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A boom is coming. With the economy flooded with cash from financial and monetary policies, savings stored due to the inactivity of the pandemic, and optimism with the waning of Covid, consumers are starting to open their wallets – on a grand scale. Business issues follow. We can’t say how long this will take, but we can know for sure that it will get companies ready for this moment. How should you prepare your brand or company for the boom?

Questions for your company

Before preparing, it is important to assess your situation and your industry’s connections to this business cycle. Some of the questions to ask yourself include these five:

1. How will an increase in business and personal expenses affect us? This is not limited to just buying new products with excess cash. Both business and consumer confidence have feedback loops, and in a boom this feedback is consistently positive. As confidence increases, how does this affect when people will buy, how high quality their purchases will be, and how willing they are to experiment with new offers? Will they fund their expenses differently and borrow cheaper while interest rates are still low? If at some point people start to spend too much, how will that show up first?
2. Where are you affected by bottlenecks? Booms create bottlenecks. In our last boom, in the 1990s, skilled workers were particularly in short supply. That could happen in this boom too, but what else could be limiting your industry? How are you going to deal with it? Can you have a Plan B to keep resilience if it happens?
3. What changes has the pandemic created for your growth opportunities? It is undeniable that the world is different now. Which changes will remain? How is the competitive pitch different? With companies moving from defense to offensive en masse, what does that mean for your offensive plan as you prepare for the boom to come?
4. What is your plan for sudden changes and disruptions? Clayton Christensen, my mentor, coined the term “disruptive innovation”, but he never would have thought that our times today would be called the “Age of Disruption”. Nevertheless, we see the term more and more often. What steps can you take to react more flexibly as it is becoming easier and easier for newcomers to turn industries upside down? If we needed evidence of the need for resilience, the pandemic provided it in bulk.
5. How much should you invest in growth options, how broadly and where? Without a portfolio plan for investing in growth, it is easy for companies to adopt a bimodal strategy: lots of small bets close to the established core and a tiny number of large initiatives. Think about your retirement portfolio; I hope your investments don’t look like this. Neither should your company. Rather, consider carefully how broadly you will spread your investments, what the right mix of aggressiveness should be, and what payback periods are realistic. What’s your plan

Steps to Take Now

Here are four steps you can take to prepare. Do them quickly but one at a time.

1. Separate the facts from the assumptions: What are you sure of, what are known gaps in knowledge, what other relevant knowledge might exist elsewhere in the organization and what are the hidden icebergs – the unknown unknowns? Use the uncertainty matrix to organize your thinking and the impact on action. You don’t want to get into the planning with a jumble of assumptions, facts and blind spots. Bad inputs lead to bad outputs.
2. Determine future behavior: How will your world differ in your planning horizon? Between the pandemic and its aftermath, e.g. A lot has been done to turn business-as-usual on its head, for example when it comes to changing behavior or doing online activities more comfortably. When you add the impact of industry disruptions and our susceptibility to future tremors, it becomes clear that you can’t drive forward just by looking in the rearview mirror. Realize what will be different. Divide your thoughts into categories and try to identify at least three ways in which purchasing and usage behavior will differ in the future. You can use tools like Jobs to be Done to provide food for thought.
3. Develop alternative futures: While we can plan the boom, we cannot assume omniscience. The world is moving in too many directions at the same time. Instead, you can develop clear alternative futures for your industry. These aren’t worst / middle / best case scenarios (people always choose the middle one), but rather detailed views of how the business dynamics could work in very different ways. Then determine what you would need to do today to thrive in each one. Try to find out which implications for action could be common in these alternative futures so that you are prepared regardless of the development of your industry.
4. Create your portfolio plan: Now that you have a clearer view of the future and the actions you should take now to be successful tomorrow, you can determine the shape of your portfolio plan. How Much Investments Should You Make? How varied should they be? What kind of risks do you prefer to take? How can you neutralize the greatest threats to your success? How well prepared will you be to double down on winning bets? Know this now, before the whirlwind of events in a boom inevitably skews your perspective.

Booms can create wealth, but they can also bring about rapid changes that can trip the unprepared. Plan ahead!

Contribution to Branding Strategy Insider by Steve Wunker, author of JOBS TO BE DONE: A Roadmap for Customer-Centered Innovation

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