Moving from Crisis to Response

Without doubt, Covid 19 is all consuming. It’s in every conversation we have and it’s impacting every decision we make. Alert Levels!  Spacing!  Is ten really ten?  Or is it ten plus or minus, do a little dance and subtract a hand sanitiser?? It is a little bit dementing.  And I’ve been thinking that I don’t  want to look back on the last 6 months and find we were simply swept along with Covid-19.  It can be easy to stay in the midst of a crisis, there is an addictive side to it - the drama, the constant flight or fight, adrenaline surging.  So how and when do you ease your way beyond the crisis? The answer is now. It’s time for us to move out of the heavy adrenal phase and actively start on the response phase. We are asking ourselves questions that give us direction: What are we doing today? What are our priorities for today? What are we trying to achieve this year? Yes, budgets will be shot; yes, revenue forecasts will be haywire; all those things, but as an organisation, and part of what I’m talking to my team about, is that we still need to set what our priorities are, we need to be clear around them. Our BVT business plan was ready to be presented just before Covid-19 turned the world upside down, and last week was the first day I opened it and looked at it. The priorities haven't changed, the lens is different but we still need to know what our 3 year and 10 year goals are. We might need to ask how we reorientate ourselves to achieve these, but the goals still exist and we need a clear articulated path to get there.  We’ve decided to keep our targets and forecasts.  Our one year, three year and ten year strategy remains intact.  Our positioning hasn’t changed.  We have things to do and barriers to break.  At the end of 2020/21 we will calibrate our results accordingly - with a Covid-19 adjustment.   The time to get started is now. By Ceinwen McNeil