How to Prepare Your Business for the Next Crisis

Faced with the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s and a global economy that’s expected to have shrunk by 4.4% by the end of the year, a team at PwC have come up with a five-point plan to ensure businesses are not caught napping by the next global crisis.

PwC says:

1. The global economy is expected to shrink by 4.4% by the end of the year.
2. Businesses need to be better prepared for the next crisis.
3. A new five-point plan to achieve this includes conquering our fear of AI and data analytics.
4. It also includes finding a way for people and machines to work in harmony.

Read more about the 5 things businesses could do right now to prepare for the next crisis.

Suddenly the World Wanted Only One Product

As business owners know, speed and agility are it.  If you don't have those traits going for you, well, let's just say 2020 has crushed you.  

Case in point:  Etsy is a U.S.-based e-commerce company best known for connecting individual crafters and artisans directly with consumers. But when CEO Josh Silverman heard in early April that face masks would be a key component of the general public’s fight against the coronavirus pandemic, he mobilized sellers — fast. 

Within days of the release of public health guidelines, Etsy had more than 20,000 sellers with masks ready for purchase. As Silverman put it, “It’s as if we woke up and it was suddenly Cyber Monday, but everyone in the world wanted only one product, and it was a product that basically didn’t exist two weeks before.”

Read on to see how this ties back into the importance of speed and agility to survive in 2020 and thrive in 2021.

Don't Let People Speak Over You

USA Vice President Mike Pence interrupted Senator Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for his current job, a total of ten times over the course of their recent debate, double the times that Harris interrupted him. 

Pence’s interruptions at the debate, however, were seen by many as a particularly obvious example of the way gender and interruption often interact, especially in the workplace, something that was noted by Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter.

This episode just further drives home the point:  Don't let people speak over you, especially when you have the floor.

Read more:  'Mr. Vice President, I'm Speaking.' What Research Says About Men Interrupting Women—And How to Stop It

Men Have It Easier

More than half of female small business owners say men have it easier.  Fifty-four percent of women-owned businesses feared they’d have to permanently shut their doors because of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to new research.

The study, commissioned by Groupon and conducted by OnePoll, aimed to understand how women small business owners are meeting the challenges COVID-19 presents.

Learn more here.