Three Guiding Principles For Businesses To Emerge Strongly In The Post COVID-19 World In our new world post COVID-19, businesses need to review how they operate, adjust to the relevance of our changing world, and ultimately design in a more responsive service to the consumer to make life better.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the world, with it leaving a lasting impact that has touched the lives of people around the world in varying degrees. It's also become abundantly clear that the lasting effect would mean navigating through a new normal, rather than simply a return to the pre-coronavirus business as usual world. With the virus still prevalent around the world, the pressure to reopen economies has led to adjustments to our way of life with continuing measures in place to ensure the well-being of people in our communities.

Clearly, we have never faced a challenge like the one we've experienced over the past few months. For the business community during this period, it has been an incredibly challenging one, requiring changes to how companies operate, service their consumers, and adapt to a changing workplace. At my enterprise, CAFU, like for so many other business leaders, it has been a period to reflect on the current situation that we are experiencing, but also to consider both the immediate to mid-term future, while balancing the level of uncertainty before us.

In my view, the three clear guiding principles of empathy, innovation, and certainty will form the basis for our north star as we navigate through the months ahead to ensure businesses emerge strongly and successfully into the new normal. Here are my thoughts on how these three factors can be integrated into the businesses that we run:

1. Place a greater focus on empathy into your service offering

As a business community, we need to both, appreciate the upheaval that our consumers have faced and experienced, and understand the consequences that have generated in changes to consumer confidence and behaviors. We have a responsibility to the wider well-being of our communities in which we operate within to do more, be more responsive to their needs, and continue to contribute to driving our economy forward.

2. Prioritize greater innovation, at pace, and scale

Rather than shying away from innovation during this period, I believe the opposite is true. For businesses to emerge stronger, more operationally resilient, and more relevant for our new world, they should act boldly and confidently with a more optimistic viewpoint. Additionally, they should infuse a more agile approach in the way that they operate their business model to become more human-centric in their focus towards acting in a more beneficial way towards the needs of the consumers. Now is the time to prioritize greater innovation in terms of the products and services we offer our consumers, but also to mainstream it into our thinking through a mindset of empowering our employees to create new opportunities to benefit our businesses and ultimately our consumers and community.

3. Creating certainty in times of uncertainty

In times of uncertainty, the enemy of every business is hesitation to act, being indecisive, and becoming risk adverse. The consequences of this are two-fold: the world passes you by making your business proposition less relevant, and secondly, your competitors can make leaps and bounds ahead of you as they seize market share, create business opportunities, and become more relevant than you. Therefore, albeit a challenging period swimming in uncertainty, we must embrace change rather than fearing it, and create the bedrock of certainty for our employees to act with certainty for the best interests of our consumers.

These guiding principles are embedded into the mindset of everyone at CAFU. As a business, we want to do more, not less; we want to inspire our people to achieve more for our community now, and be further responsive to our community of consumers and business users. In looking at my own business, I believe this period has forged a call to action for CAFU– to drive further innovation, be even more human-centric, and understand our role in helping the community. This led me to review our existing business model for the post COVID-19 era, and to change it to remove all of our delivery charges and thereby making refueling your vehicle the same price as the petrol station, but completely hassle-free, bringing the fuel to your vehicle, at your convenience.

I believe that in our new world post COVID-19, businesses need to review how they operate, adjust to the relevance of our changing world, and ultimately design in a more responsive service to the consumer to make life better. For my part as the CEO of CAFU, I commit our company to making this a decade of innovative opportunity, better engaged with the needs of our community, and forging a future of optimism.

Related: Five Ways Growth Hacking Can Help Businesses Prepare For A Post COVID-19 Economy