Responsibilities of leaders and institutions — a time for national mobilization

We are entering a critical new phase of the global COVID-19 pandemic. In Canada, the infection rate grows at concerning rates — though our health care system is not yet at a breaking point. We are just starting the workplace shutdowns caused by social distancing that are leading to job loss. The USA appears to be even more at risk, and potentially unstable.

Everyone now knows someone in isolation, on layoff, or displaying concerning symptoms. Already, I have friends and students whose personal economic situation has been shattered. Their shifts, or jobs, are gone — and they are not coming back any time soon. And the crisis will likely last far longer than many leaders have officially told us.

What are the responsibilities of institutions, of institutional leaders, of system leaders, and of working professionals at this time? It is a time for national mobilization — for each institution of society, each formally empowered leader, and each person with those organizations to bring her or his resources, abilities, and creativity to bear on this national crisis. And no institution can be on the sidelines.

Which institutions and systems are doing which work?

Let’s take a look at what is already happening. Pretty much every aspect of the health and social services system, and every worker in these systems, is attending to the crisis. Keep in mind: all of these institutions need to do this with stretched resources, with people putting themselves at risk, and while continuing to attend to the populations and people who have other needs. And many of these patients and clients are at greater risk due to COVID-19.

Many other institutions in society are doing their part. Some are running to provide the essential services in those systems — food distribution; transportation; electricity and water; telecommunications; supply chain management — that we simply need to function for us to deliver on those essential public health needs. Others are providing free access to information, entertainment and other services that they’d usually ask people to pay for.

Provincial and local governments are doing their part to support these systems, and to help workers and people on the margins stay on their jobs or reduce expenses. The federal government is moving to support incomes and businesses in the near term. With so much economic activity is cratering, direct income support beyond the current level of 1% of GDP (from the federal government’s Wednesday announcement) will almost certainly be needed — and other levels of government will have to provide income supports as well.

It was heartening to see members of Canada’s business community write this weekend with their understanding of what is at stake. Today’s federal announcement, with the potential to convert private manufacturing capacity towards public health needs, is an important step, following on the work by some businesses and public institutions (for instance in manufacturing hand sanitizer and donating supplies) earlier in the crisis.

(Last week, I removed this line from a previous posting: “Indeed, for a time, our economy will need to be centrally organized as if during a time of war.” That now feels reasonable, not alarmist.)

The public, constituents, and people working in these institutions, will still have questions. While they work under unprecedented strain, leaders in these institutions and systems will need to stay transparent and accountable, while supporting their front-line workers.

What other work could be done?

But still other institutions are still on the sidelines. As they struggle to keep up, and serve their staff, constituents, and clients, they will need to turn their attention to the greater good. They are proceeding with business as usual, though with greater uncertainty, and working remotely.

Every institution and institutional leader has to look within and ask a series of questions in this era of national mobilization. They need to answer them in relation to some of the essential systems we need right now (surely an incomplete list): health and public health; social services; education; food distribution; transportation; customer service operations; electricity and water; telecommunications; supply chain management; media and entertainment.

Here are seven questions that leaders and institutions that are not in the core of the crisis response could run through, with their teams and organizations:

1. What resources do I have that can be given up now for those essential systems?

2. What expertise is within my organization that can be made available to others?

3. What practices, resources, or networks do I have access to, that can be retooled for national mobilization?

4. Can I abandon any of the natural competitive impulses within my sector, in the name of co-operation and national mobilization?

5. Are any of my people better situated elsewhere — in those essential systems, or in those co-ordinating institutions, rather than staying in my organization?

6. What business-as-usual practices can we abandon to help us work quickly to answer questions 1 to 5?

7. For businesses and large public sector institutions, to what extent am I willing to sacrifice the primary objective around shareholder return, or client or staff satisfaction — beyond what will already happen due to the recession — to help me answer the five questions above? To help keep other key institutions afloat, am I willing to cut salaries, accept job loss, or more?

I want to get more pointed about this, in relation to professional work: much of it doesn’t matter right now. And meanwhile, in the short-run — though this will change — many professionals are still getting paid and supported, quite nicely.

(I am conscious of my own role in this. Right now, I’m writing for the audience that I do have, because that feels both like a good answer to questions 1 or 2 — when not attending to family and team responsibilities. At the Ryerson Leadership Lab, we have answered question 3 by doing online convening on issues in this crisis, where we need to organize new leadership and public policy ideas, and connect those with power to those without. But our organization, too, will have to run through this entire checklist.)

One possible benefit of this work is that institutions will have to make true on their brand promises — or dispense with those claims they make that aren’t really true.

Some implications of answering these questions might lead to the following — this is a very partial list:

— A move by senior and technical specialists into governments and other co-ordinating institutions on a dollar-a-year basis to help lead the response

— More manufacturing capacity being redirected towards adjacent system needs

— More technologists working on public purpose technology

— The sharing of distribution channels, mailing lists, and other tools that reach deep into populations for public service messages

— The retooling of a larger number of assets and asset classes — say real estate (especially hotel and dormitory beds)

— The evolution of professional services work towards pro bono offerings for the main institutional players

— More attention from other players in society towards those public systems and public workers that could be the secret casualties of this crisis, without immediate attention (especially public K-12 education)

Hopefully, posing these questions can spark discussions within organizations and unleash new creativity, and a new sense of mission, well said by Ed Greenspon and Robert Greenhill in these recent pieces. (In a future blog post, I can do shout-outs to those organizations, associations, professional groups, and others that are giving good answers to these questions. Please e-mail me at kbardeesy@ryerson.ca if you have a good story to share).

Sacrifices:

Everyone will need to sacrifice, and we will be able to tell when leaders and institutions don’t make those sacrifices. We will need political leaders — the Prime Minister and Premiers in particular — and other institutional leaders — to make specific calls for people and institutions of means to make sacrifices, and to turn their institutions towards the needs of national mobilization.

Change is hard to accept. Loss is even harder to accept. It is the responsibility of leadership, to quote a couple of mentors from the Harvard Kennedy School, Ron Heifetz and Dean Williams, to determine how the losses will be distributed.

In particular, although our governments will be borrowing at historically low rates, they are not abstract entities with no financial relationship to the people they serve. The borrowing will have a cost, for future generations. We can deal with some of that later — but we shouldn’t accept massive borrowing unless others join in the sacrifices now. “Our government” is no different from “all of us together.”

And it is clear that the yawning gulf between (a) that near-majority of the population that was already living paycheque-to-paycheque, or on the margins, and (b) the smaller number who are comfortable, have real estates, and have options and resources to help them stay comfortable for a while — is only going to grow.

(In consultation with my family, I am donating 10% of my after-tax salary, for the duration of the crisis, to entities working to respond to the crisis — ideally to one that is able to turn $1 into $4, by providing a match with a government dollar, a business community dollar, and a philanthropic dollar (Sean Mullin and I proposed an idea for such a vehicle in our Toronto Star op-ed, and Sean Speer and Brian Djikema had a related idea in the National Post). Our family can absorb it, so perhaps it is not a true-enough sacrifice. Others have other choices they can make. I say it here merely as an act of transparency and accountability — and I hope others will follow. But no one can do nothing.)

That means, quite simply, that people in category (b) above will have to join in voluntary sacrifice, and likely be compelled to do so through public policies that will have them sacrifice more.

In particular, everyone will need to make a financial sacrifice. And of course we will be well attuned (in part because we are so screen-focussed at the moment!) to leaders and institutions who use this situation for gain, and not collective benefit.

At some point, these’ll get into some very knotty questions, like some of the ones above, that will require a different set of choices — public policy choices, not merely private ones. Jon Shell makes some very compelling arguments around what these public policy choices might look like for large financial players and their bottom lines. Due to this crisis, those who have avoided fundamental questions around wealth distribution in our society will have to be pulled into that conversation — and it will have to be a political and public policy conversation, not just one about private generosity.

In the meantime, if we gather these kinds of resources mentioned above in a series of matching funds (and we can have more than one kind of matching fund), we will be demonstrating the common cause that will make a real difference, and help preserve our social cohesion.

Without collective sacrifice and national mobilization, our ability to respond to COVID-19 and our social cohesion are at risk. I am confident that Canadians, and Canadian institutions and leaders, are up to the task.