6 positive changes you need to promise to make after Coronavirus / Covid-19
Lessons from people who won’t let this crisis define them
I have written columns for Forbes, The Currency, Watt, Medium, Cainthus & a longer version of this article on LinkedIn during this lockdown, all focussed on making ‘Lemonade out of Lemons’. It’s inspiring to see companies and individuals using this moment to redefine their business, help their customers and themselves. They are not letting Covid-19 define them.
These are their six self-commitments.
ONE- I WILL ACCEPT CHANGE, AND THAT IT CAN BE GOOD.
Change doesn’t come naturally to any of us, and yet when challenged we respond to crisis by building new muscles that we didn’t know we had, and once exercised we retain these skills for the rest of our lives. The ability to meet adverse conditions, and maintain a positive outlook, looking to extract positives out of challenges, is best captured in the books of Covey and Coyle, in the ‘The Seven Habits of highly Effective people’ and the ‘Green platform’.
As Declan Coyle, sports and business motivator and student of the human condition say’s ‘we need to consciously chose a response to life’s setbacks and challenges that has nothing to do with victimhood or blame.’
Changes brought through crisis usually cause people to hunker down and adopting the foetal position, yet some of mankind’s greatest achievements have been borne through overcoming obstacles. Tim Harwood’s BBC podcast describes how the greatest jazz performance, The Koln concert, occurred despite the fact that the pianist Keith Jarrett discovered one hour beforehand that he had to perform with a broken piano. Science has also benefit from scientific discoveries which have occurred during pandemics, most famously Newton’s theories of gravity, are just more examples of human overcoming adversity to achieve extraordinary things.
Dale Carnegie is credited with saying ‘when the world gives you lemons make lemonade’. You cannot change the crisis, the situation, but how only the attitudes and actions you chose, and this defines alone the outcome.
TWO- I WILL GO FOR GROWTH
Thinking about growth in the middle of a crisis may seem counterintuitive but I have now seen the benefits of this in multiple business. Following the same principles as those in the book 2–1–4–3, a book about planning for explosive growth, I have challenged all I have met during the past two months to not ‘baton down the hatches’ but instead to carefully think of how to pivot their strategy to aggressively pursue growth during a period of crisis.
Two great books are worth reading on this subject; A Beautiful Constraint and The Obstacle is the Way both are brilliant treatises on viewing a crisis as an opportunity for growth. A once in the lifetime opportunity to overturn what appears to be an unsurmountable obstacle, loving the challenge and anticipating failures but recognizing that in overcoming the challenge puts the person or company in a unique position to build emotional and business resilience. What blocks the path becomes the path. What impedes action becomes the impulse for the same. Instead of becoming a victim, focus on becoming a transformer.
The authors of Constraint give other examples from both real and self-imposed constraints. Netafim invented micro irrigation systems (Israel) when the founder noted how trees react to intermittent leaking pipes, The Obstacle showed how SAB used the same concept to reduce irrigation of barley for their beer, while increasing yields. They describe how Audi won Le Mans for 5 years in a row by changing the question they asked their engineers from ‘how do we drive faster’ to ‘how do we avoid pit stops’. Nike’s record-breaking sports shoes Vapor Flyknit achieved a breakthrough by producing shoes in a manner that makes it feel like a sock. Constraint uses examples as varied as Mick Jagger creating his unique dance to reflect the lack of space between band members, Twitter’s popularity despite confining users to 140 characters and Southwest reframing the problem of flying 3 routes with 4 planes into being an issue of shortening turn-around times to 10 minutes.
The Obstacle is the Way and The Beautiful Constraint both emphasize that the goal during Covid-19 has to be to control how we respond. Show patience, courage, humility, resourcefulness, justice and creativity. Go for growth.
THREE- I WILL RETRAIN (MYSELF, MY TEAM)
The closing of schools and universities during this lockdown has crystallized pre-existing challenges to the traditional education system. Yuval Noah has heralded this trend, proclaiming that the ability to embrace continuous learning (especially on-line) will increasingly distinguish those who win in the employment and salary stakes, especially in a future dominated by artificial intelligence, and corona virus has accelerated this trend.
The current lockdown is an unexpected opportunity for all of us to embrace online courses, learning languages/ skills, acquiring certifications. Universities are the obvious candidates to lead the future of online learning, but many have struggled to allocate the resources to create truly effective learning environments. Into this void as Khan Academy, edX, Coursera, Linkedin, and Youtube all offer free knowledge and skills training. Some of the commercial sites (such as Masterclass and Medium) are running free or reduced-price promotional offers during this period of #socialisolation.
Reading books, watching classes, getting a new certificate? The explicit goal should be same; Don’t return the workplace post-coronavirus with the same skill set.
FOUR- I WILL (DO AS MUCH AS I CAN) ON-LINE
Are there any people left in the world who believe that business can’t be done online? Even those who have been reluctant, lazy, ‘we’ve always done it this way’. As we are now familiar with video meeting platforms (i.e. Zoom, Skype, Bluejeans, Microsoft meetings etc) do we really need face to face meetings all the time? Doctors, Lawyers, Accountants other professional trades? How much of routine communication can be handled online?
What about your staff? In the early days of #workingfromhome there were some bitter posts from workers who had wanted to telecommute for some or all of their work, but whose workplace didn’t allow it. People whose disabilities affected their ability to physically get to (or be in) an office, but who are well able to work noticed how quickly the ‘impossible’ became possible. Families with challenging domestic requirements noticed the same.
And of course, commuters right now, less than 5% of Americans and British work from home. The average US commute both ways is close to an hour a day. When I ask Chinese colleagues (captured by Lahiffe in his recent column in the Currency), what they have learned from the last six months of Covid-19 induced confinement, the answers range from ‘I know now that I can work from home’ to ‘we will never work in the office exclusively again’.
This change has occurred at a good time, in the sense that video conferencing, Voice Over IP, document sharing and the speed of the internet has never been better, and as such (even with its limitations) it is realistic for people to work from home in a way that couldn’t have been imagined just 10 years ago.
What else can you move online? How much information about you and your organization can be available online? It is amazing what cameras, video, documents, scanners, 3-D printers can all do to remove the need. What would you do if you could never meet anyone face to face anymore? Isn’t it time to maximize your time on-line!
FIVE- I WILL FIND A BETTER WAY
One of the lessons from past crises, as recounted by those who have lived through them, is to act early and decisively to cut costs, grasp nettles, find ways towards new efficiencies. Do it decisively and immediately and do it once.
This means that it may be time to look at your team, look at your management. Do you have the right team or is this the time to restructure? Who’s on the bus, what seat, who should be getting off? What about your process flow? Warehouses, offices layout, the administrative structure of how things are done. If you were starting anew what would you change or structure differently? Technology allows things to be done differently and crises such as Covid-19 can create the impetus to address issues that in more comfortable times will never be addressed.
Can you remove costs that have become automatic, but don’t need to be? Where can technology bridge the gaps? When the #lockdown restrictions are lifted will you just slide back into old practices and habits?
Incremental improvements result from conventional brainstorming, but crises and existential threats create the opportunity for revolutions and transformational disruptive thinking. There is not better
SIX- I WILL FIND BALANCE
The concept of work life balance is hardly a new one (disclaimer: people who know me well will know that I am not a posterchild for it). Still, it is obvious that the average manager works longer hours than ever before, begging the question whether the increased connectivity from new technologies has made us better at our jobs, or just gives us the opportunity to think about them more often. Stories of bosses and customers demanding 24 hour a day availability is the stuff of legends. While EU companies tend to restrict the hours worked per week (35 hours in France, 38 in Germany) and offer generous vacation and other time off, US and US companies tend to be the outliers in working long hours: 40% of US employees regularly work more than 50 hours, and 20% more than 60 hours.
As a consequence some EU countries have expressly banned the use of work devices at home, in an attempt to hold back the tide, but in a global marketplace being unwilling to stay connected puts you at a competitive disadvantage, especially to the rapidly developing countries such as India and China. One Harvard study showed US executives clocking in for 72 hours a week.
Working from home is not a perfect solution. Parents with children find themselves continuing to hold down day jobs, making 3 meals a day for themselves and others and even providing home school. That said nonetheless it may represent a sea change in people’s attitude to work.
Being faced with a pandemic introduced many of us our first glimpse of their own mortality. Few of us will emerge from this not knowing someone who has died as a result of Covid-19. Will this change our attitude to work, and the pursuit of material happiness? It is certainly something consider.
Seize the moment & squeeze hard to make that lemonade.
For more-
Linkedin, This Crisis will not define me https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/crisis-define-me-aidan-connolly/
Forbes, Building business resilience through technology during a crisis,
The Currency, 6 business lessons from Covid;
Watt Poultry, How can the industry can use Covid to its advantage
Medium, Has our food system been left naked as the Covid tide goes out?
Cainthus; 7 Lessons for building a resilient farm business through technology (during Covid-19)
