Bouncing Back from Covid-19: How to open up your company safely and soonest

Charles Hampden-Turner

We know very little about the corona virus and relying on WHO, on governments and on “science” is proving quite frustrating. We may all be broke by the time a vaccine is manufactured and distributed in sufficient numbers. And the energy expended in blaming each other is wasted. As of now, we mostly want to reduce deaths, but within weeks the economic consequences are going to loom ever larger and we HAVE to get back to work without killing more people. Others are not going to save us. We have to save ourselves. This note describes a programme for saving your company in which the necessary steps are laid out. It is possible to turn this crisis into a competitive advantage and then tell everyone what you have done and why, so they follow. We tend to think in dilemmas and these will be included in our discussion.

The central dilemma is one of Knowledge-----------Ignorance, yet admitting ignorance opens you up to rapid learning, so that knowing what you do not know is the quickest path to realizing what you need to find out. In this case we need to Open up------------Without killing people or spiking the infection rate and learning how to do this is a race all companies have to win.   

The first step is to study risk levels. What are the chances of someone under 40, with no predisposing conditions, developing serious symptoms? It may be in the region of 10,000 to 1 with death at 40,000 to 1, not much greater than skiing fast down a slope, or driving home after a single glass of wine. Our guess is that you will find volunteers willing to accept such risks to help the company and their own futures with that company. There is no shortage of people willing to test a vaccine. If employees do something for the company, then the company can do something for them when this is over. What is the risk of someone having been infected and recovering, from getting infected a second time? Once again people will volunteer to find this out and if there is no recurrence, we grow safer over time and they can do the jobs for the company and travel where others should not.

We can test social distancing of ? metre, 1 metre, 2 metres and find out what difference if any this makes. We test, track and trace all volunteers every day to see if they have become infected and place them in quarantine, along with their contacts where necessary. Essentially we are tapping our way forward like a blind man with a stick, learning from feedback. This is what W Edwards Deeming called an error correcting system, for Continual Improvement. The trick is to admit ignorance, learn fast from your own experience, and keep asking questions, does personal protective equipment for those who do the testing, work? In the New York infection among front-line hospital staff is below that of New York City in general, so we know PPE works. Let masks be worn in one room not another.

What is the effect of disinfecting rooms, wearing gloves, putting up partitions? Why do we not disinfect the right hand-rail but not the left and tell your people to use one not the other on a regular basis as they descend the stairs. We need to eliminate precautions that make no difference. The use of “bubbles” may have some unexpected advantages. The bubble has around half a dozen people whom you can get closer to, provided you stay clear of others, like a family. It isolates the spread of infection. If any one person in the bubble becomes infected, all quarantine. These should be co-workers and friendship groups and as they stick together as a small team they become more creative. (It was found that smokers were more creative, but not because they smoked, but because they stepped outside the building to smoke, became friends and incubated ideas.) Some of your bubbles could sow the seeds of tomorrow and become dedicated to helping the company open up. 

Every company is different and needs jobs done at various degrees of proximity. You should discover what is safe and unsafe in your own environments. All this will require some discipline and not everyone will stick to the rules which can be costly to all. I would ask anyone who witnesses an “unsafe act” to report it and thereby save the perpetrator from any punishment but the perpetrator would need to appear before a committee of peers and discover why s/he was less popular than before. Everyone wants their company back in business and conviviality to start.

Footnote 

Some of our basic dilemmas are involved in this.

Universalism---------------------Particularism

Cultures preferring the second, turn to ordering particular people to take precautions, while universalists throw money at a vaccines and imagine miracle cures.              

Individualism--------------------Community   

This is very much a community phenomenon. The infective agent jumps from one member to another and a small minority can doom a whole community by refusing to conform. Our individualism may be our Achilles Heel. “Give me liberty or give me COVID 19” reads a placard by a Trump supporter. Elon Musk has called lock-downs “fascist”.

Specific-------------------------------Diffuse   

If you think values are specific “rocks of rectitude” then obeying an order to go home compromises your freedom for ever more. If you think values are diffuse flows then obedience now allows freedom of movement, weeks from now. In the UK we keep hearing about X number of test performed, specific numbers. But this is irrelevant, what makes a difference is test diffusely connected to track and diffusely connected to trace and quarantine. It is the relations not things that make a difference.

Inner-directed-------------------Outer-directed        

The virus is not an independent life-form but an infective agent needing an animal host. You cannot “defy” a virus by refusing to wear a mask. Bringing a gun to rally is no use, it cannot be threatened or faced down, or even shot. It cannot even be seen! It can only be evaded which is where lock-downs begin and PPE becomes important and where Outer-direction gives a clue.