PANDEMIC pivots

Quick, decisive changes created long-term results

Prior to COVID, translation and interpretive services provider INGCO International did nearly all of its work in person. The company flew interpreters all over the world, paid them a per diem, sent equipment and a project manager onsite.

“It was a big expensive cost,” says Ingrid Christensen, president and founder.

And then, all of a sudden, it wasn’t. Just as a contracted Japanese interpreter was getting on a plane to fly to a corporate conference, the client called Christensen to let her know the meeting was canceled.

“We called her and said, ‘can you get off the plane now,’” Christensen says. “She said ‘yeah, they haven’t closed the doors.’ I would be lying if I didn’t say that sparked a moment of panic.”

INGCO was not alone. Media accounts indicate around a year into COVID that between one-third and nearly 40 percent of small businesses closed, at least temporarily, during the pandemic. And, yet many pivoted in ways that not only got them through the difficulties of 2020-22, but also created lasting improvements.

Adapting quickly

For INGCO, after a short time of worry, clients started calling in a panic indicating they still needed to find ways to meet and talk.

“That gave me a moment of pause,” Christensen says. “I’m like, ‘Well, yeah, we can do that.’”

In truth, she wasn’t sure the company could do that, but the demand and the technology were there. With the help of her teenage son Oscar Sanchez-Christensen, INGCO figured out how to deliver its services digitally. “He was, of course, home and he heard me on Zoom saying, ‘How the heck are we going to figure this out,’” Christensen says. “He came up with a whole solution.”

“It was so important for language access and equitable access to language that we just did,” she says. When you’re in the thick of things you just go. You do.”

by Andrew Tellijohn photographs by Tom Dunn

Ingrid Christensen, founder and president at INGCO International, had some moments of panic as the pandemic hit, but quickly moved forward with adding digital interpretive and captioning services that have stuck even as in-person meetings have returned.

Ultimately, after several months of 15-hour days, INGCO ended up increasing revenue by 46 percent that first year of the pandemic because it was able to meet the demands of clients looking for online translations and captioning. And much of the company’s business today remains online, though top-line growth has slowed into the mid-20s.

“It was because of our immediate overnight response and our ability to pivot,” Christensen says. “Nobody knew how to do it. Because we were a global company prior to COVID and, essentially, we’ve always been a remote company, it wasn’t that hard for us.”

EOS advantage

One factor in making such a quick change, Christensen added, was her gut instinct to try to please her clients. “When the market shifts or when a client asks you to do something, my intuition is to say yes and figure it out,” she says.

Another was its adherence to the Entrepreneurial Operating System, or EOS, for INGCO’s ability to adapt.

“We’ve always been open to new ideas and to innovation,” she says. “We really were able to put that into practice.”

That makes perfect sense to Tamara Prato, a business growth adviser, EOS implementor and CEO of Connect The Dots LLC.

The sweet spot for EOS is companies with 10 to 50 employees and the whole premise of the system, she says, is that it is about harmonizing human energy and getting everyone on the same page.

It gets leadership on the same page, as they are to agree on the top three to seven most important priorities, Prato says, and then creates discipline and keeps everybody away from “other shiny objects” for the next few months.

“It’s getting everybody on the same page, going in the same direction,” Prato says. “It creates clarity about where we’re going, how we’re going to get there, why we’re doing it. It helps from a prioritization standpoint.”