Kurt has an idea

Kurt, an employee of a company which, like many others, is currently applying for short-time work, has a lot of time to read in his spare time and has noticed that you can win new customers via a blog. Full of enthusiasm, he proposes the blog idea in a Skype meeting as a countermeasure to current declines in sales and wants to publish blog articles regularly from now on. The other employees confront him with a number of counter-arguments and are extremely sceptical about this plan. Due to the time involved, the idea is rejected and Kurt leaves the meeting frustrated.

In a company with an established growth hacking process, new ideas are promoted by not discarding them on the basis of a gut feeling. New approaches are tested before final decisions are made. Well, in Kurt's case, one would decide to test the blog on a free blogging platform before investing a lot of money and time. The marketing team determines when this test is considered successful (e.g. with 10 new customers) and gives Kurt a free hand until then.

Many European companies are completely unfamiliar with this approach and have difficulty in allowing such experiments. We have already reported on this in an earlier article.

Life-Hack 1: Life-Hacks against corona gnats

Hacks are actually nothing more than validated findings. You develop ideas and test them on the market to see whether they will fuel the growth or success of your company. Either a company has enough creative minds and develops its own ideas or it makes use of existing possibilities. One of the biggest advantages of digitalization is that a lot of good information and sources of inspiration can be found via social media, search engines or blogs.

Let's start with a few simple life hacks that you can quickly test for yourself. After all, the current forced isolation does not only affect our professional life, it influences our whole everyday life.

NASA expert and insulation researcher Jack Stuster has been studying the cooperation of people in extreme situations for years. Stuster told SRF's new youth magazine «Forward» what people can do in their current self-isolation and what strategies we use to best survive isolation.

Many people have to be alone in their 4 walls at the moment. Loneliness can quickly become a problem. Stuster emphasizes at the beginning that goals are now very important. On the one hand, the long-term, common goal of containing the virus, on the other hand, everyone should still set their own goals. In order not to sink into chaos, daily routines and to-do lists are now also very important. This not only provides an overview, but also means that chopping off a successful activity can improve the mood in the long term.

Then there are families or shared flats that spend more time together than usual from one day to the next. This can also lead to tension and problems. So it is important to get together at the beginning of the crisis and to realize how important it is to get along with each other. Joint activities are just as important as respecting privacy. Everyone in the household should be given the opportunity to retreat. This applies to children as well as to adults.

Life-Hack 2: With Bad Religion against the bad mood

The Swiss village shop owner Annarös Gisler has probably involuntarily gained international fame in the ZDF Morgenjournal with her secret recipe against bad mood. Annarös recommends listening to punk rock against sinking morale. More precisely: Bad Religion, that would quickly banish sorrow and worries.

Covid-19 accelerates the digital transformation

Recently, Forbes, one of the most successful business magazines in the world, published Covid-19 Future Theses by futurologist Bernard Marr. Marr is an internationally acclaimed bestselling author and consultant who has been strategically preparing both large companies and countries for the future for years. Marr maintains that Covid-19 will change our society one way or another.

Our freshly baked growth hacker Kurt now knows that good ideas can always be found in such articles. He summarizes the most important theses for the next meeting.

Maybe there are a few hacks that you can use for your company to emerge from the crisis stronger.

Idea 1: Using the home office as an opportunity

Even companies that have never considered home office as a possibility are forced to offer their employees this alternative at the moment. Even the biggest home office skeptics have to admit today that at least in the crisis, the effects would be even more dramatic without this new way of working. Take the chance to check whether in the future home office is not a good opportunity for you as a company to work more flexible, attract new talents or possibly even save costs.

Idea 2: Digital stress test

For companies that have been little involved in digital transformation in the past, Covid-19 is something of a digital stress test. We all hope, of course, that things will return to normal as soon as possible. Nevertheless, the current situation mercilessly shows us the opportunities and dangers of progressive digitalization. Take the opportunity to put the degree of digitalization of your company through its paces. Check whether your IT infrastructure and distribution channels are still up to date and whether you are ready for what will happen in the foreseeable future one way or another.

Idea 3: Distance Learning

In China, the educational institutions were able to continue their operations quickly via the established streaming platform Agora.io. In this country, they found it difficult and had to completely reorient themselves. Not only schools, but also companies can use flexible distance learning to make their employees fit for future challenges. But above all, employees who currently have to reduce their workload due to short-time work can use their free time to further their education via distance learning.

Crises are sometimes also opportunities

At the moment, the most important thing for all of us, one way or another, is not to bury our heads in the sand and take advantage of the few opportunities that have arisen. We have converted the event platform we set up last year into a delivery service within a week. This required a special effort on the part of the employees, but without existing digital structures this project would not have been possible in the first place.

What does the story of Kurt tell us? Does blogging always lead to digital success? No. For us, a blog might be a good acquisition tool. For you it might not. Perhaps the blog will also fail in the story of Kurt. We do not know.

But even if it fails, Kurt does well to test other ideas, then he will soon achieve his first successes. In the best case, word of his success will get around. Manuel from the product development department would now like to learn more about the new approach. He is so enthusiastic about the results that from now on product ideas will be tested in addition to acquisition ideas. And because the positive developments have reached the head of sales, different price models will even be tested in the future. 

Growth is teamwork

Under Kurt's leadership a new team, the so-called Growth Team, is created. It meets briefly every week, analyzes all growth measures and compiles optimization ideas for the entire company. Kurt now knows the most important growth figures of the company and has access to an analysis specialist. And since he has spent an hour a week talking to customer service staff and incorporating their feedback into the development of ideas, the company's growth has increased by a further 120%.

As the saying goes, one swallow alone does not make a spring. So an innovative growth hacking process is most effective if you as a company can foster creative employees like Kurt and test many such ideas each week. Even if only 20% of them are successful, you will approach your growth goals step by step every week with this approach. The more teams are involved in the growth hacking process, the stronger the growth.

Interested in more hacks & tips?

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