No time to die...

No time to die is the title song for the new James Bond movie whose release was postponed due to COVID-19, sung by Billie Eilish and released in February 2020. I usually don’t pay attention to a song’s lyrics; I just love listening to the background music. The lyrics of the song caught my attention for its uncanny resemblance to what I was going through. For those who know me personally, yes that relationship hit me hard. For others, just think of your recent relationship that you had to break up with. Relationships aren’t always with people.

The title is very relevant to the unprecedented crisis that is amidst us. All we need is to keep pushing ourselves and the people around us to move ahead – there is really no time to die.

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Four people are living in a shared 3-bedroom unit – A management consultant with a partner working in the retail industry occupies one room, a casual worker who has a day-time job in café and a night-job freelancing content writing occupies the second room and a construction worker lives in the third room. All of them were forced to work from home due to the government restrictions. The café worker was laid off from her job as the business owner couldn’t keep the job. The night job didn’t pay that much as the demand was fluctuating. The construction worker had to stay home and take up some desk work due to the physical (not social) distancing measures that were at place on-site. The management consultant’s utilisation was steady for a few weeks at sight, but it wasn’t sure to continue that way for long. The retail worker had to go to the store on alternate days and do some desk work on the other.

COVID-19 has impacted the entire world and is continuing to do so. Irrespective of conspiracy theories, it sure was a black swan event for most of humanity. It has tested the breaking point of all of our systems – physical, biological and the imagined. Close your eyes for a moment and step into the environment of the house I’ve just described. What do you see? You would see the consultant hooked onto a laptop video conferencing with clients. If at home, you would see the retail worker trying to suppress frustration from the noise of the consultant, giving up and heading out to the living room to find the casual worker sitting on the couch with teary eyes. The construction worker is probably in the bedroom sleeping or working. Would you go and hug the person sitting at the couch or would you practice “physical” (not social) distancing?

The term social distancing should be abolished from this context. Social distancing creates a wrong image and tends to push a person towards social isolation. We still need our family, friends and people in our lives and we need to keep in touch with them. Physical distancing accurately affirms the rule – maintain distance from other people (only until the virus is eradicated). In the context of the house, if I know that the person has been healthy for at least a 2 weeks of being at home, yes, I would go and hug them.

If you do find someone in distress, please ensure that they get help. Most of the time, all they need is someone to talk to, so please do. Mental health is important to track and acknowledge – read about it and find ways to create positive energy around yourself. In 2018, I’d written about some of my thoughts in this article here.

In the isolation, there were some house rules. All the occupants of the house would convene after their respective work was over. Each person would take turns to make dinner for the house and they would chat over any commercially safe-to-drink alcohol left in the house. It was the consultant’s turn to cook and due to the availability (or lack thereof) of time in the calendar, pasta was served. Everyone acknowledged the energy in the room – the casual worker was extremely distressed. The construction worker went first, “Hey, quickly, what’s at the top of your mind right now?” The casual worker responded with a “I think I’m going to kill myself!” and went back to eating pasta. Everyone took a massive gulp. After momentary silence, The consultant replied “Can I come with? I’m done with my life too. This pasta will kill me otherwise.” Soon everyone joined in the mood and moments later everyone was smiling.

Death is inevitable for humans, animals and organisations all alike. Taking one’s own life should not be a choice unless it is euthanasia and even in that case it is debatable. For organisations, a voluntary death is probably the last option before giving up. Our mind is never in our control. Thoughts come and go all the time. Thoughts we might be ashamed of or thoughts which give us creative ideas to solve a problem or thoughts as weird as vanishing an entire community of people from earth or thoughts to kill yourself. It is ok to have such thoughts but what you do right after is crucial. Acknowledge it and understand that the basic rule of humanity is to not hurt anyone – even yourself. Forget what religion or other beliefs teach you – the basic rule of humanity is simple. Do not hurt anyone.

COVID-19 will definitely kill a lot of organisations, there is no doubt about it. In our capitalistic world, some organisations could get saved by those with deep pockets. Some would try to save costs to postpone their death. Some would just accept defeat and let their organisation go. But it’s ok. It is a human creation – it can be re-created or reinvented in another form later. A lot of your favourite cafes, eateries and bars will cease to exist soon – you have to accept it.

Out of all the people in the house, the construction worker was the one with a structured routine. The day starts early, set in the biological clock at 6.30am. A quick run in the local neighbourhood breathing fresh air, a 25-minute yoga routine to acknowledge and calm the senses followed by a quick exercise for the upper body. A decent routine to kickstart the body and mind. Everyone else in the house had an erratic routine. Each day would be different for each person. Nobody noticed this person’s routine until a weekend when everyone was home and the construction worker came home happily, listened to each other’s issues and still maintained a calm-composed attitude.

A structured routine is very important for each of us. I don’t mean to say that we need to have every minute or hour of our day planned for. A structure in the routine is needed now more than ever because we aren’t stepping out of our houses as much as we used to do earlier. Our bodies will cheat us by nagging for food and we will succumb easily. Focus on both your body and the mind. Add a physical fitness routine for the body and yoga/meditation for the mind. It is fascinating just to see how long we can keep our minds from wandering. Try it, I challenge that you won’t be able to attain stillness for more than a minute!

On another day, the consultant was sent an email from HR stating that the COVID-19 crisis has forced the company to cut down the pay for all employees. The managing partner was taking zero pay and the senior members of the firm were taking larger cuts to their pay. This became a topic of discussion in the dinner catch-up. These discussions were actually helpful for everyone in the house as it expanded their perspectives to think about another person and what is happening in their lives. Speaking about this topic, the retail worker’s opinion was that as long as the company’s revenues are as expected, there should be no pay cut. The construction worker was of the opinion that pay cuts should be equal for all employees as it shows a skin in the game and everyone understands what the world is going through. The casual worker opened up and said that “At least they aren’t laying off people!”

All of the perspectives make sense. The consulting services world or any services organisation for that matter is based on utilisation, hourly/daily revenue and in some cases, there are fixed cost contracts. To put forward a pay cut proposal, the company hopefully may have done some math around it. If the person at the helm is not taking a salary and other senior management are taking a heavy pay cut – cost on most of the non-billables are taken care of, to an extent. For the rest of the company, there should be more factors added like – Are they fully billed? Are they getting the same revenue as per normal circumstances? What does our profit margin look like given pay cuts at senior management level? Can we play out multiple scenarios and pick the one with least employee level impact? The services industry is tricky because the customers of this consulting firm would also be deeply affected and in certain cases, wouldn’t be able to honour their contracts. You would see different types of strategies adopted by organisations today:

• Companies wanting to maintain their profit margins just like any other day as if nothing happened: These companies tend to lay-off people and cut pays for all employees
• Companies that are on the verge of death and want to delay it as much as possible: Those with deep pockets offer lesser pay cuts, the ones who don’t usually try to offer some severance pay and let go of employees and eventually shut down operations. You might see those rare compassionate bosses who first bring everyone together, crowdsource ideas on what the company should do and take a collective decision – the outcome might still be a pay cut but the behaviour to reach there defines the culture of that workplace
• Companies that are thriving and are seeing unseen revenues, start hiring and try to offset some of the layoffs but they might be in a chaotic atmosphere with too many things happening

There is no right strategy to this. There is only a right direction – to ensure that your employees are taken care of. They can be laid off but with some financial support. The contracts for casual workers aren’t very favourable for the worker during these times – they have to be taken care of!

The consultant and the retail worker were both working from home one day. The consultant just woke up and started working in the bedroom while the retail worker was still asleep. Obviously, there was a lot of disturbance. The major problem was that the retail worker also had to work that day, but the consultant never discussed whose turn it would be to stay in the room vs. working from the couch in the living room. It pissed off the retail worker and they wouldn’t talk. Meanwhile, there was an issue with the consultant’s project where it was difficult to communicate a certain solution design idea to the wider team. The consultant was struggling to explain using virtual boards or through images of pen-paper mock-ups as the video quality wasn’t very clear and the sight-to-sound coordination wasn’t coherent. On other days, this would just mean that they all huddled and discussed on a physical white board.

Communication is the most important thing in any relationship – personal or professional. Obviously, it is also totally up to the other entity on what they understand and perceive of it. As our communication becomes predominantly digital, we will tend to forget the nuances of all other modes of communication. We will start to take certain things for granted. It is important to acknowledge these challenges today and work accordingly. We will need to keep a check on our tolerance limits and the way we respond to any setback that we face. Talk! And take some extra time to explain calmly if the message isn’t understood and perceived properly.

It was the day for the casual worker to make dinner. The retail worker just got back from a tiring day’s work and struck a conversation with the casual worker in the kitchen. The casual worker was drifting into a deep thought and suddenly got woken up by a “Hey, how was your day today?”. The response to that was an obscure “What is the purpose of our existence now? What is the meaning of money and life? Is someone watching us from above? Will they protect us?”. Obviously startled, the retail worker tried to steer the conversation towards something else, but it eventually came back during dinner. The consultant went first and brought up the point of unemployment benefits and stimulus laid out by the government. “Don’t worry, there are measures in place and we’re all there to help you too.” The construction worker brought up an interesting point drawing parallels with the concept of Universal basic income. The entire table started googling it.

There is large scale unemployment today all across the world and it is only increasing. The first world nations have some funds in place to help people out. What about the third world nations? What about the daily wage workers in those nations? What about nations where the population count is not accurate? How can Universal Basic Income be implemented there? Should nations use their own funds to support the people or should they crowdsource funding from institutions with deep pockets? Today, the people who have enough savings are able to survive without an income for months. But what happens when it dries out. What kind of toxic thoughts will our mind churn out? For the avid movie watchers, you know what types of apocalypse are possible. While the future hopefully won’t be that severe, we sure need to be prepared for the worst. This is one real world problem that should be made to solve by people across industries, age and experience.

The other approach by governments is mass surveillance and tracking. The worst nightmare in the digital world was how all of the data that exists about us today – our profile, our activities, our behaviours – would come together in a master algorithm to decide our fate. Again, this is too utopian to imagine but just think about what can be done with such data. Today we are offering to share data with the government in the context of helping curb the impact of the virus but like any other situation, you can draw parallels and apply it to any other situation, the outcomes of which could be scary especially when our government is the decision maker. While one set of conspiracy theories suggest that this could be a third world-war (bio-war) move by China to gain superpower status or a US plan gone wrong or that an unknown country’s move to rattle things up, there could also be a different angle to it – could this be a data conspiracy? Could this be the start of an algorithmic war? The nations who successfully implement citizen tracking and use that data to build a powerful bio-psycho-social algorithm would win. China could be a strong contender. Or companies like Google, Facebook, Apple or a known/unknown collaboration among them could be a contender. So could be any unheard of start-up born out of Israel.

The casual worker continued to run low on finances with savings running out and the government stimulus not enough to stay afloat. Waking up and living every day was a nightmare in itself after excruciating nightmares from the dream state. The other flatmates offered to share the expenses until they run out… All of them just accepted the reality and continued on as there was just no time to die.

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As we get used to the current way of living either employed or unemployed, the world is going to look very different once this virus is eradicated.

The workplace of the future as envisioned prior to COVID-19 could still hold true. We might still return to a physical location to work with more flexibility to work remotely but our behaviour towards cleanliness, hygiene and human touch will change. On one side, people are getting too sedentary and they need to realise and act on it fast. On the other, the consumption of digital content is skyrocketing – people are focussing on educational resources for themselves and their children. Schools might become virtual and the concept of home schooling would start to thrive. People are finding unconventional ways to connect with their people network. Deeper and meaningful connections would be made as most conversation topics will run out.

A lot of businesses (big and small) would cease to exist and we would need to live with that. It is just a testament to the fact that everything has to die one day. A lot of digital businesses will thrive and will switch to remote hiring, onboarding and exiting. Health care could also see a digital boom with technology like VR and AR advancing. There would still be hospitals for the advanced cures.

While traditionally work and life had unbreakable boundaries, we started to see the wall vanishing. It could turn to another extreme of having an always-on mindset. Organisations must invest in having mindfulness as part of their culture as equally as embedding risk awareness (from a business sense) in the culture.

Organisations which have the potential to continue to exist will need to ensure that they stay loyal to their customers, engage and protect their employees, do good to the society, harden their digital infrastructure whilst also looking for newer opportunities for growth. Most industries will need to rethink and rebuild themselves as a digital platform ecosystem. We’re already seeing businesses trying to tweak their existing supply chain to stay relevant and realise some revenues – Breweries/Distilleries making hand sanitisers, bakeries venturing into grocery and pre-packaged food business. All nations should seek a digital transformation to serve the people and stay in-line with the future of remote work. Cities and towns should be designed keeping pedestrians in mind rather than cars or mass public transport.

Travelling for work will probably end – be it local, domestic or international. The concept of a head office will cease to exist.

While all this is very reactive, I do hope that there would be certain groups of people who would be thinking about avoiding such a pandemic in the future. It is very difficult to get there, but I hope we do. We never know that another virus would be in the making waiting to get to us.

But life will move on, humanity will move on as there is just…(fill in the blanks)

Stay safe everyone and thanks for reading. Feel free to share this article with others if you liked reading it.