Preface: Crisis Response for Universities

Human beings always seek a side of comfort, self-regulating; both psychologically and biologically while always aspiring moving up for further (almost insatiable) growth. A very normal reaction, engrained in our psychy, and explained with the Maslow’s heirarchy of needs.

There are times when the multiple stages of the seeming structured pyramid come into conflict with themselves, it is as a time of crisis. Only in times of peace do they tend to complement each other.

New risks are emerging that need mitigation in a current crisis and a post-corona world. The economy slammed its brakes, its impact will be felt in short term. It would slowly regain upwards momentum with time but for now, the employment will take a hit as businesses shutdowns, economy slumps and in some cases just because of no virtual frameworks to operate in. Hiring has ceased as people are already being laid off for these reasons. The non-digital works will suffer the most which have to be either digitalized or just wait till it all gets over and re-structured. The new talent coming in the economy will have to compete with already saturated labour market. Desperate selection of work would happen as people, in a rush, will take up any job that is offered. This in-turn will cause dissatisfaction in a long run resulting in churn and temporary re-alignment of the market. We, as a society, are tumbling a few steps lower on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

The current crisis of COVID19 has shaken the complete structure with threat to all of the human needs of comfort. Starting from social confusions and unrest around basic necessities; food, shelter, toilet paper to safety needs; of security, employment, health to further social belonging; threatening sense of connection, fear of losing friends and family with lost confidence and confusion on the other higher needs of Esteem and Self-Actualization in an era of forced lockdowns, contraints and economic uncertainty.

While we certainly prioritize the lowest common denominator to address first, the complete recovery will beg to offer a phsychological solace from the pandemic. It is as important but seldom given the full importance or focus. As for the biological, there is no shortage of people already dealing with the subject. How can we improve something which we cannot measure? In order tp map a plan for adapting to the change, we must create rapid frameworks to allow time for change both in terms of planning and in adoption. However, time is a luxury we do not have in a crisis. So we take the change amangement models and apply them to a crisis situations while shortening the time frames. We must realize the need of rapid response but still not get into a time-scarcity mindset to not skip important planning actions.

Failing to plan a response is sure shot plan to fail with the response. On other side, not to be stuck on planning a perfect response as we are not dealing with Change Management Timeframes but are forced in work in Crisis Management Timeframes.

A university or an educational institute can map their strategy of crisis response in four main areas:

Forecasting change, Development Planning, Capacity building and Sustainability

Let’s strive for short-term results, based on best practices, betting on stability and future, creating trust, investing in alignment, leveraging commitment.

This is our mission: to provide supporting frameworks and conditions to create, maintain and sustain movement, based on external impotus that we cannot stop but only adapt to.

The models are adapated from

1. Succession planning techniques using talent analytics by Peopltree Analytics. The model and strategies as defined by Martin Sutherland in his book Talent Talker: 60 Conversations to Unlock Talent and Potential
2. Alignment Squared Model for business model innovation, data-driven growth and digitization (Ritter & Pedersen, 2019). The model is described in the book Alignment Squared (Ritter, 2014): Alignment Squared, CBS Competitiveness Platform, Copenhagen. https://research.cbs.dk/en/publications/alignmentalignment-squared-driving-competitiveness-and-growth-th Ritter, Thomas & Carsten Lund Pedersen (2019): Digitization Capability and the Digitalization of Business Models. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0019850119300999
3. Talent Fitment and Market Readiness Indicators by GetBoarded Technologies towards mapping a better student-market fit for universities and companies.

Index:

Preface

Chapter 1: Forecasting change

Chapter 2: Development Planning

Chapter 3: Capacity building

Chapter 3: Sustainability