Running remote teams and pivoting business during a crisis

Executive overview

The COVID-19 lockdown forced businesses to abandon in-person operations overnight, exposing gaps in remote collaboration skills, cash positioning, and strategic agility. Coaches Deb Gabor (brand strategy), Ami Kassar (finance), and Anita Cabell (leadership/neuroscience) share what's working across Zoom facilitation, pivoting, and funding.

The businesses that thrive will be those who stop waiting for normal to return and instead use the crisis window to upgrade talent, acquire distressed competitors, and build community.

Making remote meetings and workshops work

• Zoom fatigue comes from missing the nonverbal feedback loop — micro-expressions, eye contact, and vocal tone are all degraded through the medium
• Camera position matters: mount a camera close to eye level and screen-centre to approximate natural eye contact
• Lighting from the front, not behind; even illumination reduces cognitive load for viewers
• Directional microphones (e.g. Audio Technica AT2005) reduce background noise pickup significantly compared to cardioid studio mics
• Pop-up Zoom calls that replicate office drop-ins create anxiety; ask permission first
• 90-minute sessions are the practical maximum before fatigue and discomfort set in; split longer workshops across multiple days
• Breakout rooms are the single most effective engagement tool for groups of 10+; even two minutes in groups of two or three changes participation levels
• Ask participants to report what they heard in breakouts, not what they said — lowers the barrier to sharing
• Visual gating (turning off slides, using green-screen slide overlays) reduces overstimulation and helps re-focus attention
• Collaboration tools — Mural, Miro, Stormboard — replace Post-it and flip-chart work; pre-building templates removes friction from live sessions

Maintaining team cohesion and culture remotely

• Daily standups (huddles) run regardless of location; already-established cadences survive the transition better
• End-of-day "sanity hour" touchpoints provide the informal connection that structured meetings don't
• Sending physical gifts to team members' homes (cookies, pizza, art supplies) creates shared experience across distance
• Themed team activities — PPE fashion shows, sculpture competitions, juried art shows — maintain culture and morale
• Bringing in external facilitators for improv or game-based exercises adds novelty that internal teams can't easily generate
• Remote workshops can produce equal or greater intimacy than in-person, especially in smaller breakout configurations; several clients now prefer virtual facilitation

Pivoting: how to find what's indispensable now

• The core question driving successful pivots: "How can I be indispensable right now?"
• LVMH retooled perfume factories to produce hand sanitiser and met France's entire need in 72 hours
• An eco-friendly dry cleaner in Austin pivoted in four directions simultaneously: home dry-cleaning promotion, zoom-appropriate wardrobe content, van-and-driver partnerships with restaurants for delivery, and a community-funded laundry service for frontline workers
• An audio products manufacturer (Atren USA) lost most of its 60-person workforce when sales collapsed, then converted its materials and supplier relationships to produce PPE — and rehired everyone
• A strip club in Portland rebranded as "Boober" and "Boober Eats," deploying performers and kitchen staff for socially distanced home entertainment and food delivery — generating significant press
• Creativity is driven by constraint, not innovation labs; the lever was invented because someone needed to dig out of a cave
• Companies that wait for normal to return will lose brand affiliations and customers to those who adapted; loyalty is being reassigned now

Funding: using capital strategically, not just for survival

• PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) was intended as a paycheck bridge, not an entrepreneur protection program; optimising for maximum forgivability can distort hiring and vendor decisions in ways that compromise integrity
• The Main Street Lending Program (as of late April 2020) offers 4× EBITDA minus existing debt, or 6× EBITDA capped at 130% of existing debt, with a $1M minimum — a potential war chest for businesses that performed well in 2019
• Most business owners were too focused on squeezing forgiveness from PPP to evaluate the Main Street program at all; the window is short
• Cheap, low-interest debt used for acquisition or talent upgrades is qualitatively different from debt used to prop up a broken business model
• Using crisis-era debt to extend a business that already needs fixing only delays a harder reckoning with personal assets at risk — the 2001 lesson
• Businesses with the right mindset should be: shoring up balance sheets, identifying acquisition targets among distressed competitors, and recruiting talent that the market is now making available

The SWT framework and spotting pivot opportunities

• SWT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Trends) is a more strategic alternative to SWOT; the key move is looking at trends across industries, not just within your own
• The intersection of two trends — overwhelmed ER workers and struggling restaurants — drove a $450K community fundraiser delivering hundreds of meals daily to frontline staff
• The Scaling Up Scoreboard provides visibility into company plans and performance as a digital substitute for office whiteboards
• Cashflow Stress Test and employee health surveys are available at scalingup.com

On coaching and strategic clarity

• Coaching helped identify which team members were genuinely aligned and which weren't — a prerequisite for real accountability
• Three data points make a trend; consistent quarterly coaching sessions over roughly three quarters produced clear directional clarity after a long plateau
• Scaled-down, focused online summits (10-minute speaker slots, two-hour total) are proving more valuable than full-day in-person events for knowledge transfer
• Shorter sessions online are producing higher output per hour than longer in-person equivalents, minus the relationship-building that travel and meals provide
• Building an audience through generously shared expertise monetises influence and connection, not content directly — new business meetings are happening without formal business development