Lockdown Lessons: “All market data points indicate that things will turn out positive”

The year 2020 has taught us several harsh lessons. Barely had we entered a new year with renewed hopes and expectations, when the global COVID-19 pandemic jolted all of us out of our comfortable ‘Normal’ zone and flung us into an uncertain world. Terms like lockdown, social distancing, quarantine, work from home, new normal, unprecedented times and the dreaded ‘R’ word – Recession – have become a part and parcel of our daily lives.

Read More - Lockdown Lessons: “It has forced a re-think on both personal & professional pursuits”

India is just emerging out of an over two-month lockdown – a period that has changed our lives, behaviours and the way we conduct business forever. The lessons that we have learnt during the lockdown period and our experiences during the year so far, will help us navigate a world that we had never imagined. Adgully’s latest endeavour – Lockdown Lessons – is an attempt to present the key learnings that India’s business honchos have learnt and imbibed, and which can help the industry navigate the new normal better.

Minal Srivastava, Vice President - Growth, Strategy & Marketing, Shalimar Paints,

What are the key lockdown lessons as a professional during the lockdown period?

As business professionals, we often function well if we have got some of the variables in control. However, COVID-19 and the consequent lockdown have shaken that belief to the core. It has presented unprecedented challenges to businesses and taught us the significance of being future-ready to sail through any crisis.

As leaders, we should keep experimenting with and innovating our existing business models to check what works best and what doesn’t. Following this approach will help us evolve as a better version of ourselves and come out stronger in the times to come.

Please tell us some of the key takeaways in terms of life lessons from the lockdown period?

Always be prepared to face uncertainty because it always comes uninvited. Secondly, never get anxious over things that are beyond control. Work hard, try new things, and most importantly, live in the present rather than worrying about the future.

Both these mantras work wonders in the personal as well as the professional world. It is one of the greatest and simplest learnings that I have come across during the quarantined homestay.

How did you manage and achieve work-life balance while working from home?

There is never a balance. Some moments you have to invest every ounce of yourself to your work and then there are phases when you are pulled into the home space. Honestly, I struggle when you have to work 100% from home. I love demarcating my work day in slots and immersing myself completely into it. When the work and home space blended into one, it was a huge mental challenge.

And with time I have learnt that parenting is not as much the quantity of time that you give your child, but what you do with it. Being home and on calls or stuck to your laptop locked in a room is not helping him much. I still have the luxury of carving a separate work space and room for myself, a lot of women do not have that – and I feel that is a bigger challenge. Plus, all of us are social beings, we need work not just for the salary that you get at the end of the month, but also because it helps you connect with humans and adds on to how you experience life.

It has been more than two months since the lockdown was enforced. How are you gearing up for back to office mode?

It’s been just a couple of weeks that we got back into the business. We were not just struggling with a slowdown in demand, but the overall operations, including the warehouses, the depos, the supply chain, everything was broken back then. However, all of that is back on track now. We are positive that we will pick up pace in the next few months. Also, we were also working on a new product line which is in its final stages of delivery, so that is something really exciting for us. All the data points around the market help me predict that things are going to turn out positive. Let’s see how things shape up in the coming days.

Any lessons that you picked up in financial management from the lockdown period?

Cash is the oxygen for any business and managing cash flow is a challenge during COVID-19. I am aware that not many businesses survived the lockdown. So, I am grateful that we had just enough of a cushion to scrape through it.

Mental well-being of the employees was my other worry. Working with a young team who needed work place for not just the routine of it, but for most of them it is the only social fabric of relationship that they have to fall back on. I believe, in the coming days this will be a continual source of worry. There are some roles that will probably be working 100% from home in the foreseeable future – we will have to work doubly hard to ensure that these employees do not feel alienated or disconnecteddisconnected.