It’s time to face the ‘new normal.’ Here’s how we can begin

This is Working Together, a weekly series on the changing face of U.S. business. This week has been particularly challenging for me and I was to know what is top of mind for you and what we should talk about as a community. Let me know in the comments below or send me an email: [email protected]. Let’s dive right in. 

On the night of March 11, Anna Maria Chávez made an urgent call to her CEO. Chávez, who was the chief growth officer of the National Council on Aging, was watching President Trump announce to the nation that travel from the United States to Europe would be suspended. She told her CEO that the council needed to move its nearly 100-person team to remote work, and they needed to do it now. 

The next morning, no one on the non-profit’s staff was in the office. 

“This is going to be a whole new world and we are going to have to start preparing for that world right now,” Chávez says she remembers thinking. “I may be overreacting, but I started to pick up emergency cues in [President Trump’s] vocabulary and I just thought to myself, ‘Here we go.’” 

Chavez’s quick reaction didn’t come out of nowhere. It was a skill she developed while working as a policy advisor to the Arizona National Guard early on in her career. And that quick thinking is exactly what crisis expert Davia Temin says every leader — and every worker, really — needs to embrace right now. 

Whether you’re the CEO of a large organization or an employee who is part of a smaller team, it’s likely that your job looks very different right now. As we settle into this new normal, the quicker you can get out of denial that your industry, career and role have changed, the better off you’ll be. 

“The first thing we do is that we say this can’t be happening or it won't be that bad or no one will notice and it is just a cascade of denial,” Temin said. “The longer you wait in denial, the worse it gets where you can’t put in fixes anymore.”

Debbie Wosskow is the co-founder of AllBright, a network for women that includes clubs in London as well as a digital platform. In the era of social distancing, she knew owning and operating physical meeting spaces was going to be next to impossible. So in the span of 48 hours in early March, Wosskow furloughed her frontline workers, dropped her business expenses by 85% and moved AllBright’s programming online.

“It was the worst day of my entire working life, but we got through it quickly,” the fourth-time founder told me in an interview. “I have seen every version of everything. I am very calm and clear and have learned that you need to over-communicate during a crisis.” 

Transit Wireless CEO Melinda White also relied on over-communication — and, perhaps, early reaction — when the crisis hit. On March 10, when she heard that one of her 85 employees had been in contact with a patient who tested positive for the coronavirus, she closed her New York City-based office.

It was a little early, she says now, but she recalls deciding after the September 11 attacks to not allow her workers to travel on planes even after flights became available. The move was overly cautious, but she says she would make it again in a heartbeat. 

“My goals for my business have not changed, but how I get there is going to feel and be different,” said White “My priority has been to make sure that the employees have the tools to be productive, but that also includes senior leaders checking in on a consistent basis and have a level of communication and collaboration that we haven’t seen before.” 

For those still in denial about the monumental impact the coronavirus will have on all of our careers, crisis expert Temin has a few tips. The first: Consider improv class. It may sound cliche, but in these kinds of crises, you have to do and say the right thing immediately. There is no room for error or miscalculation. Improv lets you practice and become more comfortable with quick thinking. 

Temin — who has worked with hundreds of CEOs in crisis situations — also shared that the best leaders focus on the humanity of both their employees and their customers. Every crisis comes to an end. And when this one is over, everyone will remember how you treated them. 

For the National Council on Aging’s Chávez, that means paying attention to her employee’s energy levels in Zoom calls and being the first to reschedule a meeting when she sees something stressful happening in the background. For AllBright’s Wosskow, it’s having daily meetings with the workers she had to furlough. And for Transit Wireless’ White, it’s in making a personal phone call to each of her employees to see how they are doing. 

“I am hoping what comes out of this is a sense of humanity and a sense of how quickly we can really shift as a society,” Chávez said. “ We have an opportunity to regenerate what the workplace looks like and how we all show up in it.” 

What’s Working

#WomenOnTheFrontlines. Since this crisis began, I have been inspired and heartbroken by the many stories of women who are working on the frontlines to keep up safe. I want to start sharing these stories with you daily. Check out one below and follow #WomenOnTheFrontlines to see these mini profiles in your feed every day. 

STEM skills online. Kimberly Bryant of Black Girls Who Code isn’t letting social distancing keep her from pursuing her mission. This Friday, she’ll launch a series called “Get With the Programming,” where you can learn the basics of web development from seasoned instructors. [LinkedIn] 

Job seeking mid-pandemic. It is a challenging time to look for a job, but the good news is that the hiring slowdown should not last forever. I spoke with Politico’s Anna Palmer about what job seekers can do to be prepared after this crisis and what women are experiencing right now. [POLITICO] 

Private sector stepping in. Getting access to loans via the $350 billion Paycheck Protection Program is taking longer than some business owners can afford. Bumble Founder Whitney Wolfe Herd and Spanx's Founder Sarah Blakley are stepping in with grants for female-led businesses. [Bloomberg]

• RELATED: Catch LinkedIn Editor In Chief Dan Roth in a live conversation with Sarah Blakley from the LinkedIn Editors' Page on May 5th at 2ET.

A silver lining. The current crisis is forcing all of us to be more vulnerable at work, fashion designer Rebecca Minkoff writes on LinkedIn. “We’re all being honest about what we’re going through, asking each other what we need and how we can help. These are the conversations we should have been having all along,” she said. [LinkedIn]

What Needs Work

Female financial crisis. Black women are twice as likely as white men to say they’ve been laid off, furloughed, or had their hours or pay cut because of the pandemic, LeanIn.org’s Rachel Schall Thomas shares in a recent article. Women are also more likely to feel job insecurity and have less of a financial safety net to fall back on right now. [LinkedIn] 

Woman interrupted. Recent surveys have found that half of women had experienced being interrupted or spoken over during meetings and 38% had others take credit for their ideas. In the virtual workplace, these issues may be even worse. [NYTimes]

Who’s Pushing Us Forward

What topics do you want to discuss next week? Let me know in the comments below using #WorkingTogether