In retrospect, what do you remember most about those early days of a global pandemic and how it took you by surprise? One day it was business as usual and the next day businesses around the world were ordered to shutter their doors until further notice. The only businesses allowed to stay open were referred to as “essential” and even some of those were borderline.
With that in mind, if you were asked to look back on the past three years and what you were able to take away from all that transpired, what would it be for you and your place of business? What lessons did you learn and would you be prepared for another pandemic if one should occur during your lifetime? Here is some of what businesses from around the world have been saying, most often on social media, and what they learned. Does any of this sound familiar to you?
1. Keep Those Masks in Good Supply
At this point, you are probably saying to yourself that there probably will not be another global pandemic, at least in your lifetime. Sadly, that is something most business owners and consumers in general had to say in the years pre-dating Covid-19. Most people thought that any mention of a global pandemic was a conspiracy theory and that modern medicine was such that it just couldn’t happen.
Well, it did! In fact, prior to late January 2020, few businesses were even familiar with Protective Equipment other than the kind worn by various occupations such as welders, doctors, exterminators, and so forth. With that said, you never know when the next big one will strike again, so the lesson here is to be prepared just in case Murphy decides to rear his ugly head!
2. Be Ready for Disruptions in the Supply Chain
Although disruptions in the supply chain are not limited to a global pandemic, this was really the first time most businesses even became aware of the possibility of a total shutdown of supply routes. Most of it was caused by worker illness, and sadly death, but there were other contributory factors as well.
Even though they, too, could be traced back to a limited workforce, shortage of petrol was prevalent around the globe, as were foods in grocery stores. This created a panic, not only among consumers but in businesses as well. The key advice here is that we should always have a backup plan and be ready for the unexpected.
3. Don’t Rely on Government for All the Answers
There is one more very important lesson we learned from Covid 19 and that would be our penchant for relying on the government to have all the answers. We waited for government funds to carry us through and when it wasn’t forthcoming, or came about too slowly, we blamed them for losing our proverbial shirts. This should have taught us that the government didn’t have all the answers and that they were stumbling about in the dark just as we were.
So then, what did your business learn from a global pandemic? The one thing that so many businesses remember is that it just doesn’t pay to say “it can’t happen,” because as we learned all too quickly, anything can happen when you least expect it. Keep an open mind and be ready to improvise. If you want to survive, that’s just what it might take.