Every business has put together multi-year strategies, and from there worked backward to establish short-term goals. With the unexpected impact of COVID-19, many of these big picture plans lost steam. This is particularly true for small businesses. While a number of larger companies may have the resources to continue to scale in spite of the current situation, a good amount of those operations with no more than a few dozen employees are fighting just to survive. How can companies of any size adapt their vision and execution to the unique challenges affecting 2020 and beyond?

Today’s guest answers that question. We have interviewed Kathy Bowman Atkins, Founder, and CEO of The Lattitude Group. She helps other CEOs and business leaders set the course for their business. She has perfected the process for change and does something that most consultants don’t: follow-up and follow-through.

1) What led you to where you are now professionally?

Like many other consultants, I started my career in corporate America and ended up as an executive doing mergers and acquisitions for a Fortune 100 company. I was traveling 80% of the time all over the world and had parents with very severe illnesses, so I decided to take a break for about 10 months along with a colleague who was experiencing much of the same. We put our heads together and planned for our future. We realized that our strengths in corporate America were setting a vision and inspiring people to it, and recognizing the potential in people who couldn't see it in themselves and helping them realize it. That’s what led us to start The Lattitude Group.

2) How should small business owners proceed in the wake of COVID-19?

We’re a very long-term, strategic company. We traditionally look at the five-year plan then break it down into smaller timeframes, but because of COVID-19, we have to do a reversal of that due to all the uncertainty. Don’t worry about your five-year vision, because we don’t know enough to predict what’s going to happen. Instead, let’s talk about the next six months.

We put together a three-part process for this that depends on where your business is. We’re looking at the projections and asking what’s the worst-case scenario, financially. What opportunities have been missed and what can be capitalized on within the next six months? We help them define those and then execute them, all the while helping them with accountability and change management.

Weekly, we’re going to set one or two metrics that you’re going to absolutely manage. If those metrics go off-kilter, we make changes. That’s the way it is. Once we get through those six months, we then talk about what the future holds. Then it’s another six-month plan. By the end of 2021, we can start looking at big, strategic things. Otherwise, we plant stakes in the ground and start planning around that.

3) What would you advise those established companies that are actually ready and eager to scale even during COVID-19?

We have colleagues in the large format printing business. That market has become somewhat soft right now, but as it turns out, their equipment can make plexiglass. Their business is now booming thanks to their making the shift to creating plexiglass for a variety of companies.

There are a couple of questions that you, as a business owner, need to ask upfront: Is this our new business (and it most likely is not) and does this sustain us such that we can actually think about what to do when our traditional business comes back so that we’re better prepared coming out of COVID-19 than we were going into it.

We have to talk to the owners and ask them why they’re doing business and what they’re trying to accomplish for themselves. They should also define what they’re willing to do and not do to get there—in other words, their values. The owners get the first take of where the business goes because they put in real equity and sweat equity.

We then interview their...