A R E YOU GU I DED BY T H E SCI ENCE? Science has informed our response to the pandemic and now offers us a route out. We go inside some world-class scientific institutions to find out whether it could also change the way we manage people and organisations in a post-pandemic world
WORDS / GEMMA CHURCH ON 12 MARCH 2020, just after the spread of the novel coronavirus
was declared a global pandemic, UK prime minister Boris Johnson made a speech full of foreboding. “I must level with you,” he said. “Many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time.” It was, for many, the moment when the gravity of the situation cut through. A few moments later, ordering people with symptoms to stay at home for seven days, he used a phrase that has become the government’s go-to response during the crisis. “At all stages, we have been guided by the science, and we will do the right thing at the right time.” (I leave it to future historians to decide whether the two parts of that sentence belong together.) For scientists, this was a milestone moment. It suggested that world leaders would be moving away from their usual instinctive leadership personas and trying to take a more rational, evidence-driven approach to decision-making instead. “What governments are doing for the first time, very publicly, is positioning scientific expertise front and centre > 32 — SPRING 202 1
— You lead, I’ll follow... Boris Johnson arrives at Downing Street with Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance
