This is a seminal moment for us all: for us, our families, our community and our businesses. While not everyone will be infected with Covid, everyone will be affected in varying degrees by the unfolding crisis. However tragic and painful this current crisis has become for many, the lockdown (now in varying intensities across the globe) has thrown up some real opportunity and possibilities for how we might live more meaningful lives. For businesses, who lost the trust of the communities they served as a consequence of the global financial crisis, this is an opportunity to rebuild that trust deficit by being part of the solution. For some governments who have failed to recognise financial inclusion as key to social cohesion, this crisis also offers opportunity. It is a much needed antidote for rising division and tribalism. For individuals, it offers an opportunity to ask deeper questions of ourselves, respond to the Socrates’ challenge “an unexamined life is not worth living”, and live a truer life.
This is not the time to ‘snap back’ to how we were before but to fully realise the opportunities the crisis offers. It will require reimagining the very assumptions on which our economies are based.
Valuing our interdependencies
Every day in large part we take relationships for granted in both the personal or work domains. The crisis has brought in full view how our lowest paid are doing some of the most valuable jobs. The value that essential workers add, illuminated by the ravages of the lockdown, is under-rewarded. Rather than exploiting power differentials between owners of capital and the people who work that capital, it may be time to acknowledge and value the interdependencies that contribute to a sound working economy. This may involve addressing the exploitation evident in gig worker conditions, rethinking the unconscionable spread of zero hour contracts, modern slavery used in producing five dollar tee shirts and the systemic under-valuing of foreign workers who pick our produce, clean our hospitals or man our 24/7 convenience stores. It may also be a time to experiment with new and different ideas such as UBI and MMT. This is not a Marxist plea but a call to stand back and properly value the very dependencies on which a functioning society thrives.
Rethinking the nature of work
Amidst the largest forced experiment in flexible working, we realise we no longer need bricks and mortar to do our best work. Banks, energy companies and retail behemoths are being run by leaders working out of their kitchens. Call centre workers around the world, essential to keeping the lights on, are now working from home using Virtual Call Centre technology. Some CEOs are turbocharging their previously sluggish communication channels by hosting weekly town halls for hundreds of employees simply to stay in touch. Through such forums, these companies are seeing levels of engagement go through the roof, producing a wellspring of ideas about change and business resilience from the people closest to the real work. By rethinking the nature of work and ways of working, we can also reduce the harmful consequences of our footprint on the fragile environment. A world without roads or train platforms jammed with commuters, the birdsong now audible in our city parks, bluer skies and cleaner rivers and canals may be something we don't want to lose or snap out of, when the pandemic recedes.
Stress testing the power of purpose
Some companies are beginning to realise that in the midst of this, their purpose and values are no longer optional, nice to have conversations. Instead, under immense financial stress, they are using their purpose and values as the moral compass for making tough choices and managing impossible dilemmas. Such companies are standing up and being counted: paying suppliers earlier than usual, extending credit or insurance cover to people who would not have qualified previously, extending health premium holidays, contributing more to charity groups supporting thousands that are jobless and homeless and so on. There is no better time than now to stress test your values and purpose and use it to determine how the organisation is living up to the terms of its social licence. Vague purpose statements or values won’t cut it. You will want to look back and be proud of the values you had publicly espoused as a company, the brand you strengthened and the trust you restored during this challenging time. Your shareholders will be handsomely rewarded.
The humanising of companies
As team leaders manage their teams remotely, witnessing the unscheduled and inconvenient interruptions from kids, dogs and other dependents calling on team members’ attention, gives a special humanness to working relationships. Even the sobering realisation that not everyone can call home a generous multi-room apartment, or find the space to take a quiet call gives more humanness to the workforce and working relationships. In a sense, while we are now more remote, we are more connected, relating to each other in more intimate ways. Team leaders are having to practice more patience, more empathy, more generosity and more humility and we will be better managers for it. A humanising of companies is underway. This shift has the power to truly differentiate companies through sustaining extraordinary levels of workforce commitment and dedication well beyond this current crisis.
The importance of mental health and well being
This crisis has amplified mental health as an issue. This is an opportunity for governments and corporations everywhere to accelerate mental health investment. For many of us even without a prior history of mental health, fears for the health of our ageing parents, our children, our grandparents, close friends and of course our livelihoods can take a disabling hold on our well-being. The loneliness that some of us will feel as a consequence of the lockdown only serves to show that our emotional well-being is as critical as our physical well-being. Governments need to invest as much in mental health as they do in physical health and ensure where investments are made that the policy intent-impact gap is quickly closed.
Hope for a better tomorrow
The lockdown and its consequences provides us a timely pause. As we face into an existential threat to what glues our economies together - physical, social and moral capital - it presents us with a profound choice. An opportunity to put aside old playbooks and old prescriptions and imagine what a different world could look like. Let’s seize this crisis and be remembered as the generation that helped make the world a gentler, kinder, more inclusive world.
Written by Meena Thuraisingham, Principal, BoardQ, April 2020