Bright Obeng

All business are run on implicit assumptions. Very few businesses take the time to understand the implicit assumptions that are governing their business.

Restaurants operate on the implicit assumption that people are looking for a place to spend time outside their home and that businesses like to wine and dine their clients. That is how relationships are built.

Office building owners assume their tenants will be in most of the days to spend money at their fancy bar on expensive lattés.

And then covid-19 happened.

No wine and dine and surely not a soul at the office ordering lattés.

2020 will maybe for a long time remain the year our implicit assumptions got a body check.

Let me give you 2 examples:

Customer service used to a time and space determined role: Customer service professionals were assumed to be available during the business hours and at the office. Covid-19 smashed this implicit assumptions. It was apparently so difficult to perform this job from home because the files where at the office and you needed to be where the magic happens. No, not true.

Another great example is travelling and relationship building: building a relationship meant seeing someone to really build rapport with them. No, covid changed that. The key question is how do you build rapport with someone you physically cannot see? It’s all in how you deal with them. The type of question you ask them and relationship building is then based on the actual relationship building; no travel, no dinners of lunches, no golf, no fancy business seat at the game, just your authentic self and a screen. For all of us, this is un-natural. The beauty lies in the tension to genuinely ask questions to really understand their needs in an authentic way. This means the quick boys and girls are having a tough time. This is great because they were fake anyway.

It seems a pandemic is the right opportunity to rethink our implicit assumptions and business models.

And now? What do you think are the unspoken rules underpinning your business model?

I hope with December in sight, you will take the time to think about this, to get ready for a new year with huge opportunities. If you cannot see those opportunities, please just think about your implicit assumptions and perform a scenario analysis on a few of them:

What if home office 1 to 2 days a week really become the norm? what opportunities do you see?

This is the last episode of the Key Figures Podcast for 2020. It’s episode 18, we are officially allowed to vote .

I am so thankful for the team behind me in making this work: a big thank you to Stijn, George, Timm and Geert.

In 2021 we will make some changes to our podcast and at a certain point to move to our initial plan, video podcasting.

We are extremely thankful to your support as our listener. This podcast is growing very fast each week, beyond our plans.

Season 2 starts on January 6^rd 2021.

I also missed my friends I was not able to hold, 1 so called “knuffel contact” is not enough for me. I look forward to our fantastic 2021 and wishing you and your loved ones a nice year end and great start of the year.

A wise woman told me this:

When you take only easy decisions, you have will get a hard life

But when you are brave enough to take the hard decision, your life will be easy.

What hard decision will you take in 2021 to make your life easy.

Thank you for your trust and see you in 2021.