Internal Company Message, Our First Day of Working At Home.
Internal Company Message from AD CEO, Bill Weisberg, shared on March 16 at 7:00 AM, the first day for many of us at AD to be working from home.
Neither life nor business goes in very straight line. There are ups and downs. Twists and turns. AD’s been on an upward slope the last ten years. Double digit growth has been the norm. This year that’s unlikely. No fault of our own. Coronavirus.
And just like everyone else, we will likely be taking some backward steps. How many? I don’t know yet. Predictions don’t age well in this environment. But probably more than a few. When our members and their customers do less business, there’s less business coming through. In the near term, the drop could be big.
The important thing, in times and situations like these, is to get through them. That’s why we focus on associate health and safety; and basic business operations. Rebounding comes later.
To minimize the damage on the downside of things, they’re some things we need to get right. We need as much visibility as we can get about the situation at hand; we need a sound plan to deal with that; we need to execute that plan with conviction; and we need to stay vigilant to identify and remove obstacles, plan for contingencies, and adjust when necessary.
This takes all of us.
With a situation like this that is rapidly evolving, we need to keep our head up, with our eyes, ears and mind wide open, assessing the landscape, communicating with each other, anticipating what might come at us next, and adjusting to whatever does. Our plans and priorities are likely to change, and change again, as the situation evolves.
Curiosity, awareness, open mindedness, flexibility, creativity. These will serve us well.
But part of succeeding also involves having an unblinking, heads down, laser like focus on what we need to do right now. There’s a time for thinking and there’s a time for doing. We want to win, we need to do our work. And, if there’s less of that, in some position or department, we need to find others we can help in other parts of the company.
This week’s fundamental, “Look and Think Ahead,” is apropos. We need to anticipate issues associated with the changes in our workstations and identify workarounds that will enable us to continue to serve our customers. We need to use our imaginations to contemplate scenarios, no matter how strange, and prepare for their remote possibility.
But we also need to remember that life is lived in the present, one day at a time. No one has ever had absolute certainty about tomorrow. So, let’s not “Look and Think Ahead” so much that we neglect our tasks at hand or miss out on the joy, beauty and fellowship that is all around us, even today.