M4C Admin
Getting out from the home office...as lockdown eases
It's mid June & after 3 months lockdown restrictions are easing, non-essential retail is coming out of hiberation. Matthew Curtis has also started to venture out from the home office this week too... we catch up on what's been going on.
Like many people across the UK M4C Director & Founder Matthew Curtis has been tucked away in his home office during lockdown. Matthew's home office is in rural Northumberland, we catch up with him today to find out more about his experience of lockdown and how the pandemic has affected M4C.
When did the pandemic first start to affect your daily activities and the business?
Apart from a crazy day of snow in the North East on the 24th February when I had a very wet and slushy walk to a meeting locally February was very much business as usual. In businesses across the UK there was a post election confidence and clarity around Brexit and all the indicators were that 2020 would be a good year.
Even into the first days of March when there was mounting & more worrying news coverage and a rising awareness that the once distant (might not happen here) Coronavirus threat was indeed going to impact the UK severely, many events went ahead still, with attendees jovially greeting each other with an elbow bump or a foot tap. Thinking back that phase of the crisis was very short lived and so remote from the restrictions that became necessary later in the same month.
For M4C March was going to be a record month in terms of projects delivered for clients...on the 12th March whilst attending an event in Carlisle, phone calls started to come through from clients that understandably wanted to postpone projects that involved bringing together groups of people. Most notably for M4C this included a 2 week Senior Leadership programme for a government institution that was due to be delivered in the last week of March and the first week of April. The last physical meeting that went ahead before lockdown was on the 16th March a week ahead of the lockdown announcement.
What has lockdown been like for you and for the business?
Although I haven't worked in a 5 days a week fixed office location to for more than 20 years, I have never worked from home more than a few days in a month... and never before have the whole family been confined to quarters. We've had online Uni exams, home schooling and two of us working from home... I don't think the dog can figure it out.. he's probably feeling sleep deprived!
In terms of the business M4C has continued to support existing clients, particularly as they navigate their way through the morass of guidance and confusion. In our "business as usual" model working with our clients means exactly that we are WITH
them, delivering workshops, facilitating & participating in meetings as well as joining them at their project and client locations too. In that model dates are agreed and booked in advance travel arrangements and accommodation reservations made... the plans become "semi-fixed" and have a regularity and consistency to them. During the crisis the service has become much more "On-Demand"
and delivered at times of the day to suit the changing situation and the needs of our clients. On the night of the 23rd March when the PM announced lockdown, clients were engaging and planning their responses and communications to teams and customers up until midnight that night and re-commenced at around 6:00am the following morning. The use of technology has meant that more clients were supported on any a single day than would have been possible had travel and physical meetings been held.
Lockdown has also meant that the volume of content being created for consumption online, on social media and via virtual events has sky rocketed. M4C has hosted peer to peer forums around the topics of leadership in a crisis and resilient leadership and I have also been a guest speaker at virtual conferences on the topic of organizational resilience. There have also been a lot of individuals that M4C has been able to connect with in the global online market for career and transition coaching, business coaching and mentoring. New clients have come France, Italy, Ireland & USA - definitely an un-expected positive as the business wasn't really pushing to be a global online service provider.
Flexibility and innovation are key strands in resilience, it's important to make good things happen not just minimise the impact of the bad things to be resilient.
What are the future plans?
To continue to give all M4C clients the best support possible and to continue to demonstrate that together we can deliver outstanding results and build more resilient businesses equipped to withstand the challenges of operating in an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world. To continue to "bounce - forwards" adopting and embracing the positive adaptions and changes that have been made and recognise that pre-covid best practise represents the best thinking of yesterday and not necessarily of tomorrow.
There is undoubtably going to be global economic challenges as the world lives and works with covid. There will also be huge demand for an increased leadership capacity in business, leaders that can drive optimisation, nurture innovations and make bold investments of energy and finance, whilst also providing consistency of direction and good governance. Inevitably there will be tensions so and leaders will need to demonstrate courage and vulnerability & recognising that often they
should be asking great questions of their teams rather than taking it upon themselves alone to be the ideas engine room.
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Crafting a Winning Pricing Strategy: Balancing Cost-Up Pricing, Market Pricing, and Value Perception to Align with Customer Experience
Book your road-trip to success - via Take-off@m4cltd.com