Current crisis could provide opportunity

Solving problems in your business doesn't have to be binary. With some digging, there could be other options.

By Columnist .
| 2:02 p.m. February 19, 2021
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Advice

Every crisis is different. Some present a bigger opportunity for change than others.

COVID-19 is definitely a crisis for the commercial airline and cruise ship industries. Although this crisis may prove to be “creative destruction,” resulting in more streamlined and capital-efficient industries.

It also will be interesting to see how adaptable, agile and flexible certain industries can be. There is clearly a need for more planes to fly cargo, particularly ecommerce packages. Some hotels have filled rooms and even entire buildings with college students heading back to school. Colleges and universities need more dorms due to social distancing requirements, and they need them now.

So, let’s look back at the two most challenging problems you identified at the end of my previous column: your biggest current personal problem and your biggest current business problem. Could either one be reframed or restated as an opportunity? Give it a try.

If that doesn’t open any doors to a new way to look at the current situation, then try asking yourself this question: Are there any possibilities or other options you haven’t considered for addressing your current biggest problems? Sometimes, thinking through possible adaptations to current changes can unlock promising ideas — third ways of thinking about a problem or opportunity that could, if you make the right choices, turn a problem or even a crisis into an opportunity.

A.G.’s perspective: Beauty sleeper

At Procter & Gamble in Japan in the mid-1990s, we had two major failures in the cosmetics and skincare businesses — back-to-back. Japan was an attractive women’s skincare market, the largest by dollar sales or volume in the world at the time, and the cosmetics category was growing.

The first failure was part of a broad, global relaunch of the Max Factor brand behind new packaging and products. Despite a big, expensive launch, it was bad. Neither the new packaging nor the products appealed to Japanese women, who had a lot of comparable, better choices. We followed with a moderately cautious test-market of Olay. The products were better received, but we couldn’t generate enough business to make the size of the prize worth the risk.

But the third time was a charm.

Turns out the opportunity for P&G skincare in Japan wasn’t one of the company’s usual brand or product suspects. Instead, it was the relatively obscure SK-II, a small brand that came along with our Max Factor acquisition. So small and insignificant, in fact, that it wasn’t even mentioned in the Max Factor acquisition proposal that went to the board of directors and investors.

I noticed how enthusiastic and loyal Japanese SK-II users were in home visits when we were test-marketing Olay. We decided to experiment and, while the brand wasn’t an overnight success, it went from $30 million in sales at acquisition to over $2 billion in sales in about 20 years. And it’s still growing — behind a truly unique product line, a classic glass package and sophisticated and personalized service that encourages users to follow the improving condition of their skin with frequent and regular use of the product regimen.

Here’s one example: within a month of Florida’s first announced cases of coronavirus, Sarasota entrepreneur Anand Pallegar and his team began to implement a plan to bring three separate businesses — a marketing company, a technology firm and a mostly events-focused public benefit corporation — under a single umbrella. “It allowed us to connect the dots between three very different companies and highlight their ability to intertwine and engage with each other — ultimately to the benefit of the customer,” Pallegar says.

Pallegar originally tried a new name for this unified approach, but he realized the benefits of capitalizing on the strength of his most-recognized brand, marketing company AtLarge. “People knew it and trusted it,” he said. “So we decided to embrace AtLarge as the overarching brand for the collective and use it as the storyteller of what each sub-company did.”

A.G. Lafley, the former CEO of Procter & Gamble, worked for decades in and with large public companies. Over the past 15 years, he has turned more of his attention and energy to small businesses and nonprofit organizations. He currently serves on the boards of Omeza, Snapchat, Tulco, Hamilton College and the Sarasota Bay Park Conservancy. A Sarasota resident, Lafley has written best-selling books on innovation and strategy as well as numerous Harvard Business Review articles on leadership and management. His new website, LeadingToWin.com, comprises practical, how-to insights for small businesses, nonprofits and freelancers rooted in his five-plus decades of business experience.