We are not going back to where we were (before the coronavirus). But that’s not new.
Yes, we are going through unprecedented times.
Yes, you might scream if you hear or read that one more time. I know I will.
Yes, it is absolutely true and every one of us is experiencing that in our everyday lives in one way or many.
And yes, it’s in human nature to look for certainties, especially in times of deep challenges, like the ones we are up against. So, wanting to get “back to normality” seems like a no-brainer. That is what we keep hearing anyway: “when are we getting back to what we were doing?”, “how will industries get back to business as usual?”, etc.
But when did any human or any situation ever got BACK to where they were? Never.
Every day moulds our next. We are not the same we were a year ago, even without disasters. But still. Psychologists talk about the negativity bias: the notion that we are more influenced by negative thoughts and events than from positive ones, even if they are of the same intensity. And these change us. Profoundly.
In any case, (to borrow from my beloved Design Thinking mindset) we are prototyping and testing every single day and then we make use of the learnings in order to iterate.
That is how we evolve. For better or worse. But surely, it’s impossible to get back to any state we were before. Because life has now given us new information and our brains are wired to process and decide what to do with it. Ignoring it is not an option.
Take a bad job, for example: you make an arguable decision and end up with a boss that mistakes the notion of “leader” for “a petty person who wants to give you hell”. You say that you want to go back to a healthy environment (if you were in one before). But even if you get back to your old job, you’ll be a whole new professional, with a broader POV, tolerance points, experiences to share, DOs and DON’Ts you tested and did or didn’t work for you or the company. Most probably, your antenna for a*****s will have become more sensitive, too.
Time does not work backwards.
Let’s see the current situation: we were told we could not visit or hug our loved ones, we could not go to work physically, we could not send our children to school, we could not visit the grocery store by tens, we could not go out whenever we pleased and all this while the news were broadcasting what could happen to us if we were not compliant — exactly what happened to the countries that did not act fast: people dying in such frequency that were taken away in trucks and devastated health workers choosing which of the patients would get a ventilator, amidst the scientists’ desperation of not having all the answers and not knowing when they would.
No matter how this turns out and when we’ll be able to restore our ability to go about freely for any reason, nothing will ever go back to what it was. Because now life has shown us what can throw at us. And science says it’s not an oddity. It will happen again. Then, we have to be better positioned.
As we got compliant to each country’s guidelines (some more that others), we were also very quick to state that well, this is a situation which eliminates all differences.
“This pandemic has made us all equal, all vulnerable in front of the common enemy: the virus”.
And we also took the time to share pictures of the food we are now cooking, our co-workers now saying hello from their box on the platform our company is using for remote work, the online seminars we now have the time to complete, the Netflix series we binge watch, the online art events we are watching, the roots of our hair going black or grey, longing for our hair stylist to get back to work… And there’s nothing wrong with that. Humanity again.
Disclaimer: I’m not talking about the celebrities who shared their… resilience from their enviable homes. I’m talking about the middle class (and let’s not get to the discussion of whether that’s that even a thing).
But did the majority of us take the time to think about all these people who cannot work from home? People with mostly low-paying jobs that they don’t have for a while or they lost completely? Who cannot afford subscriptions or a colorist? Who don’t even have the internet access necessary to try up-skilling? Or for their kids to attend school online?
Well, if we didn’t, we cannot ignore them anymore.
Bloomberg predicted that the pandemic will lead to social revolutions in the same way the Black Death is considered to have ended the feudalism. “The coronavirus has put a magnifying glass on inequality both between and within countries”, they say.
“The political outcome of the epidemic will, like all political outcomes, be decided by struggle, by battles over interpretation, by pointing out what causes problems and what solves them.” (taken from the article “We can’t go back to normal: how will coronavirus change the world?”)
To shed light on the other side too, there definitely were admirable acts of solidarity, sprung either from individuals or from communities and even companies with true purpose: neighbourhood delivery networks to aid the elderly, donations to communities in need of help, support to the employees we sometimes did not give the credit they deserved — until we saw that the community cannot cover basic needs without them — and so much more.
What about business?
I come from and chose to build a Strategic Design consultancy in Greece. A country deeply depended on its amazing sceneries, crystal seas and shiny days, even when it’s raining. In other words, we have placed a good part of our economic future in the hands of tourism — even if we are not directly related to it. According to Kathimerini and INSETE, “directly and indirectly, tourism (in 2018) accounted for between 47.4 billion and 57.1 billion euros, or 25.7 to 30.9 percent of GDP”.
We thought that it’s a wealth we would never lose. We took that for granted. But like in any relationship that crashes when you take too much for granted, the day has come when tourism (at least, as we know it) is not a given anymore. What should we do? Hope that this is going to be a devastating year, but the next one will be so good that we’ll make up for what we’ve lost?
The wise thing is to divert your sources of income, before disaster strikes. But even if you don’t succeed in that, when gloomy days come, you can’t go back to where you were and pray it won’t happen again. Hope is not a strategy.
So, hopefully, we’ll understand that we have to build more industries efficiently. There is a promising scene of startups for instance, but still, they need to be incentivised through stronger deliberate support from the state and forward thinking organisations. Not only in the service of marketing tricks from companies looking to throw prizes for their next contest.
Tourism itself has to be seen in an alternative light. It’s now obvious that insurance will mean a lot more to (the few?) people who will be travelling, shorter booking windows will be pursued and maybe incentives should be given for domestic travel as flights will probably seem too risky. And that’s what is easily seen for the near future. But after that? Maybe good old customer research and innovative ideation will shed some light to the next day, the new reality in this industry — as in many others.
What effects will the reduction of travelling have in our culture and acceptance of the “different”? Are we looking at people closing in on themselves and an uprising of nationalism?
And then, what about the future of work, now that even those companies who didn’t think they could trust their employees with it, tested remote work?
Education? The online experience has to be designed in a way that takes into account the strengths of technology, but also its weaknesses.
Healthcare?
Religion?
The law?
“This story is developing”, as news outlets profess in an ongoing event. How can anyone think we can get back to anything?
Like in so many hardcore circumstances, we had the chance to see the true colors of every one: neighbours, friends, “friends”, bosses, governments, companies, organisations. And hopefully ourselves in the mirror.
That’s more information in the palette that is going to shape the new “normal” which will be based on who we were in our pre-Covid state but also on loads of observations and learnings. It’s true that the information load is shocking. Not the notion itself, though.
The answers have not been found (yet), but we cannot be thinking that it’s possible to piss around our known territory and let the others burn while they try to move forward. Yuval Noah Harari had a lot to say about how we are witnessing a serious lack of leadership, especially from those who were supposed to be the adults in the room — namely the US.
Just to bring back the lovely Greek contrast from a previous paragraph, in order to keep up the sun even in rainy days and while we inevitably go forward, we will have to re-visit what we were doing and bring the new realities to the design of the future. Understand our weaknesses and utilise this iron slap that we are experiencing to become better shielded for a new one in the future. No way back. Just forward.
The new slap will come.
It’s in our hands to not allow it to find us in some nostalgic “normality” we manically tried to hold on to with our bare teeth, even though deep down we know that it is against our (human) nature.
“We” was used a lot in this piece. That was in an effort to reflect what I see as the majority’s reactions. In some of those reactions, I’m including myself — in others, I don’t. These are intended as observations, definitely not finger pointing.
Obviously, there have also been a lot of voices expressing views like the ones here or totally towards another direction. All welcome to be discussed.
If you miss travelling as much as I do, for now you can visit our country virtually through “Greece From Home,” an initiative of the Greek National Tourism Organization in collaboration with Google.
