Cathy: Thanks for joining the Gearhead community!
When I was writing Get in Gear, I certainly didn't anticipate anything like the COVID crisis. Who did? The principles outlined in the book help individuals and organizations perform better in "normal" times. In these incredibly "not normal" times, aligning the seven gears outlined in the book can make the difference between surviving and failing completely. Driving strategy to results has gone from important to vital. Here are a few examples:
Gear 1 is about having the right people with the right capabilities in the right roles. Many organizations are working differently (remotely vs physically together) and with reduced teams. Both of those require that people quickly gain the new capabilities necessary to take care of customers, produce products and services or manage supply chains.
Gear 3 covers Creating a Culture of Communications. Organizations that have out-performed others through COVID have also communicated better. They have been far more progressive in sharing information about COVID and its impact on the organization. More importantly, they've listened better and more empathetically to their team members as well as their customers and suppliers. Further, no single person has all the answers. By communicating better, organizations learn faster and adapt more quickly. They can thrive instead of die.
Gears 4 through 7 are the Performance Gears. They focus and align everyone in the organization on what they must do to deliver results. In those mythical "normal" times, we often find that 60% of the time the work people do is misaligned to what they should be doing to deliver the right results. You might survive that in good times; in this environment that leads to almost certain doom.
To survive COVID, it’s critical to have everyone focused, aligned and moving in the right direction. Get in Gear is written to help do that!
