Reinvention

On March 13 2020 I published a blog, on our former website, entitled “Beyond COVID”.

In it I posed a number of questions for Boards of Directors which I would want to put to them once we were heading back towards a less constrained economy. Around now, perhaps?

We may or may not be on the verge of release from quite such strict lockdown - that depends on whether you believe our Government and where you lie on the optimism<>pessimism spectrum.

The implication was meant to be that there was a real opportunity for reinvention.

For improvement.

For radical change. Permanent change.

That there would be businesses which flexed, which were good employers, and businesses which were not.

My questions and associated narrative were:

(1) What did we actually lose by not travelling, not flying?

There will be some valid answers to this and they will need to be taken into account. There will also be areas where not travelling has actually made little impact, where it was shown to be a business habit. These offer every business a cost-saving opportunity and, much more importantly, the route to a permanent reduction in their carbon footprint.

(2) What impact, if any, did flexible-working / home-working have on our productivity?

(3) How adept were we at trusting our staff?

To what extent can trust be hard-wired into how we work in perpetuity?

(4) Which myths about remote-working were shattered once and for all?

Which were the positives which we can build into how we work? Was the business flexible? Can we simply adopt flexible working from now on?

(5) Were our values alive?

(6) How effective were our leadership behaviours?

Did we default to old-fashioned “control” or did we manage to relax into trusting our people? Was situational or adaptive leadership our prevalent style or were we ‘stuck’?

(7) Were we inclusive?

(8) Were we kind as our teams faced the personal impact of COVID-19? Were we human?

I believe the answers to these questions – and the increased self-awareness – will lead to significant reinvention, a dramatic & positive change, in how many of us work forever. At least they will in forward-thinking businesses.

Well then, Board of Directors. What are your answers?

How was your business during this crisis?