly develop an accurate forecasts when we don’t know when people will be able to get back to work, school, travel, attend live events, go to restaurants, or even hang out at a favorite coffee shop?
Rushing to the cloud
One of the ways many companies are managing to survive is by digitizing their operations faster than they had planned.
That quick pivot is nothing short of commendable. Some businesses have managed to do in a matter of weeks the things they had previously thought would take years.
But with accelerated change comes uncertainty.
Take customer satisfaction as an example.
The times when companies could wait months for the results of a customer survey to come in are over.
Companies that have digitized quickly must be able to track their customers’ experience on a daily or weekly basis to avoid blind spots. A company lacking that quick feedback might, for instance, attribute a decline in business volume to the pandemic when, in fact, it might be caused by their customers’ dissatisfaction with the way they are being served in a new environment.
The future of work
As leaders reinvent the way their companies operate, they also need to re-examine the future of work. And I’m not just talking about the working from home (or anywhere) phenomenon.
I’m talking about having the right talent to help the company operate new business models, become more agile, and implement new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning as operations move to the cloud.
It’s a whole different way of doing business and companies that accelerated their move to the cloud need now to accelerate the re-skilling of their workforce accordingly.
That’s not going to be easy in an already strained competition for that type of talent.
Too much to handle?
I really commend the leaders who are juggling all this change and uncertainty while avoiding a faux pas that could damage their brand’s reputation overnight.
Without diminishing the work these leaders are doing, I suspect when we look back we’ll find that the most successful are those whose vision was complemented by a wide range of points of view: that of a diverse board of directors.
Uncertain times require diverse viewpoints and diverse representation. There’s never been a more pressing time for boards to contribute multiple perspectives, whether it’s gender, ethnicity, age, or orientation, and to give leadership the best advice possible.
I congratulate those corporations that are actively and genuinely seeking to diversify their boards. In my view, there is no better place to find the right talent than in the pages of this issue of Latino Leaders.