Blog #2 - Thinking Long-term in Global Response to Crisis

As 2020 shapes out to be year packed with pandemics, recessions, and political unrest, companies can find themselves swept up in short-term crisis planning. It is no coincidence that a month ago, I was receiving emails from numerous companies on their global response to COVID-19. Then in the last few days, I have been bombarded with social media posts on organizations standing with George Floyd and the protests around his death. Each of these companies, many with a worldwide audience, are responding to current events as timely as possible.

The articles for this week showed that while this is a good response in the short-term, corporations need to consider these values and focus on safety to affect their long-term strategic planning. As global disruption happens, companies must be armed with the tools to pivot, as they are forced into rethinking how their products fit and evolve in the current landscape.

There will always be external threats facing organizations (and usually not so many all at once to nearly every industrial sector), but in order to succeed in the market over time, companies must be able to seek out the opportunities from these outside factors. Urbanization, technological change, obstacles in an aging world, and a more globally connected world are all inevitable challenges that companies are facing, all of which majorly impact strategy.

We will not always be in a pandemic. A new President will be elected in the fall. Major cities across the world will not be protesting forever. Seen in the chart on European banking, the COVID-19 pandemic could make these banks lose four years of economic progress without strategic changes. These corporations need to determine how these shared viewpoints and new ways of conducting business affect their strategy in the next 5+ years ahead, while also combating ways to create opportunity out of those four overarching global threats. As the world slowly becomes more optimistic post-crisis, what impact will that have on strategy?



Resources:
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/the-four-global-forces-breaking-all-the-trends

https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/the-global-forces-inspiring-a-new-narrative-of-progress

https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/risk/our-insights/covid-19-implications-for-business