The current global lockdown, finds many of us working from home, limiting interactions with team members, customers and partners and reducing new business opportunities. Henry Othieno, CEO of Tusafishe, shares some inspiring strategies on how Tusafishe is nonetheless making the most of the situation, and may just come out stronger from the lockdown.

Uganda based-Tusafishe produces, advertises, sells and installs automated low-cost filters. The lockdown is strongly affecting Tusafishe’s daily operations and its plans to scale-up. Their main clients, schools are closed and plans to install new filters had to be put on hold.

How does the team keep its energy? And how does Tusafishe turn such drawbacks into opportunities? Three take-aways:

Focus on your team

“The team is the key asset for the resilience of the business and helps us to get through this crisis” said Henry. Focus on your team, use this time to further grow together and support each other emotionally. Together, you can make it!

Move online & stay engaged!

Move your physical team meetings online and keep each other up to date. Team check-ins are always important, but even more important when working remotely. Tusafishe has moved from one to two regular team meetings per week. This helps the team keep engaged motivated to push forward their individual tasks. To bridge the rural divide with team members based in the country-side, they use individual phone calls to leave no team member behind.

Take a step back to reflect, strategise and grow!

As many of our enterprises, Tusafishe is an interactive business that relies on on-the-ground work and interactions in the field. But being in the field can easily keep you busy without time to reflect on the big picture and your overall strategy. Use the “down-time” to take a step back! Reflect on your business plan, your strategy and scale-up plan. Are you on track? Are any adjustments needed? Do you have any new ideas? Apply for funding and reach out to form new partnerships to set your plans into action right after the lockdown.

As much as this is a time for reflection, this is also the time for you to grow personally and develop your team’s skills further. This may just be the opportunity to conduct online training on marketing or accounting that has always been in the back of your mind.

 Do you have stories of SMEs innovating to adapt to COVID-19 related conditions? Share them with us at infoseed [dot] unoinfoseed [dot] uno (info[at]seed[dot]uno)