What business leaders really, really want
The results of our Business Leader Survey are in and the headline is: Yes, you are stressed.
“As a CEO you shield your staff from the pressure… but no one takes time to check in on the CEO.”
34 of you responded to our survey—and Q&R kindly surveyed another 24, giving us a sample of 58, spread between:
large businesses with 500+ employees (50%)
medium businesses 100-499 (29%)
and small businesses employing under 100 people (21%)
Almost half of you expect things to get worse in the next year, although a cheery 23% are optimistic things will (only) get better. And for some, things are going surprisingly well.
I was on a panel with Steph Douglas from Don’t Buy Her Flowers this week, who said that their sales have increased 500% during lockdown—which has of course generated its own stresses.
Your biggest concerns are a recession and the potential of future lockdowns.
Some fear a depression, and many regret the Brexit decision (especially given we already have Corona breathing hotly down our necks).
But the reflections in the comments are where it gets really interesting.
The three things you want:
A crystal ball to see the future
"Especially what the heck government is going to do next."
Improved digital skills
To connect more strongly with teams, drive sales, deliver training, run meetings, and so on. We’ll come back to this, but I want to plant the seeds of storytelling—using emotion and humour. To hear it work well, check out The Moth podcast which is just people telling stories. (I know it sounds awful, but… just try it)
Mental health support
“Leading a company has been massively stressful… in March and early April we saw all of our senior colleagues in tears (or close), but we had to have a rule: we only did it with each other, as we needed to keep a game face on to give everyone else confidence."
On which theme, have any of you taken a *holiday*? Every report I am getting is that people are not taking enough… you need to get on that.
What’s next?
I will be focusing on these over the next few weeks. But until then, in lieu of a real crystal ball, I refer you back to my piece on Scenario Planning as a way to explore your different options for the future.
Not that our scenario planning managed to predict either a 24 hour local wifi outage on a day doing webinars and an Instagram live, or a finger broken in two places by a penalty shoot out this week. The ball was saved but my day was lost.
Turns out that I need a (cue Madonna) holida-ay too. It would be so nice.
Christine x
