Recruiting Special Skills to Help You with Economic Recovery: Finding the Resilience Mindset

A crisis means that something has changed.  That is clear by the very definitions of the word, which include “a turning point for better or worse” and “an unstable or crucial time or state of affairs in which a decisive change is impending.”

Now, the changes wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic have brought on a challenging era for economic activity and its rebound. What we have experienced has accelerated some historic trends and imposed unanticipated realities.  For these reasons, economic entities large and small have –– to their credit –– come to realize that they may need guidance in recovery and in strengthening their economic future.  Recovery with resilience is the byword now, because we know that it’s the enduring, adaptive, fully prepared recovery that reaps the most value in the long run.

But hiring a consultant to achieve this is a new experience for most economic communities.  It involves assessing your specific needs and then justifying your choice in selecting a provider for advisory, planning, and execution services –– because at that point you will be choosing a partner to help set you up on a new economic playing field.

The COVID-19 pandemic has lasted long enough to change behaviors.  In a short time, this public health event has produced a dramatic alteration in such areas as work, commerce, employment, spending, and more.  And everyone knows that broad public health events such as this could recur in the future.  Not to mention developments based on climate change, world events, population shifts, and more.

Economic units of different sizes are asking questions of themselves.  For example, have they leaned too heavily on the tourism/hospitality industry?  Is their vitality based on the willingness of people to live in densely clustered areas?  Are they depending on a level of education in the workforce that’s adequately supported by their region?

Regardless of the concentration of your economic activity and the elements that support it, should you push for a shift or diversification?  If your target area is a residential escape from the city, can you market it as a great place to live amidst the new reality of remote working?  Can you tap into the new green economy? In short, the recovery and resilience discipline takes the longer view of possible new ways to do business.

Let reorientation and renewal lead the day

A recovery and resilience plan that is slanted toward the short term and not the longer haul is ultimately less successful.  I’ve been deeply immersed in this recovery field and I concur with this current sentiment: the danger now is not that we do too much, but that we do too little.

Your consulting resources should help you turn the focus from obstacles, despair, hopelessness, and a simple yearning for a return to normalcy, to the themes of opportunities, investment, and enduring vitality.  It’s not adequate to simply depend on rebound effects.  What you want is a strengthening in risk/hazard mitigation and consequence mitigation for the future –– and growth potential.  As a result of this recovery engagement, you want to come away with an improvement in your economic community’s ability to foresee and even take advantage of shifting conditions.

As you work to catalyze these efforts, seize the value of consulting that is passionate, owns a track record of expertise, and can assist you in appreciating the changes in mindset that result from disruption.  Find a source that will have a knack for keeping a finger on the pulse of the stakeholders that can influence your success.

Bring in the tools

Your recovery and resilience consulting source should come not just with the soft, people skills and known strategies of the trade but with harder tools and more tangible techniques as well.  With the help of your consultant, the effort should challenge all parties to:

• Create a national, state, county, regional convergence of support wherever possible.  Make sure that relevant business-related groups are at the table.  And, consider inviting public input.  Union involvement, Small Business Association support –– whomever or whatever can contribute should be brought to the campaign.  Try to detect and resolve system characteristics that will trip up the work.  (For example, governmental departments that don’t want to be put in a position of sharing data or credit.)
• Practice “consortium consulting,” a collaborative retention of assistance and pooling of staff time that overcomes duplicated efforts and bureaucratic obstacles and helps to achieve plan alignment and plan integration.
• Aggressively, energetically, resourcefully pursue diverse funding streams including, of course, stimulus money and other federal support, as well as loans.
• Ensure that governance for decisions and resources is in place that will manage budgets prudently.
• Acknowledge and respond to historic shifts, including for example the challenge of remaking your business district in the face of a more remote workforce and supporting working parents and isolation-related mental health issues in this new environment.
• Pursue and try to resolve aspects where your economic unit may be short-changed and at a disadvantage.  For example, provision of Internet connectivity is now looked upon much the same way that electrification of the nation was over the last century –– as something that should be a guaranteed public utility.  So, look for partnerships or funding to create ubiquitous broadband for your constituents.
• Prepare for debate about whether resources should be applied equally to all socio-economic levels, toward those who are most entrepreneurial, or skewed preferentially to those most in need.
• Praise innovation. For example, how can the IOT (the Internet of things) help to make your communities and businesses smarter and more connected?
• Document your successes.  Measurement is increasingly required, especially by funders, so develop a data dashboard to track needs and progress.  Your recovery consulting partner should set you up with metrics you can generate and follow, so you know what’s working and so that you can tout your wins.
• Finally, if you are fortunate to have a recovery consulting partner who assists you in securing subsidies, abatements, grants, recovery funds, or other financial support, let this consultant help you manage these assets smartly and account for them meticulously.

Amidst all this, the consultant should set an example in the tone and style with which to lead economic healing.  Empathy is important, and both the existing leadership and the support hired to help guide it should evidence management traits the are:

• responsive, not reactive
• authentic without sensationalizing or politicizing
• balanced and calm in an environment of anxiety
• grounded and present
• mission focused and committed

To achieve the resilience mindset, let enthusiasm rather than fear drive the effort.