Four must-haves for business resilience in a time of crisis

Adobe has more than 20,000 employees around the globe, not dissimilar from many of our peers. But March also happens to be a key point in time for the digital experience-focused side of the business: It’s when we hold our annual customer conference in Las Vegas. When we moved our workforce to remote, there had already been months of work completed for this in-person event, which was expected to attract 23,000-plus attendees, and teams had to shift quickly (25 days, to be exact) to reimagine our event into an online experience.

Through it all, we experienced many successes and , of course, several hiccups along the way. But if there’s anything we learned over the course of the past six months, it’s that effective leadership, a strong technology foundation, a consistent engagement strategy, and digital maturity are distinctly important to business resilience during a time of crisis.

Effective leadership is key

Empathetic leadership is always important, but even more so in uncertain times. The first rule to effective leadership is putting your employees first and being able to walk in their shoes. It’s important to make a concerted effort to talk with your team about how they are coping, what their specific work-from-home situations look like, and how you can better enable and foster their productivity.

The old adage of staying calm under pressure is also imperative for leaders, especially in crisis. Businesses are dealing with highly unpredictable situations, and it’s important as a leader to understand and openly acknowledge the fact that you do not have total control. Make that clear to your people, too. Instill the mantra that mistakes will happen and failing fast and learning from them is key.

Covid-19 has also taught us that becoming fluent in and open to new technology to collaborate and run the business is more important than ever. Show your team through your own actions that you embrace this newness; this will help ensure they embrace the same. In addition, the ability to think fast, challenge assumptions with data, and solve business problems (all part of the creative process) are equally as important for effective leadership.

Finally, don’t be afraid to ask for help. As leaders, we sometimes equate this with showing weakness. Not true. Seek out leaders in other parts of your organization, as well as outside the company, who can share their experiences, challenges, learnings, and best practices. It’s important to come together as a community at a time like this. 

Build a strong technology foundation

Digital transformation has been a talking point for a number of years. And while there are many examples of companies that have fully embraced digital and are reaping the benefits, there were countless others not as far along when the pandemic hit.

In conversations with many of our own customers, we hear over and over again that organizations with a strong technology foundation in place—in terms of both employee and customer experience—are faring far better than their counterparts. If it was ever a “nice to have”, it isn’t any longer.