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HOW TO LEAD IN COVID-19 CRISIS AND ECONOMIC DOWNTURN
6 Actions for a Leader to Take: 

Cash flow is the top killer of businesses now, especially 90% businesses are not putting priority in cash flow. It's time to learn and manage cash flow now as cash flow is the Panadol to cut your pain and at the same time, make it as a discipline to take "Cash Flow Management" everyday as your business supplement. As crisis like Covid-19 may come again in another 5 to 10 years’ time.

In cash, you can work out 5 strategies to get your cash in order: 

Strategy 1: 6 Months Cash in Hand
Strategy 2: Cost Optimization
Strategy 3. Cash Conversion Cycle
Strategy 4: Channels of Funding
Strategy 5: Improve 5 Financial Key Metrics

Focus on the cash side of your business. Review all monthly recurring expenses and eliminate redundancies. Every ringgit counts, be critical with purchases. Involve your entire employee base in finding ways to save money. On the other hand, restructure your debts if necessary, get help from your bank. Talk to your creditors and bank advisors, negotiate for the lowest possible repayments. 

Keep in contact with your employees, this is the most important action you should take, you can send a daily communication in the form of an email, voice message, text message or even a 2-minute video. Make it brief, express in a few sentences or within 90-seconds. Communicate now and send out to your team members, just do it!

A daily communicate message has to be from the top-down approach, meaning a CEO message to all staff, then from department or division head to all their managers, and managers to their team. Always remember, in effective communication, begin with intentions, and end with directions, so that you can avoid complications.

Besides CEO message, to keep the good rhythm, for department or division head to their team members, it will be good to do daily hurdle with start of the day and end of the day, with the job assignments assigned. All these can be done through technology by dialing every team members together.

If you are not communicating with your team daily and to assign work by start of the day and end of the day , many may treat this as a holiday, because psychologically, people tend to take it as a holiday and start living a more relaxed lifestyle, thus, salary is paying without effective output. Moreover, it could be hard for employees to get back to work with the same efficient mode mentally as before the break when they do not practice daily hurdle. Do remember, the worse is yet to come, if one does not improve, he will be out of the market very soon. 

Brainstorm how your company and your team can support your customers and the community at such challenging times, take actions and give help with no expectation of return. Your customers will remember you and appreciate your support during this critical period.

It's a good time to assign the whole team, including the CEO to give call and message to all your clients to extend help.

For some business who are not badly hit, consider whether you can give any community support or extend Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to donate to hospitals in Malaysia, as they are running low on resources. 

Stay calm to have a peaceful mind and start crafting out your next 14 days plan if the Movement Control Order get extended. Then craft your next 30 days, 60 days and 90 days plan as the worse is yet to come.

When you craft out your next 14 days, 30 days plan, brainstorm and bounce off with experts or you can call us for help to come out with what are your key actions by now to get the key results that you want. 

Use this period of slowdown to catch up, learn something new by reading a book, an article online, or enroll in an e-learning course to improve and develop yourself, your employees as well as your company. At the same time, clean up any unnecessary activities and costs, make everyone’s jobs easier, more efficient and save money during this critical period.

Life could be difficult and there’s enough hardship especially during this critical period. Instead of filing ourselves with negativity and wasting our life force on worry and stress, always remember to count your blessings every day, start now, and you will have the extra strength and focus to appreciate every moment in life.

Remember amid this Covid-19 crisis, don’t be panic, you can lead by taking these actions: 

Focus on Cash Cash Cash!

Communicate Daily and Do Daily Hurdle, 

Help Customers and Community,

Stay Calm and Prepare for the Worse,

Catch Up and Clean Up,

Count Your Blessings and Be Positive.

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