Preparing for Uncertainty

For those of you reading this in WA, you might be feeling the same way we are at the moment. Grateful… with an edge of foreboding. As events have unfolded for our compatriots in Melbourne and over the trench in Auckland – Perth people have realised that we are probably only in our (relatively) COVID-free (and JobKeeper inflated) bubble for a limited period of time. Borrowing from the Buddhist way of thinking, we know that as with all things good or bad, this too shall pass. And it’s very hard to predict what will come next.

So as a business we continuously try to stay prepared for anything and building resilience into our program delivery and business model. We’re doing our best to keep all our people onboard and we’re squirrelling what cash we can away for an uncertain future. Despite an economic downturn, we continue to invest in innovation and R&D and in many ways I think this continued investment has and will help us prepare for an uncertain future.

Envisaging and Investing in the Future 

Investing in innovation is about envisaging the potential futures, identifying preferable futures and building a pathway to that for our business and the society we serve. Prior to returning to Integral our Head of Digital (Jeroen), our Program Coordinator (CJ) and I spent several years building a digital-health company developing innovative AI-tech. Some of the problems we faced hadn't been solved before and as an early stage startup planning was fraught with unknowns, uncertainty and scarce resources. Funnily enough it was good practice for now.

Thinking through scenarios and planning for the business, our team and our services is in many ways a similar approach to the scenario planning we've been doing for Covid-19. I find the futures cone a useful way of thinking about the future (below) and have also found McKinsey's briefings and scenario mapping useful for macro-trends > here.

Investing in Innovation helps you survive and grow.

At Integral our plan has always been to develop a digital leadership development business – we just hadn’t planned to do it in a pandemic.

Over the last 2 years we've invested about 15% of our revenue in innovation, R&D and software development to create better leadership development programs and enabling technology for these programs. This is well beyond the Australian average of 1-2% of GDP (that's 3rd to 19th on the OECD ranking by the way, depending on how you cut it > here or here, but less than the norm for a healthcare or computing company (21 to 26% respectively > research here or software company like Facebook at 21%. And that investment has certainly helped us over the past 4 months.

For some it may feel counter-intuitive to invest in innovation during times of uncertainty and economic tightness but there is good evidence organisations that invest more in R&D perform better than those that don't. A recent paper for the Office of Innovation & Science Australia on "Australian Business Investment in Innovation" found the top fourth of ASX200 firms by R&D expenditure (as a share of sales) grew revenue 8.5% more than the average 7.7% growth vs 7.1%).

Our intent has always been to help improve program impact, reduce costs for clients and help grow revenue. Luckily in the pandemic this investment has also helped us survive - helping us easily switch face-to-face programs online with some grace and speed. We're continuing our investment in R&D to ensure that whether we're operating online or face-to-face, we'll be able to provide continuous high quality leadership & team development services.

If you'd like to read more about our experience delivering online programs read Ron’s blog post here or if you'd like to chat about our online or blended delivery options, book a call with our client services director, Phil Moyle > here.

Investing in Resilience, Mental Health & Mindfulness

Alongside our investment in digital technology, we're also increasing our R&D and investment in mindfulness-based approaches to employee resilience and mental health. Our team has always been committed to helping people develop wellbeing and resilience skills – taking a mindfulness-based approach to this. We see these as essential fundamental skills for everyone and every team to thrive – now more so than ever. We've recently invested in training our coaches and facilitators in mental health first aid and are progressing R&D in the space to improve our existing training and coaching services. For more info see our website > here or book a call with our client services director, Phil Moyle > here.

How are you preparing?

So – knowing what you don’t know – what is your organisation doing to prepare people for uncertainty? I’d love to hear your insights > send me an email, or if you'd like to talk about innovation I'm always happy to chat > here.

Jonah