Preparing to Regain Equilibrium

Punctuated equilibrium is the theory in evolutionary biology which proposes that animal and plant species go through long periods of stability interrupted only by short spurts of rapid evolutionary change. This theory has often been applied to business as well – suggesting that organizations evolve with agility through long periods of stability and equilibrium, which is punctuated by relatively short bursts of disruption or fundamental change. One is tempted to accept that this is indeed a way of being.

I want to, however, invite you to consider a different possibility. What if we did not have to rely on agility alone, over long periods, to regain our disturbed equilibrium but could achieve a new order of equilibrium through resilience on-demand?

Let us, for a moment, consider our current situation - a time of unprecedented dissonance where our equilibrium has clearly been thrown out of balance. Our response, as businesses, to this disruption has been, and now must continue to be in phases.

Phase 1: Looking for a way out. We’ve enabled our workforce to work from home – with the band-aid tech for virtualization that we can muster. We are finding ways to be productive and serve our customers in the best manner that our altered conditions permit us to. We are looking for ways to serve the immediate and pressing needs of the communities in which we live and work. This is a time of great stress as businesses grapple unprepared with a known unknown. Having taken the great shocks to their system in their stride they will respond as best and as fast as they can to the immediate need to restore business continuity. Most American businesses, still operating in locked down cities, are stabilizing in this phase.

Phase 2: Looking around. The waves of contamination will ebb and abate unpredictably and the lockdowns withdrawn intermittently - partially or wholly, so we will be back in our offices in fractional strength and rotating rosters. A significant section of our workforce will continue to swing on-demand between virtual remote working, staffing shifts due to health compulsions and working on-premise. Contact tracing, more health-tech, virtual-physicians on call, new ways to measure productivity, new workflows and rhythms will mark our work days. We will look to insulate our supply chains from this volatility. We will start to obsess over our customers once again - chart out changes to the services and solutions we have on offer, and find new, altered ways in which we expect to create greater value. Ready for anytime interruptions to routine, companies will take the path of cautious optimism to try to return to business as usual. The seeds of new adaptive operating models will now be sown - sometimes unwittingly. Some part of the Eastern world is already settling into this phase.

Phase 3: Looking for stability. We’ll have available a vaccine at scale that’ll bring with it a new normal. Our work and workplaces will have permanently changed with virtual-physical ways of working, we’ll see greater participation from the gig economy and get comfortable with outcome-based measures for performance and productivity. Our supply chains will be geared to weather the same nature of disruption should it occur again. Our operating models will be leaner and more efficient. New ways of working uncovered in phase 2 will now be norm. Focus will shift from ‘survive’ to ‘thrive’. Businesses, in this phase, will have established new routines and a new business-as-usual they are comfortable with. Their assets will be optimized for efficiency. They will have grown in confidence to boldly tackle competitors, forge new relationships and invest into the future. For most businesses this is a time of regained equilibrium.

For those businesses keen to adopt a less excruciating approach than the phased one, to regain lost equilibrium the next time, the journey must go on.

Phase 4: Looking for more. This phase is about preparing to be ready for a future unknown unknown. There is no playbook that we can fall back on to guide us here. Perhaps, that’s the reason not many companies will venture into this phase, content to remain in the long-awaited, newly established comfort of phase 3 that will have brought them what most businesses seek – sustained foreseeable profits. But then, what if the business must take on the unforeseeable once again? A few leaders will ask, what can we do now to be able to switch on-demand to instant resilience then? They’ll recheck their balance of physical-digital investments, they’ll look for ways to leapfrog several generations of digital maturity, and put more of their trust in systems of AI. They’ll begin to rethink traditional economic models of asset efficiencies, made-to-stock vs just-in-time, and closely examine interlinkages and interdependencies of their supply chains to refocus their innovation energies. They’ll bring a startup-like restlessness at enterprise-scale to develop the capabilities, skills and mindset to exponentially increase their ability to embrace new problems and create new adaptive resilience. They too will sustain equilibrium, only it will be resilient - a resilient equilibrium. They will never again have to take the phased approach to regain equilibrium. They will create the new order that the rest must learn to find their own equilibrium in.