COVID-19: Eight management lessons

Photo by Benjamin Rascoe on Unsplash

In March 2020 the world and our lives were shaken up by COVID-19, one of those unique events that occur two or three times in a lifetime. As the Fjord Trends Report 2021 said: “With the events of 2020 upending so much of what we took for granted, we now need to look ahead with focus and a desire to help people solve their challenges on their own terms. In many ways, the 21st century starts now. The Covid-19 pandemic has brought clarity and surprises alongside its chaos and tragedies. It’s highlighted what’s important to us, it’s inspired community spirit and ingenuity, and it’s generated change on a huge scale around the globe.

Eighteen months later, we are happy to see the progress of vaccination, but we are still far from seeing the defeat of a virus that is transformative. Or not. Without any desire to be exhaustive, learnings and discoveries emerge:

1. We are fragile. Despite all the scientific advances, our lives are still hanging by a thread and we are far from having things under control. We have to keep thinking about it: embracing vulnerability enriches us. The coronavirus is not a crisis for arrogant managers. Those who believed they had all the answers have had to backtrack wave after wave. Humility makes us better: we can only trust those who know how to recognize their limitations. A healthy effect of that growing vulnerability: now we talk more about mental health, also in companies.
2. At the same time, effort and difficulties also help us improve: much is learned from hardships, stresses, and problems. Have we used fatigue as an excuse? Without losing compassion in the face of suffering, it is advisable to maintain the effort to preserve a classic virtue: fortitude. It is necessary to leave the “comfort zone” and opt for the difficult, striving for ever-higher goals and avoiding conformity despite difficulties.
3. Technology is never the solution, but it is a great help. When the coronavirus arrived, the technology was in a difficult moment: it received numerous criticisms and doubts from experts. In these months, we have seen that we can do much more than we thought: technology has been a great ally to prevent the world from stopping. The Digital transformation is here to stay and has discovered new audiences. It has also exposed some productivity issues: all those meetings that could have e-mail, so to say…
4. A new brand of planning. It is not possible to plan everything. One of the conclusions of the crisis is that we must make plans knowing that it is very likely that we will have to change them. It is difficult for us to work with that uncertainty, but we will have to get used to it: agility and flexibility are on the rise in a crisis that we do not know how long will last and from which we do not know how we will get out. At the same time, those who could plan something, even provisionally, were better equipped to deal with seismic changes.
5. We have seen the pandemic accelerate the spread of rumors, incomplete accounts, and straight lies at a time when trusted information was a matter of life and death for people and businesses. The media have not always been able to measure up to contrasting the news: speed has overcome precision. The political class, sometimes more eager to please and distribute blame than to solve problems, does not live its highest hour either. One of the great questions of our time is: Who can I trust?
6. Globalization is a reality. The pandemic has been intense in almost all parts of the world, affecting the North, South, East, and West in its different phases: we follow what is happening all over the world, in Germany, the United States, India, China, Italy, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Sweden or New Zealand. At the same time, COVID is a local disease that places us in our communities and changes our closest behaviors. It will be very interesting to watch how this apparent global-local paradox unfolds.
7. We can’t do anything alone…We have seen to what extent we depend on each other: teamwork and collaboration help us to get out of the catastrophe, reminding us that we live in a common home. The individualistic fallacy vanishes … We are solidary, mysteriously solidary.
8. Only hope awakens the best energies and helps to summon other people in difficult circumstances. It is time to join the group of those who see the bottle half full. Pessimism will not help us get out of it.

Vulnerability, fortitude, trust, agility, globalization, solidarity, technology, hope. Amid so many difficulties and personal tragedies, opportunities for management learning have not been lacking: we will need to continue thinking and investigating. What will the next world be like?