Businesswise -- The coronavirus home quarantine could be a growth opportunity | Avihai Michaeli

Having “more time” sometimes seem to be the business “skill” everyone would like to possess. Managing time more effectively is taught in any managerial course. But what if having “more time” could be a managerial tool?!

When written in Chinese, the word ‘crisis’ is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.

A Startup founder I was working with, told me a while ago that even if he had “25 hours a day” he still couldn’t cope with the business issues he’s facing, mainly since the tech platform he based his company’s product on, has limited growth abilities, and needs to be rewritten all over again.

Another entrepreneur shared with me that at an important business meeting he attended, his colleagues were talking about a very important issue which he knew nothing about, and he wished he had time to explore it in more depth. While a global R&D manager told me that he was too busy, and never had time to extend his understanding of coding to match the changing needs of the market (in this case to better understand AI not just as a “buzz word”).

These are just a few examples, where it seems that if the world were to “pause for a minute”, some people would take the time to deepen their business abilities, while others would use the “extra time” to think through the business issues they were struggling with more thoroughly.

The Coronavirus pandemic has forced many hundreds of millions of people into Home Quarantine. On the one hand this is very bad for your business. “No business” is not good for any business. However, assuming it is just for a limited time, you should try to make the most of it. Now you’ve got the “extra time” you’ve been looking for.

Ask yourself – how could you use this time period to come out stronger? In fact, strengthening your business skills is a real need for any scenario of the day after the Coronavirus Crisis:

Rebooting your business after such a crisis
Finding New Opportunity – if the worst comes to the worst, the crisis lasts for too long, and you lose your job, or close your company – what are the new skills that will get you hired in no time? Or alternatively what could be your next Startup product or service? Which skills will it require from you?

Since the Coronavirus started in China, I’ll finish my post with a quote by John F. Kennedy that could best summarize the situation: ” When written in Chinese, the word ‘crisis’ is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity”.

Instead of waiting for the end of the Coronavirus Crisis – prepare for it!