About Things We Know Of, And Things We Must Not Forget

It was during the December of 2019 when we heard about the outbreak of a novel virus in Wuhan, which eventually got WHO to declare a public health emergency of international concern in January 2020.

I travelled from Ghana via London to Mexico City and eventually landed in the Mexican city of Hermosillo on February 25, 2020, to see the Dynamic Gas Blending innovation for CAT 785 trucks in action. At the airports most people were already in masks and the protocols for Covid-19 had kicked in, in places like Heathrow and Benito Juarez.

I flew back to Accra on March 3, 2020, and two weeks after that Ghana closed it borders, followed shortly by the lockdown of the cities of Accra and Kumasi.

Back on site, we had put in very tight controls to ensure business continuity amid the chaos and uncertainty. I was not to leave site again until November 2020. The rest they say is history.

To put things in perspective, Covid-19 reversed most of the gains the world had made since 1998, reducing extremely poor population from 2 billion, 36% of world population to about 630 million, 8% of world population as of 2021 (Financial Times).? The world experienced a massive economic shock. Remittances from migrant workers dropped by about 20% in 2021. Global income fell about 20% per head which increased extremely poor population by about 420 million. This wiped away a decade of gains in the fight against poverty (SDG 1). Some giant emerging economies shrunk at an annualized rate of 45% within the first few months of the pandemic.

During the pandemic our professional and personal networks shrank by close to 16% (HBR, Fall 2022). We had video calls, but video calls made it hard to connect and build relationships. And oh, masks ... they made in-person meetings so uncomfortable.

It is said that adversity makes the strong stronger and the weak weaker. And so, whilst western markets and businesses found innovative ways to sustain their economies and businesses, most African countries fell flat with resultant shrank GDP growth rates and broken economies and the consequential impacts on businesses, equity investment, personal wealth, pensions, and provident funds. Most importantly, we saw the effects of bad planning in Africa, and more so; and the huge deficit in our primary health-care systems and infrastructure.

Covid-19 therefore represents the elemental avatar of everything that we dislike.

However, if there’s one thing that the pandemic and subsequent geopolitical conflicts and instability have taught us, it is for leaders to develop our capabilities to surf the waves of disruption. There is no doubt that we are in a period of continuous disruption; we need to create a permanent sense of urgency and place ourselves on a constant ‘pins and needles’ with the status quo.

Covid-19 taught us to be agile and nibble, to keep a key focus on our immediate environment. We have learnt to be on constant alert and pay attention to the small issues. Leaders more than ever before must focus on innovation by elevating our visual literacy competency. ?In the workplace and in organizations, we must bring the factors that determine how people behave in the environment together. We must place a lot more emphases on culture and values, structures and processes, people, and incentives.

This period of disruption has taught us to focus on the small changes that make the big impacts. And most importantly, we have learnt how to give autonomy without losing control!

As leaders, it is important we never forget the lessons of Covid-19!