Pandemic – And Reopening – Surprises

Pandemic – And Reopening – Surprises Creative ways to stay close in a remote working world Rita McGrath / Thought Sparks

When an inflection point comes to a head, human beings are remarkably ingenious in adapting to its requirements. It may not be fun, but we figure it out. But when the changes wrought by the inflection point settle in for good, a lot of re-learning and adjustment needs to happen.

When the world as we knew it ended I’ve never seen anything that touched all of humanity at much the same time the way the COVID 19 pandemic did. And what was quite amazing was by and large how well organizations adapted. There were definitely hiccups in the planning, and as my colleague Bent Flyvbjerg would say, we could have done a far better job with fast mitigation, rather than the half measures that allowed the virus to take hold. But from a business point of view, it was pretty impressive.

A surprise: Just how much overhead it takes to do business in person What is fascinating to me about that period now is how normal it felt to shift to this frictionless, travel-free way of connecting with audiences. A lot of my colleagues would confess (in private) that they were loving the absence of travel and the ability to spend time with their families and on hobbies and their personal health (which take a beating when you are on the road for a good chunk of the year).

It’s surprising how things we assumed had to be done in person, well, don’t

One of the assumptions that everyone made before the pandemic was that major transactions, such as the purchase of big IT systems, major mergers, and arrangements for big consulting contracts had to be dealt with in person.

What that assumption did was condemn a good many road warriors to endless nights in business friendly hotels that try to offer some elements of a homelike environment.

Surprisingly good news about virtual teaching As we at Columbia took our courses to the live online format, one of the great delights was that we could bring participants into our virtual classrooms who never could have joined us in person, for budget or logistical reasons. One of my favorites was a participant in my “Leading Strategic Growth and Change” course who joined the course (which ran in Eastern time) from Australia! He was literally logging on at 2 am for 4-5 hours, then heading off to work. I admire that determination.

The surprising ability to tap into global talent

I regretfully opened an email from a student at Hult International Business School in San Francisco, asking if I would be interested in sponsoring her for a summer internship. I say regretfully because I’m not regularly in an office and up until the pandemic, the assumption I made was that an intern would benefit the most from an office-based environment, so I never sponsored one. To my surprise, she said, “That’s OK, I’m planning to work from Italy!”. That’s how Helena Trentino and now her sister Flaminia came to join us, and it has been a joy. Similarly, our customer success lead, Jacora Kiser, has used the flexibility of remote work to build up our systems and get our act together without the strain of finding and keeping a place in some of the most expensive real estate markets in the country.

Hybrid teaching is the worst of both worlds

We’ve learned that you can make in-person teaching work (and now that we are back it has almost a magical quality, perhaps because Columbia has a fabulous new campus and the classrooms are state-of-the-art). We’ve learned that you can make virtual teaching work, but it’s very different than in-person. The timing is different, you need to organize discussions differently, the chat is terrific and I personally love the “mute” button!

Things I started during the pandemic that I don’t want to stop now My “Friday Fireside Chat” series was, to me, a way of creating community, fostering conversation and sharing ideas in a format that was accessible to everyone. My chat guests are a star-studded roster of thinkers, writers, entrepreneurs, and all-around interesting people of all kinds. Now that we’re back on the road, I’ve cut them back to once every other week, but they have been a real highlight of the pandemic for me.

Another surprise – the seldom mentioned beneficiaries of virtual work Our daughter has a friend with a disability that doesn’t affect her work at all, and isn’t visible on a Zoom screen, although it is in person. She has said it’s been life-changing not to feel like an “other” and not to have to spend emotional time or energy on other people’s reactions to it. It makes you think of how much of an equalizer the virtual interaction has been and how we could take advantage of it to help people who might otherwise be marginalized thrive.

We have an opportunity to be more mindful of the decisions we make now The pandemic led many of us to realize that we weren’t being very imaginative about questioning our assumptions about how things get done or what kind of work we want to do and in what way. We have the opportunity now. Let’s take it.

Meanwhile, at Valize Super excited that the team is coming together this week to brainstorm and plan what’s next. We’re crisping up our SparcStarter advisory program, a short 60 day project aimed at rapidly enhancing the ability of clients to accelerate the progress of an innovation project by applying the discovery driven growth methodology. We are sorting out the Sparchub software offering – software that is a tool that makes the mechanics of discovery driven growth a lot easier.

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