As the COVID-19 vaccine rolled out across the U.S. this week, we began to believe that the light at the end of this tunnel is real relief and not another oncoming train, even as our health system faces the train wreck of this latest surge. Yes, the number of cases and deaths continues to grow, yet something approaching hope washed over me as I watched the first vaccine administered to a front line health worker. It may be months, no doubt well into mid next year, until we can move about freely again, but the pandemic that has paralyzed us in uncertainty is finally entering its final act.
That is, of course, cause for celebration. So why am I feeling like we are about to waste a perfectly good pandemic?
By “perfectly good”, I don’t mean any of this has been much good. It has been painful and there has been loss, tremendous loss. Like way too many, I have buried a loved one because of Covid. I have family who have recovered and family who will be recovering likely for years to come. I have lost business and seen others have shutter theirs entirely. No, there’s not been much good at all.
Still, we’re about to blow an opportunity, and that would be a terrible shame.
Certainly, Covid-19 has been an astonishing accelerant, as Heather McGowan and I have written. The annual McKinsey Global Survey found that companies have advanced their digital portfolios a breakneck seven years of progress in less than one year. In a matter of weeks, organizations around the world made transformations that they expected would have, prior to the pandemic-enforced lockdowns, taken a matter of years.
Still, while many executives and organizational leaders, like those leading companies like Aetna, Capital One, Hitachi, Mastercard, Nationwide Insurance that have announced extended and even indefinite work from home accommodation, are looking forward to a business environment forever altered by the Covid pandemic, many more are not. Instead of embracing the pandemic as an accelerant of change, too many companies, civic leaders, educators are making short-term accommodation for what they believe is a short-term blip in business as usual.
That is wasted opportunity.
Now, please, I’m not saying this as if any of it is easy, because it’s not. True transformation requires a shift in mindset and that is often the most difficult transformation of all. But businesses large and small that have used the pandemic with all its restrictions to rethink who they are and what they do — at their core — are having an easier go of it in what is, without argument, the most difficult of times.
Consider, for example, Carrie Dove Catering. This Oakland, Calif-based catering company helped plan and cater hundreds of events throughout the Bay Area each year. I met them a couple months ago when an event they had been hired to cater went virtual. With no banquet to cater, the company offered virtual event goers home delivered meals to enjoy during the virtual performance. A few hours before the online event was to begin, beautifully packaged meals arrived at our door with careful instructions for preparing and plating them.
In a note I received following the event, Carrie Dove Catering announced “Dove Dinners” as “our way of ‘pivoting’ during the pandemic. . . We are doing what we love at our core — creating comfortably elegant food for families to share together.” And you see what they did there? By making this pivot, the company not only found a new way to deliver their services, but they turned every virtual dinner guest into a mailing list of customers, something they’d never be able to accomplish had their wait staff served plates at a banquet.
Contrast that to the thousands of catering companies across the country who thought of themselves only in the context of in-person events, companies whose business evaporated overnight and which at best have been in hibernation since March waiting for this pandemic to pass.
Emulating IRL in Virtual Isn’t a Pivot
We have spent the last nine months trying to emulate real life experiences in a virtual world. Everything from classrooms, meetings, and conferences to weddings and funerals have gone online. What cannot be made digital has been transformed. Restaurants of every stature have become takeout joints and even specialty grocers. Retail shops have become concierge shopping services, available in limited quantity and by appointment. What cannot be transformed has closed.
Much of this transformation was done with an eye on the rearview mirror. We wanted things to be as much like they “used to be”. We were — and too many of us still are — eager for things to go “back to normal”. Much like in the early days of cinema, we focused our metaphorical cameras on the stage, missing the realization that we have a whole new medium to explore and develop. We didn’t ask who and what are we, “at our core” as the owners of Carrie Dove Catering asked. What because of — dare I say it — the “gift” of Covid might we be and do so much more wonderfully better.
How might we use this “perfectly good pandemic” to reinvent our systems, cultures, structures, norms? That is the opportunity we are about to waste, particularly now that we are entering this new, hopeful vaccine-availability stage of Covid.
We could, of course, decide that the end is in sight, so why bother with reinvention Or, we might take this important chance to rethink our lives in important ways. What is “school” if it is not a building with a playground, gymnasium, auditorium and lunch room? What is an “office” if it’s not an array of desks and offices, water coolers and conference rooms? What is a hotel? A restaurant? A city council meeting?
Recently, I heard an interview with a local school official who said, “Our purpose is to get kids back into the classroom”. Butts in seats, I would argue, is not the “purpose” of a school. Teaching children, preparing them for an uncertain and constantly changing world is. Yes, in-person learning is preferable, yet by focusing on classrooms we missed the opportunity for learning.
Since the pandemic moved city council meetings to Zoom, I have attended dozens of meetings, in sharp contrast to the one meeting I attended in the prior 25 years. During one comment session, a regular attendee scoffed at the crowd of virtual newcomers, saying she hoped we’d “show up” when meetings resumed in council chambers, as if somehow our virtual participation was less valuable her in-person presence. Isn’t greater citizen participation the goal? If we’ve learned that citizens will show up for hours’ long meetings when they can quietly slip away to prepare a meal or put the kids to bed, might it not make very good sense to continue to offer Zoom-based participation even when the chambers open again?
As my alma mater went virtual, once on-campus events were opened to the broader community of alumni around the country and the world, enabling me to hear lectures and readings that I would not have in an in-person world. For the first time in 30 years since graduating, I felt a part of the learning community rather than a cash dispenser for the annual campaign. Might my college and every college reconsider and strengthen their relationships with their alumni by inviting them on to a virtual campus, even as classes return to “normal”?
Now, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Vaccines are rapidly rolling out across the country. The same is happening around the world and we can begin to expect a re-opening of commerce and travel in the second half of 2021. We now have a definite end to what seemed like an indefinite problem. We have a timeframe for planning. And that planning ought to include new ideas about how we take our businesses, small and large, forward.
What Do We Keep from Covid?
As we all look desperately forward to a time when we can see one another’s smiles now hidden by masks, hug our friends, play sports, of share a ride, it’s still worth asking: what might we lose when Covid goes away? What changes have we made that ought to be permanent? What opportunities might we have missed? What might we want to stay virtual even as we are able to assemble again?
Shall we keep virtual appointment that have lowered healthcare costs? Should we keep virtual gatherings that have widened the circle of access? Can we continue to be mindful of how and when we jump in our cars, consolidating chores and tag-teaming with friends and neighbors on errands? (I don’t know about you, but I’m getting about three weeks to the gallon at the moment.) Will our virtual happy hours anchor our weeks, creating moments to connect with friends and family who we might otherwise see less frequently?
Most importantly, might we think differently about our relationships to our work, our customers, our values, and our self-definitions.
Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash
