Things are definitely a little different right now – many of us are in isolation, away from friends and even some family. We are working from home and so are our teams. Some have lost work and are wondering when or even if it will come back, and if it does come back, will we be able to deal with it, will we have a business by then….
I hear many people talking about “when things get back to normal” and although I understand the sentiment, I truly believe that as a leader you should be asking yourself a different question :
“When we get through the pandemic, what will be the new normal?”
“What do I want the new normal to be?”
“What have we learned from this experience?”
In a conversation with a colleague this week, he was telling me about a client who was definitely on this path. His client has a business which usually runs out of an office building with three floors. All his staff are working from home right now and although there are things that may not be functioning as smoothly as they would normally, the business is continuing and in general the business is doing well. So he asked himself this question:
“Why would I ask people to come back to the office once the lockdown is over? Coming back to the office means spending time travelling, means paying to commute – what reason do I have for asking people to do that?”
He is already looking at renting two out of the three floors and rethinking what the remaining floor is used for – when do the teams need to meet face to face and what for? What will the teams need to have in the office? How will they use the space?
And this is only one of the areas he’s looking at.
If we are to learn anything from this Covid-19 pandemic, things cannot back to normal. As a leader you need to ensure that you, your teams and your organisation, learn from this experience and create a future that is maybe even better than the reality we have come from.
And it doesn’t matter what industry you are in… What changes will we make to education, leisure, retail, travel, etc?
In my next post we’ll look at some processes that will help you think through the changes you might want to make.
