Groundhog Day?

This week as a team we once again found ourselves discussing lockdown as a potential scenario. Operationally, we’re considering if or when we may need to revert to our lockdown modus operandi: closing up the office again, reinstating our Royal Mail Keepsafe arrangement, and updating our website for our supporters, directing everyone to email and telephone once again. As a charity that deals with the still heavily paper-based business of transferring retail shareholdings and banking residual cheques, this is of greater consequence to us than many other less paper-reliant organisations.

It’s highly tempting to roll our eyes and draw parallels between our current situation and Groundhog Day. It is certainly frustrating to have to contemplate Keepsafe again as, having only cancelled the arrangement earlier this month, our held-back mail is still arriving.

Yet somehow this time it feels different, and – whilst still far from ideal – somewhat less daunting, at least in work terms. Why? Well, we’re reflecting on what we know now that we didn’t know six months ago. Pleasingly, the list is longer than I’d expected, and surfacing these lessons now means that we can apply this knowledge and be better prepared than we were in March. A second lockdown is by no means a foregone conclusion of course, but it pays to be prepared. Here are some of my lockdown lessons learned.

Lesson #1 - The office is still important, just not for what we thought it was

It doesn’t matter to me where my team and I do our actual work but I do miss the presence of my colleagues. There’s a good reason why Thursday is now my favourite day of the week – it’s because that’s the day that we all gather for our team meeting via Zoom. We’re in contact with each other throughout the course of the week but being together as a group, even virtually, feels very valuable, and we all look forward to it.

A perceptive friend of mine remarked to me recently that those of us who are at an earlier stage in their careers are missing out on learning from their colleagues in the office – listening in on that difficult client call, watching senior colleagues problem solve around the table, or simply being in the room when important topics are discussed and decisions made. This type of ‘learning on the job’ is much harder to replicate virtually, and I do wonder what will take its place.

If many of us end up with a ‘hybrid’ workplace with part home-working, part office-working, we will all need to quickly learn new disciplines and ways of working in order to ensure that some of our colleagues aren’t inadvertently excluded from learning and decision-making opportunities. We would do well to make it a habit to pause and consider who’s not in the room – virtual or otherwise – before we embark upon important discussions and decisions, and make sure we invite them in first.

Lesson #2 - None of us misses our commute, and we’re all using this time better

Last week, I made my first trip back to London since March. Aside from the chilling realisation of how eerily quiet bits of the city still were, I was amazed at just how long the journey felt. I’d always prided myself on using my commuting time productively (TED talks, podcasts, emails, you name it) but now that this time has been reclaimed by my family – and my yoga sessions – I’m staggered that I used to willingly give so much of my personal time simply to shuttling between the office and my home. And don’t get me started on the cost!

On the occasions where I do feel the need to ‘decompress’ at the end of the working day and put myself in an appropriate frame of mind for family time (effectively what I used to use my train journey home for), I simply stay up in my study a little while longer and play some music before heading downstairs. I am lucky to have the space to be able to do that – working from the kitchen table or other shared space would not afford me that same luxury.

Lesson #3 - The process changes that we put in primarily to help our beneficiary charities are helpful to us too

One seemingly simple process change can save significant amounts of time, and even cause us to question why we ever did it ‘the old way’ in the first place. Listening to those whom you consider to be your customers and stakeholders and truly addressing their evolving needs first is so, so important. It seems a statement of the blindingly obvious, but I wonder how many of us are actually finding that processes which we felt could only be done via method x are actually perfectly possible via methods y or even z. Did we lock ourselves into ways of working which could have been improved significantly by simply thinking the unthinkable? Perhaps the pandemic has forced us to accept and adapt to swift and sweeping changes in ways that we would never have done before. Our new-found adaptability is a big win, for all concerned.

Lesson #4 - Small is nimble – big is not?

My team are now sick of me wheeling out this metaphor but in my view, smaller organisations like ours are veritable speedboats whilst larger organisations (with notable exceptions) can be more akin to oil tankers – our turning circles are sizably different. This makes the job of pivoting back to a wholly virtual existence much easier and less stressful. I mean absolutely no disrespect to those running and working for large organisations who are proud of the way they’ve adapted to this year’s challenges – simply that on balance, I think smaller organisations have advantages when faced with swift and significant change.  

Lesson #5 - I’m more of an extrovert than I thought I was

A personal one, I find myself mourning the intensity of human interaction that’s common to this time of year aka conference season. While I am not for one second missing the stress of organising a 500-attendee conference, whether in-person or virtual, I am missing the adrenaline rush of standing up in front of an audience and talking about our industry’s latest challenges and victories. You don’t get the same thrill of ‘reading the room’ and responding to its energies whilst presenting via Zoom.

But I love the fact that I don’t have to spend entire days on my feet in four inch heels, and that when my working day is done, I simply shut the door on my study and pad down to the kitchen for a cup of tea (or glass of wine).

I would love to hear about your lockdown lessons – please feel free to share these in the comments below.