Coping with the COVID-19 Pandemic: Taking Care of Business, Taking Care of Yourself, Taking Care of Your People.

This is our first blog post focused on the COVID-19 pandemic, and it deals with the three dimensions to surviving and thriving any crisis: the well-being of your organization, the well-being of yourself, and the well-being of your people.

Thus our Survive and Thrive workbook is uniquely divided into two parts: Business Resilience and Personal Resilience. Business Resilience is the first part of the workbook. It depends not only on your internal assets, people and processes, but also on the reliability of the many outside people and businesses on which your company is dependent. More generally, a company’s business resilience also depends on the nature and predictability of  its business eco-system, including general business conditions, financial markets and governmental institutions. The list of matters that need to be considered is long, and the process requires disciplined methodology and diligence. The lifeblood of any organization is of course cash, so cash position and cash flow are the ultimate framework for the first part of the workbook.

The second part is Personal Resilience. In this website and our workbook, we use the term “personal resilience” as it is used by psychologists:

“Psychologists define resilience as the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant sources of stress—such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems, or workplace and financial stressors. As much as resilience involves ‘bouncing back’ from these difficult experiences, it can also involve profound personal growth.”  (American Psychology Association)

This approach to personal resilience reflects the work of a group of distinguished psychologists and is comprised of seven thoughtful steps. People in a crisis who take advantage of these seven steps are likely to move in the direction of desired outcomes.

Please remember: while you’re taking care of business, find time to take care of yourself.