 As this year comes to a close, 2020 has certainly been memorable. It's been a year of firsts, a year of the use of the word unprecedented, a year many of us want to finish as quickly as possible and lock away the memory vault, never to be seen again. But rather than simply banishing it and forgetting about it, perhaps we'd be better to learn from it first. My name is Anna Taylor and I've had a 20 year career in business management across household names like Cadbury's, Peroni and Unilever. I've had first hand experience in helping to navigate periods of great change and of dealing with the unexpected. If you're new to this channel, Enhanced Stop Training provides online business courses to help professionals, managers and business owners improve their performance. If you like this video, please give it a thumbs up, subscribe and share with friends. So no director, business owner or entrepreneur will end 2020 with the same approach to business as they had at the beginning of the year. Their businesses may have suffered, pivoted or even benefited from the unforeseen events of this year. However, all will now realise the importance of being flexible and being able to adapt to changing circumstances. As we come to the end of this year, I've written down my personal 2020 optics, the lessons I've learnt, but I've also surveyed friends, colleagues and clients, leaders and directors in multinational companies and small businesses about what they've learnt in 2020. We've discussed the major impacts and the key business lessons that we should take forward. I've grouped these into seven 2020 lessons. So lesson one, cog in the machine. Now I think we'll all remember 2020 for the virtual lives we led, more than the real or physical ones. I mean in 2019, Zoom was a little known platform, yet now it's a common verb that at some point this year we almost use daily. And the numbers echo this. Do you know when it went public in April 2019, Zoom's market value was 15 million and it's now worth over 115 billion. The pace of technological change was increasing well before 2020, yet this year seems to send it into hyperdrive. You just have to look at the drive towards cashless society, increase of online shopping, including groceries. I mean, I'm sure we all remember how hard it was to get a supermarket slot earlier this year. Then in the workplace, we started to use either new technology or technology we'd perhaps even avoided or ignored. Cloud-based everything has become the norm and we use video conferencing more than ever before, especially due to working from home. So lesson two, working from home. Before 2020, working from home was the exception, an opportunity given to actually relatively few people. It was even off a laugh-dact called names like shirking from home. And justly I would say, for the life of a fortunate, I've managed to work for employers who've really trusted their employees and have embraced working from home for years. However, as working from home became a necessity, a demand from the government even, new ways of working have appeared. Those previously skeptical of working from home got to experience it and see the benefit for themselves. And I know of many who actually complete converts to this way of working now. Reports suggest that productivity also increased, businesses became more trusting of their employees, and more flexible working has been granted and teams have had to work together virtually regardless of location. Geography is no longer a barrier, and for this year at least the expensive travel and expenses budgets have just disappeared. I don't even know of companies who have sent their expats back home because of working virtually. This is, say, the tens, if not hundreds of thousands of pounds. No one knows what the workplace will look like next year and further ahead. I mean, all the surveys I've read show a preference for perhaps a hybrid model of, say, two to three days in the office and the rest at home. But we'll just have to wait and see. And we really need to prepare for all options. To lesson three, it's okay to not be okay. Because while working from home has had its advantages, it hasn't all been good. It's made us realize the need for human interaction and isolation is so mentally tough. Many have struggled to find a work-life balance with the workplace and homes that are morphing into one. And managers have had to find innovative ways for social interaction and to try and support staff morale. Especially if those managers have had some or all of their teams on furlough. It turns out we actually do need those kitchen catch-ups or auto-caller moments or whatever you want to call them. More businesses have started to realize the real value of their people and their mental well-being. They've enrolled in programs such as Headspace or similar. And mental well-being is actually now more of a real focus. It's finally become acceptable to ask for help and not be ashamed of mental health. There still seems to be some way to go on this but we are getting there. All that's happened this year has certainly helped to fast track both the problem but perhaps also the solution. People are a company's greatest asset and those businesses that put their people first benefit on so many levels. Lesson four, survival of the fittest. Because it's not only the use of technology working from home and mental health that have had experienced fast track events, business survival has been affected too. 2020 has been a harsh year for business survival. Did you know, according to the Office of National Statistics, in the first half of this year, 213,000 businesses failed in the UK? This was 14% higher than last year, which means over 26,000 businesses failed just because of the pandemic. And the figures for the second half of this year will be no less bleak, I'm sure, especially with giants such as the Arcadia Group and Debenhams going into administration. Now some might argue that the pandemic has simply sped up what was already on the cards for these giants, although the pandemic has simply sorted out the wheat from the chaff. Perhaps harsh, perhaps not. But what is clear that in 2020, businesses have had to work really hard to survive. So that leads me on to lesson five, adapt or die. The way the best businesses have survived is to adapt, whether that's their product, their business model, their advertising, their routes to market, or any and all of the above. Because in previous years, they might have spent months or even years in research, planning, getting everything perfect for launching a new product or changing a system. No, but not this year. There are times to plan and take things slowly, and other times just to strike while the iron's hot, to be nimble to make the most of the situation. We've seen some brilliant examples such as pubs and restaurants developing takeaway options almost overnight of turning their premises into small local food markets or finding ways to serve outside, even in the winter months. We've seen people on furlough or being made redundant who are now starting new businesses or learnt new skills. We've seen a whole raft of new products. We have an enormous range of masks and hand sanitizers that we didn't have this time last year. Now, I could go on and on about the innovation and adaptability that's been shown this year, but you'll be pleased to hear I won't. Because the point is that the businesses that fared the best are the ones that have adapted quickest and most to the changing consumer need. If you put your customer first and adapt your business accordingly and do it quickly and efficiently, then you'll be okay. Lesson six, don't forget the basics. And lesson six, don't forget the basics. So in adapting and changing your businesses quickly, it's important not to forget the basics. And it's also important to make sure that we don't learn the wrong lessons from this year. The biggest of which would be that having a business plan and making forecasts are simply not necessary. Well, yes, they can be drastically changed by events outside our control, but we still need them. Because instead, we should put plans and forecasts together, but we'd measure them in place to be able to adapt to them in the future. For example, to help us prepare and plan better, we can use systems such as adaptive planning or full risk analysis. And many businesses this year have been thrust into survival mode. They've had to get closer to processes such as cash flow forecasting and planning than they ever would have been used to. Because when the going's good, it's easy to perhaps let these things slip or to take them for granted, but we all need to keep on top of the cash cycle. We need to build and support relationships and processes with our suppliers and customers in the good times. Because that way, we'll have a better chance of being able to call on them when the going gets tough. As alive from a Christmas film I watched this week says, true act of goodwill will always spark another. An act of goodwill bring me to my final learning for this year, that is to do the right thing. Your actions in time of crisis will be remembered. They'll be remembered by staff, customers, suppliers, and in fact, all stakeholders. I would think of some big examples this year, such as several of the large grosses giving back their relief funds or the hospitality industry helping with free school meals and they didn't even have much resource themselves. All of those neighborhood support programs we did or the restriction on profiteering for Amazon and eBay. But how you act in a crisis will show your true colors and people won't forget. This year advertising has also changed to reflect this mood because never have so many adverts been focused on asking if the consumers are right rather than simply trying to sell to them. Now some businesses have perhaps been more genuine in this than others, but I leave that for you to interpret and decide for yourself. In good times as well as bad, I would always advocate high standards of integrity and purpose. It's abundantly clear which companies are genuine and which are just trying to tick a box. I would always aim to be the former. So from all of this, we can see that any business with a large or small will face new challenges on a continuous basis. We can predict many of these challenges as they're going to be the obvious ones. However, there will always be new, unforeseen, unpredictable challenges. 2020 has perhaps been the best example of this that any of us can remember. But let's hope that 2020 will remain almost unique in how many lessons have had to be learned so quickly by almost all of us. What the future will look like? Well, I simply don't know. And I'm sure that many will conduct more studies and analyses on this year. There'll be more learnings and more interpretations. But what I do know is that the smartest business leaders will manage to combine the best parts of our pre-2020 working lives and all the best lessons learned from 2020. They'll be able to create new ways of working into this next year, this next decade and beyond. 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