Isolation to Innovation

Covid19 has got us in to what we can safely assess as a 'once in a lifetime' situation. Most of us have not faced something like this in our lives before. The biggest contribution that we can do to ourselves, our family, our society, our country and humans at large, is to Break the Chain. I am sure all of us are staying indoors and doing our bit.

These are probably the most testing times in our lives, both personally and professionally. Some of us are able to work, some are not. We are trying to do many things to keep ourselves occupied and importantly so. People who have habituated to working from offices, travel extensively as part of work; would all find this frustrating. It also can bring stress to many.  

Some are trying their hands at household work, some are reading, some are meditating, while some others are chasing their forgotten dreams, passion or hobbies. Some are looking at this as quality time available to spend with families, while some others are happy, that they are off the hustle and bustle of work-life. All of these are on the personal front and mostly for those who are unable to work.

What about professional life?

At the first look, it looks like a lot of restrictions and challenges even to do that is required for bare survival.

So, are we to be affected by the situation? Is Isolation the biggest challenge that we have at hand?

My perspective is that Isolation is only to the body. The mind is free! Our ability to think has no restrictions. I strongly believe that challenges bring out the best in us. We should see an opportunity in the situation around, and use this time to come up with something different.

Often, it so happens that we are driven by our thoughts. They start moving in a certain direction and we keep going the same route. Not that it is wrong, but for something extraordinary to happen, we may need to change the course of our thinking process. The challenge many of us face, is that we do not get an opportunity to take a pause, reflect on what is happening, do a dispassionate assessment and do a course correction. If you agree with me, then what has happened, has given us a golden opportunity to do exactly that.

It is time for us to use this isolation to take that 'much-needed' pause and reflect on what better can we do, to bring something better to our clients. It is a time to go back to to the drawing board and re-look at what we were doing.

There is definitely additional time at disposal; the time that we spent commuting up and down to our place of work, the time we spent socializing with friends, the time we spent shopping and the list goes on.

Innovation in this context means anything new and different that we can do. It could be sharpening our products, bringing process changes, adding new products or service lines, bringing a change in customer service process or looking for efficiency in some process by way of introducing technology. The additional time at disposal can be used for looking at various options, evaluation, internal decision making, and deciding the best way forward.

Remote meetings are the order of the day and even board meetings are happening remotely. Why not team meetings? why not evaluation meetings? why not process or purchase committees?

I feel this time can be used to do what we otherwise were not able to accomplish, due to burning day to day issues that we had to attend to. Yes! those decisions are waiting to be taken. Let us use this time to move those to the fast-track, let us bring Innovation in what we do, to deliver something better to the KING whom we serve day in and out; our CUSTOMER!