Five Futures after #covid19 Lockdown Where will yours lead?

Brick Roads: Five Futures from after #covid19 Lockdown

"Those were five strange months", you think, as you step off the crowded train and begin to make your way outside. You look up at the hazy grey sky and wait to cross the road bustling with traffic. You check your phone. You have twenty minutes to make it to your first meeting and then it's back-to-back. You hoist your laptop bag higher on your shoulder and decide to step into Starbucks to pick up a coffee. "Thank goodness it's all back to normal!"

i. The Old Normal

(Back to BC - Before Covid)

"They'll have my job", you mutter in frustration. It's all well and good to move to a partial lockdown but you hadn't expected that all the youngsters and junior managers would be back at work and you wouldn't. How are you supposed to manage and lead remotely when they are all in the office together? You never really got the hang of any of this digital nonsense anyway. It had surprised you how well it had worked in the lockdown. You are convinced that now they're leaving you out of the decision loops on purpose sending you incorrect links to zoom and teams. And what's even more annoying is they are demonstrating success in your absence to the CEO!

ii Partially Locked

Lifting the lockdown has made no difference. After all everyone has called it the New Normal and it feels normal to you now. During the lockdown the surveys showed that 66% of workers want to work remotely today and 99% said they want to work remotely in the future. You spent a month frenetically keeping continuity and four months learning to work with a remote workforce and now everyone is familiar and have built new habits based around the new tools they have been using. Productivity is up because they're spending the two hours they would have spent commuting on extra work! And in reality, you, like 74% of your fellow CFOs, can see the benefits of going more remote after #covid19

iii Accidental Rut

It was a good call. You and the Executive Leadership Team have been scoping out recovery after #covid19. You established the core business, evaluated it's capabilities, then you worked out which capabilities you were stronger than competition in and then reviewed how you would go to market with customers in new ways to recover the business. You have incorporated what you anticipate will be hangover requirements for social distancing, mental health support and provision of safe solutions. It's obvious which resources you can shed, both human and asset. You have a 100 day plan all set to go. Textbook! Just before you click off the CEO says, we're going to raise this from the ashes and make it even better than before.

iv Another Phoenix

You are embarrassed. You're trying to empathise with friends on a call but apart from the misery and horror of the pandemic, the biggest change for you has been having to wash your hands so frequently. You were working remotely before the pandemic. Well they call it working remotely you and your team called it 'close collaboration'. They are raving about discovering a whole bunch of 2nd generation communication tools. They show off they have new apps then complain that they're tired and haven't been able to do any work because of the back to back teams and zoom calls. You smile wryly because you know that webcams make people self-conscious and less open to listening. 2nd generation tools were always meant to be supplemented by face-to-face. Without face to face they are emotionally draining and intellectually poor. Their output may be up but that is because they are working longer hours not because they are more productive.

You heard a talk by Eddie Obeng on how to transform to fit the reality of a complex uncertain fast-changing new world. You went on QUBE five years ago. You learnt how to lead, innovate and deliver using shared thinking performance enhancement tools. QUBE's featureless avatars made it safe and easy for even introverts and non-native English speakers to be together. The QUBE tutors hammered home the culture of the super-real world which was basically the culture of creativity, collaboration, delivery and profitability every enterprise has aspired to since the nineties.

You look out of the window at the clear blue sky and notice a squirrel on the window sill opposite, as you listen to your friends. You marvel at the silence and flex your lower arm slightly showing clear muscular definition. This 'ill wind' of covid seems to have 'blown some good' for the other species on our planet. CO2 emissions are down. The black particulates which land on the polar ice, absorb heat radiation and speed up its melting are gone and even, you read the other day, whales and dolphins are singing.

You wish they had done what you did five years ago. Life after #covid19 for you is going to the same blend of different, new and better.

v. The Multi-Modal Meld

Brick Roads: Five Futures from after #covid19 Lockdown

Inspired by David Eagleman's Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives, my Five Futures from after #Covid19 Lockdown, come from my insights of having led a digital remote organisation for over 20 years, strategic work for from clients & inputs and corrections from colleagues. I used the FutureMapping Performance Enhancement Tool [PET] and took inputs from lots of data sources but not the media o major consulting firms (who despite making money for decades telling everyone about the digital possibilities had not seized them themselves!)

The human longing is for the Old Normal. But that is not going to happen. Sorry.

The human longing is for the Old Normal. But that is not going to happen. Sorry.

Habits take about 100 repetitions to become set in concrete. Even as you read this you have already formed some terrible, draining, counterproductive, digital and behavioural habits due to the lockdown. Do you know what they are? Are you beginning to defend them because they may be terrible but they are comfortable and familiar? Will you ever give them up? How will you stop your new bad habits? The only way out is a learning program with strong disconfirmation.

How will you stop your new bad habits??

For most, the cultural pressures of the old world organisation mean they must aim to create another phoenix. Same old - same old with a few tweaks and accessories aiming to get back to the same old grind. Is this you?

...I have not imagined doing anything different, better or alternative to how I do things now."

Almost everyone who is on QUBE for the first time begins to evaluate how they will use it. They will use it to replicate a digital twin of everything they currently do. QUBE is a rich virtual environment. they are in avatar form and yet they ask. "What is the difference between this and skype or slack or teams." I failed the exam for a year because I just didn't understand the question. I wondered if they were mad. It was obvious, the enormous difference. Then I understood. What they were actually saying was, "In my current life I use teams to share documents. You have shown me I can share documents on QUBE so the two are the same because I have not imagined doing anything different, better or alternative to how I do things now." "Everything you are explaining about being on QUBE: culture, engagement, proximity, productivity and so on, did not register because I just want another phoenix".

The only way to thrive in our new future is relentless re-education. Try, review, read, share, collaborate, challenge, seek people with foresight. Relearn everything

The only way to thrive in our new future is relentless learning. Relearn everything. I have been teaching about how to live and thrive in a world which changes faster than you can learn for over 25 years. I am still teaching how to think, act and behave.

I have created a programme just for you called MetaMorph

After ten years of teaching, working and living on QUBE. I have been connecting creatively and emotionally in a way that only 3rd generation collaboration tools like virtual worlds can. I can tell you that if you are going to have people working remotely, then have them learn to work closely. Have them learn to work out loud. Engage the whole person - not just their slack thread or 365 files. Let them be there.

That means use of digital solutions which last after you click off. They must be persistent like the qubicle rooms on the QUBE campus. We know why we love to be together to work in offices. We get the buzz, we get serendipity, we can co create easily, we can make friends. Imagine if you could do all that and be highly productive - perhaps five times as much. Your costs could reduce by half, your speed to customer double. And customer satisfaction treble. And imagine it could integrate into the rest of your life giving you the balance you need. Of course QUBE lets you be there just like real life but also gives you digital 'super powers'.

But don't miss the non-business subtleties of 3rd generation digital collaboration. The saving in carbon emissions, the removal of the pressure to keep building and constructing. The fact that we don't have to cram ourselves into expensive cities and much more.

But all of this is impossible unless your people learn new world ways to think and act.

I have created a programme, MetaMorph, where you will Learn to Transform. I run it on QUBE so all your key people can go through the programme safely maintaining separation physically but closeness in thinking and collaboration. MetaMorph?will let you move fully and permanently move to your new world.

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