My Personal Thoughts on the Coronavirus: 3. Socioeconomic Side Effect

An Attack on Civilization

A global pandemic is one of the few things that late Stephen Hawking said could end humanity. Whether Covid19 will be our doomsday agent depends on whether we can evolve as a species and adapt to the new environment created by the novel coronavirus.

We may need to sacrifice some of our freedom to roam around in order to keep the epidemic contained. We may need to get rid of our culture of handshaking or cheek kissing to avoid infection. Social distancing may completely change the way we work, our entertainment, and how we spend our leisure time, as densely populated areas with more opportunity for human interactions tend to increase the speed of viral spread.

Ironically, the more we hold onto these cultures during this pandemic, the more likely these cultures might become extinct. Don’t underestimate a microscopic virus, it has the potential to decimate an entire civilization if we let it grow out of control.

Keep in mind that we are at war now with an impalpable enemy. But this war will end! Meanwhile, we must all learn to make some sacrifices at wartimes and stay focus on defeating Covid19 together. Otherwise, we won’t live to propagate our deep-rooted culture to our future generations.

The Economic Reality

Because Covid19 is such an insidious virus, effective containment for unprepared countries with insufficient screening capacity will require aggressive measures. Country borders locked-down, statewide shelter-in-place order, school closure, work-from-home policy, and cancelation of all events are just the beginning. The impact of these measures on our workforce and our economy is paramount, because most people can no longer conduct their work while homebound. Consequently, many industries are on the verge of shutting down.

This is reflected by the volatility in our financial market and the sudden collapse of our economy. The Federal Reserve took some extreme measures to save our economy by lowering the interest rate to near zero, printing money and exercising unlimited quantitative easing, economic relief payments, etc. Although these economic stimuli have some stabilizing effects, they are bandaids before we find an effective vaccine for Covid19. Nevertheless, bandaids are necessary in an emergency to prevent too much blood loss. Our containment measures are putting our economy on a temporary induced coma to allow for a full eradication of the coronavirus.

As we mobilize the world’s collective human resources and knowledge to combat Covid19, I’m hopeful that we will eradicate it. However, the drastic containment measures and economic bandaids are not without side effects. Inflation, unemployment, and recession are plausible. How can we mitigate these long-term negative side effects? That will depend on whether we treat Covid19 as a disruption or an opportunity.

The Resilience of a Digital Economy

I’m very fortunate to be in the high-tech software industry, because most of my work are digital. In response to the Covid19 pandemic, PROS has moved our business operation to 100% virtual workforce. This means we can continue to work, collaborate, serve our customers, and remain productive virtually even under a shelter-in-place order during a pandemic. However, the economy is a complex web of supply chains. Our business is nevertheless impacted indirectly through our customers and partners who may be less immune from the coronavirus.

As more companies go through digital transformation and digitize their business operation, they will become less susceptible to physical disruptions, like a pandemic. Consequently, the entire economy will become more agile and more resilient.

Although there are many different paths to digital transformation, many businesses start with e-commerce. This is because of the long-proven ROI due to the huge cost saving compared to traditional brick-and-mortar businesses. But beyond coast saving, e-commerce provides a means to create a flexible and resilient workforce that can work anytime, anywhere. Moreover, because all digital work can be tracked digitally, turned into data, and used to train an AI, digital work can eventually be automated through intelligent robotic process automation (RPA).

If you are a good leader, you will see this pandemic as a disruption. And you will work diligently to get your business back to the way it was before the Covid19 outbreak as fast as you can. And that is great! But if you are a visionary leader, you will further recognize that every disruption is a natural opportunity for change and improvement. And you will also take this opportunity to re-engineer your business operation to make it more robust coming out of this pandemic.

Now, it’s up to you which type of leader you want to be.

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This article is part of a series, if you miss the previous installments, they are linked below.

1. Making Sense of the Reality
2. The Immediate Urgency