Economic uncertainty and geopolitical tensions are prompting many Belgian companies to make tougher choices: smaller teams, tighter budgets, and the question of how to maintain the same standard of performance despite these constraints.
It is precisely at times like these that resilience is a key strategic choice. It means making choices that keep your organisation on its toes, without losing sight of your people or your customers.
In this blog, you’ll find out exactly how to go about it.
Focus: working more efficiently
It starts with how your organisation allocates its time and energy today. Where do you focus them? The temptation is often obvious: to step up the pace across the board, work longer hours, and take on more tasks. In the short term, that seems to be the solution. In the longer term, however, it leads to burnout.
It is therefore necessary to make more focused choices in order to stay true to the essence of the job. Your time should be devoted primarily to the areas where you and your team really make a difference to your customers. How do you go about this in practice?
Start with the things that take up a lot of time but yield little: reports that nobody reads any more, meetings with no clear outcome, and processes that once served a purpose but have since become redundant. These are the first things you should cut out or simplify.
Also bear in mind your meeting culture. The more people there are in a meeting who don’t actually need to be there, the more collective time and energy is wasted. So, whenever you send out an invitation, ask yourself who is really needed, and let the rest use their time productively elsewhere.
On the other hand, there are the core elements of what your customers expect from you: fast response times, quality controls, specialist expertise and a customer experience that sets you apart from your competitors. These are not areas where you should cut corners.
As well as time, energy also requires conscious choices. Look within your own role or team to see which tasks really deserve your attention today. Not every aspect of the job carries the same weight during a busy period: some tasks have a direct impact on the customer or the outcome. Focus your efforts fully on those.
In practical terms, this might mean organising your day differently. Psychologist Elke Geraerts calls this the ‘elephants and rabbits’ theory: start with your most important task (the elephant), not with the small, less important tasks (the rabbits) such as emails or phone calls. Those who tackle the rabbits first often lack the focus needed to get started on the big tasks properly.
That same mindful approach to energy also applies at team level. Whatever you, as a manager, focus on will grow. If you focus too much on those who complain or resist, it will drag down the morale of the whole team. You should therefore consciously give space to those who want to move forward, and not give negativity any more attention than it deserves.
All these decisions only work if they are made at the right level. Team leads and project managers are closest to the work. They are the first to spot which tasks are causing delays without adding value. So give them the actual authority to make these decisions, not just the instruction to “work more efficiently”.
Customer relationships as an anchor
Your customers are also feeling the effects of these uncertain times. Yet, when under pressure, companies often quietly cut back on customer experience first, even though that is precisely what makes the difference. Companies that consciously monitor their customer experience build the most trust.
At a time when more and more customer contact is taking place via chatbots and automated systems, strong, personalised service is becoming a rare commodity. Customers still prefer to pick up the phone for complex queries or when they need help quickly. A genuine smile at the counter, someone who really listens, or a member of staff who goes that extra mile: that’s what a customer remembers. Think of someone who still manages to find a gap in a packed schedule to help a customer on the spur of the moment. It’s those little, unexpected gestures that really stick in the mind.
Building trust starts with managing expectations. Be completely honest about what is and isn’t (any longer) possible. Proactively communicate any delays or changes. A customer who is informed in good time that a delivery deadline is under pressure will react fundamentally differently to a customer who has to find that out for themselves.
To make that a reality, there is one condition: give your customer-focused staff the confidence to make their own decisions. Customer experience stands or falls on speed, and speed requires the authority to act. When every deviation from standard procedure has to go through a manager first, you lose valuable time precisely when speed makes all the difference.
All these choices add up to something bigger. Customer experience is the sum of every touchpoint a customer has with your organisation: from initial contact through to invoicing and after-sales, whether digital or in person. For many customers, that overall experience often carries just as much weight as what you ultimately deliver. It is precisely in a challenging market that this experience becomes the deciding factor. Customers stay with you longer and are even willing to pay more when that experience is consistently clear, swift and personalised. So identify which touchpoint in your customer journey is currently the least consistent. That’s often where the greatest gains to be made lie.
Leadership under pressure
Tough decisions and strong customer relationships stand or fall on the people who carry them out. How you manage them in this regard is just as crucial in determining whether that approach holds up.
It all starts with communication. Open communication (almost) always works best, even when you yourself aren’t yet entirely sure how things stand. People don’t like being left in the dark: vague or incomplete messages simply cause more stress. After all, uncertainty often feels worse than a difficult message. It is not the news itself that makes people anxious, but the feeling that you are keeping something from them. So don’t be afraid to admit that you don’t yet know exactly how things will turn out, as long as you make it clear that you will keep your team informed as the process progresses. Teams that are kept properly informed are more likely to trust their management.
That transparency only really works when it goes hand in hand with recognition for the right things. Meeting a target is visible. The effort and flexibility required to achieve it often go unmentioned. Sometimes, the factors influencing a KPI are simply beyond your team’s control. Continuing to hold a team to account for a target blindly in such cases overlooks what the team has actually achieved. Set high standards, but assess performance realistically.
That’s why it’s just as important to celebrate small successes from time to time. These may be things other than the end result: valuable input, good teamwork or customer-friendliness. Do bear in mind where you set the bar. Applauding every single action dilutes the impact. Look for the successes that really matter and make a point of celebrating those.
Resilience as a culture, not as an HR programme
What begins as resilience in difficult times ideally becomes something lasting: a culture that remains intact even when things settle down again. The real difference lies not in how you weather the storm, but in what you are left with afterwards.
Organisations with a strong, positive culture generally have one thing in common: they have a clear understanding of their core values, and they stick to them. That is a strategic choice. You decide where you are prepared to make cutbacks, and where you are not. Especially when everything comes under pressure at the same time.
You don’t build that kind of culture with a one-off action that you simply tick off your list. It’s a habit: re-prioritising when the situation changes, communicating honestly when uncertainty arises, and taking time to reflect on small successes when the pace remains high. Companies that stick to this find that their team not only weather the storm, but emerge stronger for it.
