The Covid School of Business: What Two Years of Real-World Lessons Taught Me

Undoubtedly, the past two years have offered business leaders a crash course from the school of crises, change and transformation. This real-world schooling hasn’t exactly tracked with a traditional business degree curriculum, but it’s produced countless case studies and learnings we wouldn’t have received otherwise. In many ways, the past two years have taught us what books and lectures couldn’t on navigating some of the biggest trials leaders will ever face.

We’ve been confronted by an array of challenges – not one at a time, but simultaneously – that required a complex web of prioritization. We’ve managed rapid changes in customer needs, navigated ever-changing supply issues, learned to work virtually while safeguarding the wellbeing of our workforce, and re-designed company culture amid far-reaching talent shortages.

Truly, the lessons learned from dealing with two years of challenges have tested our strength and perspective and will guide organizational strategies for generations to come. We’ve all earned a new degree in leadership studies. And we’re continuing to live in exceptional times, with new challenges and crises, one after another. Taking learnings from the past two years may help in building our resilience, agility, compassion and resolve as we face an uncertain future. Here are three critical lessons I’ve learned from this unexpected journey.

1. Disruptions create opportunities when you’re bold enough to face them.

Of all the disruptions we’ve faced these past two years, countless opportunities have also presented themselves. At least two of those opportunities will continue to reshape every industry indefinitely. First is finding new points of connection with customers. When in-person customer interactions became impossible, digitalization became an existential opportunity. Across the globe, more than 60 percent of organizations advanced digital customer experience strategies and 37 percent developed new channels to better reach their customers wherever they are.

We saw the resilience of our HP channel partners in full effect. Those that best adapted to the new era focused on tailoring offerings to customers’ specialized needs. That’s why data collaboration around customer insights is so important. Through our HP Amplify partner program , we are turning the information our channel partners glean from end users into actionable insights that allow us all to adapt more quickly to customer needs, no matter how rapidly they change.

The second opportunity—and mandate—that Covid-19 further highlighted is the need to recalibrate our businesses and lives around choices that enable a more sustainable future. In becoming aware of the fragility of so much we took for granted, we’ve also seen sustainability become much more than a competitive imperative. It’s a requisite for any business that has a long-term future. As companies continue to transform how and where work happens, we must also fundamentally transform the impact we have. At HP, we have ambitious climate goals in our journey to become the most sustainable and just technology company because we know it’s not just the right thing to do, it’s the biggest priority and only answer for our employees, supply chains, communities and shareholders.

2. Agility is here to stay – but companies must get it right.

Communication and collaboration became all the more critical in the early days of the pandemic. The short-term realities of lockdowns quietly led to permanent changes in the ways we interact with others. As employees adapted to remote work, they found it suited them, and 58 percent of executives reported productivity increases across their organizations. However, employees still miss the critical interactions, team building and collaboration that offices provide.

In the years ahead, digital collaboration capabilities will continue to evolve to support shifting approaches, as personal and professional lives combine into one blended lifestyle. For so long, we used the term, “new normal” to describe what life might be like in a post-pandemic world, but if the past two years have taught us anything, it’s that there will be no single norm or one-size-fits-all approach to work or life as we’ve relied on in the past.

Companies that win will be those that innovate products and services with agility and flexibility in mind – those who see not one solution, but many operating together and seamlessly blending the ways that people need to connect both at home and in the office.

3. People are much more similar than different.

It’s easy to get caught up in the historic scope of the pandemic and its far-reaching effects on our business strategies, our organizations and society at large. However, the pandemic also offered poignant reminders that human beings are the ones behind the digital tools and expanded collaborations that companies now rely on – tools that are seemingly accounting for human needs more than ever before.

To build a better hybrid work model, we have to support our teams and ensure work/life balance, flexibility and personal values are prioritized above all else. Failing to do so is not an option, because talent is difficult to replace. We’ve all learned that while most of us have a desire to make an impact in our careers, we don’t want it to come at the expense of what matters most. Again, looking to the future of our planet, it’s imperative to put people first and innovate in ways that sustainably bring more opportunities to more people.

We owe it to ourselves to learn from two years’ worth of difficult challenges. If we can transform these lessons into a more collaborative, resilient and sustainable world, we will have all earned a degree in building for a better tomorrow.

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