“Never let a good crisis go to waste,” said Sir Winston Churchill, towards the end of World War ll, a lifetime before Rahn Emmanuel was credited for the same quote during the 2008 ‘great recession’. Today in 2020, mere decades later the COVID-19 pandemic is wreaking havoc that will maybe morph into a greater or even the greatest recession ever.
Semantics aside of how ‘great’ the recession is, for most mortals, we can already agree that business-as-usual no longer exists, however, it’s entirely up to you to decide if the post-COVID Business-As-UnUsual is a curse or a blessing.
You’ve probably come across a meme showing how happy introverted folks are during lockdowns (did you see me?), actually, there is more than just a grain of truth in it.
Introverted employees, by virtue of being introverted, have long been a silent crowd in the workplace, who oftentimes find it challenging when communicating face to face with others for various reasons. Body language expressions that are straightforward to many can be frustrating and nerve-wracking to these people.
For this group, the transition from physical offices to virtual ones during the COVID-19 pandemic is somewhat a welcome change. Thanks to collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Asana, etc., interpersonal communication is now more simplified and less stressful.
Without the pandemic, they would not have had such a refreshing experience of working from home.
In my previous CEO letters, I’ve mentioned how the pandemic and its subsequent lockdown and social distancing measures have forced organisations to implement work-from-home policies, accelerate cloud transformation, and even adopt brand new mindsets. And yes, I continue to predominantly work from home.
These are, without doubt, major changes. But just as important are the attitudes towards such changes. You can either see them as forced reactions to the crisis or embrace them as opportunities to drive further transformative initiatives.
Cloud computing, the very underlying technology that makes virtual working possible, can also transform how you manage your business. As a result of all data and mission-critical systems being put in the cloud, management can have complete, real-time visibility into day-to-day operations.
Let’s think of the typical, business-as-usual pre-COVID budget season, where spreadsheets would be sent back and forth between the finance function and other departments numerous times, ridden with errors; and still, nobody knows exactly what other departments are doing or which version they should be using.
This tedious process may even require lots of travelling if your business operates on a global scale with multiple branches across different countries.
In an ideal Business-As-UnUsual world, as everything is moved to cloud, all of those siloed, error-prone spreadsheets would be replaced by a cloud-based system with a single source of truth, ensuring a much more streamlined budgeting process. Done well it will transform the tortuous budget season from literal torture to something of pleasure (hey, I’m a beancounter myself, and I love it when a plan comes together and adds up!).
Another example is you could use the shift from the physical workplace to the virtual one as an opportunity to reimagine your workforce.
Once your business has perfected the art of virtual working, there is no reason why you can’t start employing talent from around the world and gaining access to a talent pool whose size is hundreds or even thousands times larger than your local one.
As an example, we’ve embraced virtual internships and today have 2 dozen interns from 10 different countries resulting in a far more diverse workforce bringing a host of fresh ideas and perspectives into our business. Better yet, you can have all of these benefits without having to invest in expanding your physical office footprint.
In the post-COVID world, being able to recognise incoming changes is not enough. What matters is whether you see them as obstacles to the return to the “normal” that no longer exists or as opportunities into the future of Business-As-UnUsual, so be sure not to let this crisis go to waste.
