The Unexpected Benefits of #Coronavirus

A businessman tells his friend: "My wife usually spends more than I earn. The #Corona virus (COVID19) like a saving plan because she is not going to the malls to shop or eat with her friends to avoid people. She also stopped buying online because most of the packages come from China."

Jokes aside, in every adversity, there is something to be learned. Here are a few potential benefits for organizations and individuals:

Flexi & remote working:

Organizations who delayed, avoided, or ruled out Flexi work arrangements, will have to reconsider it from now onwards. Those who adopted flexi-working before the pandemic outbreak are having an easier time to respond to the crisis, having gone through procedures such as security, shifts alignment, ethics, and trust management. Many financial institutions especially in Asia, have activated their emergency plans to split teams in multiple locations and activate standby teams in different countries for redundancy and business continuity.

Even governments are embracing remote working. Civil servants in Hong Kong have been working from home for weeks. According to the China Daily, remote work is the new normal for employees in China. In recent weeks, DingTalk, Alibaba’s enterprise communication and collaboration app, enabled its platform for free to over 200 million workers from more than 10 million companies and organizations. In the last few weeks, the share prices of Zoom and Slack, which are both available in China, have risen by 28% and 33%, respectively.

Healthier organizations:

At least for a while, hygiene ethics and norms will change. It is no longer acceptable to come to work when you are sick anymore as you might be a carrier of a deadly virus. The health authorities collaborate with the media to share higher standards of hygiene to wash and disinfect hands, phones, and surfaces, to sneeze into an elbow. If unlike SARS's time, organizations and education systems will keep the high standards of health discipline, fewer people and students will come sick to work which will reduce dramatically the spread of diseases. It can save billions of sick days.

Encourage speaking up and challenge the status quo:

The cost of not listening to feedback and ignoring evidence is intolerable. It is literally about survival. What would have happened if the authorities in Wuhan would have taken seriously the diagnosis of Dr. Li Wenliang? The damage of not listening to the whistleblowers could have been limited and the outbreak had a much higher chance to be under control. The big toll of loss of human lives, the ability to earn, the cost for the global economy estimated at hundreds of billions of dollars, and disruption to our way of life could have been largely avoided. Who are we not listening to now? Greta Thunberg?

Uniting the world together, inclusion to fight global problems

Bill Gates saw it coming. Exactly 5 years ago in his TED talk, he told us the future that we are almost living now. The problem is that as a human specie we do not listen before it is almost too late. He ends on a positive note that reminded me of a story I head from one of the most inspiring speakers about creativity & globalization Fredrik Haren. He used sports as an example of what makes us human. If I am a fan of a local team, there is a rivalry, we want us to win and them to lose. And then the best stars from all the teams go to the national team. We then cheer our country against others. We want to win and they lose. And if there is a team of a continent against a continent the same logic applies. So if there is a team of aliens, it will be earth against another planet, all of us be transformed to be "Team Earth". 

Perhaps we needed a formidable external "enemy" so we unite ourselves as an "earth team" to deal with real problems that humanity is facing and stop the waste of energy and resources of fighting each other. Armies that can mobilize teams across the world. They understand about fuel and logistics and the same radio frequencies and can divert the energy from fighting wars against humans to "virus wars" to save humanity.

The sad thing that we need to address soon and fast is that the pandemic caused an economic crisis that will bring millions into starvation. The NY Times reported in April 2020 that experts from the UN say warned that without global cooperation and financial assistance, the number of people suffering from acute hunger or hunger-related diseases could double to 265 million by the end of this year.

At times of threats for the health and lives of the human race, the virus, the tsunamis, storms, fires, earthquakes, and other natural disasters, do not care about what is our race, faith, tradition, color, sexual orientation, social status or any other way we believe ourselves to be different from others. It is an opportune time for us to unite and celebrate the best in humanity working together to save ourselves.

Courage, honor, respect, and gratitude:

As a society, we need to show in action our appreciation for the courage and sacrifice of the people at the frontlines, dealing with the disasters to contain the damage from spreading so we can live. While governments will need to make a considerable increase in investment in uplifting their compensation. Thank you to all the doctors, nurses, medical staff, hospital builders, transport and delivery professionals, firefighters, and more for risking their lives for us.

Digital payment revolution:

Money is dirty. When a virus can live between a few hours to days on any surface, wireless payment is paramount to save lives. Governments need to work with the private sector to plan to develop a secure and trusted e-payment infrastructure. Greater adoption of e-payments will save billions of dollars and make the economies more efficient. Learning from the Finish

Purpose Powered by Compassion and Generosity

Excluding companies who use the crisis for cheap PR, there are companies who are taking meaningful actions to help others during the crisis. Various initiatives like GrabCare, for healthcare professionals, to book a ride home from the National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID) and Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH).

Compassion is not only for humans. What about animals that are left behind? There are groups of volunteers helping to take care of animals.

Chin-up and uplift spirits:

At tough times the most important thing is to keep up the spirit and not be defeated. One of the initiatives that I liked was by the medical staff in a hospital in Wuhan, dancing with hundreds of patients to a lively Chinese song about red flowers.

Humor is also important to call out anti-Asian sentiments amid the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak. In their 60 seconds clip, actor Michael Tow and editor Teja Arboleda use humor to help people put some of their fears into perspective and to help those who feel like they are being targeted.

Conservation of the environment

NASA and European Space Agency (ESA) pollution monitoring satellites have detected significant decreases in nitrogen dioxide (NO2) over China related to the economic slowdown following the outbreak of coronavirus. As cruel as it sounds, mother earth could do with less of us as we hurt our own habitat. We need to ask ourselves tough questions on how to expedite more environmentally friendly ways to reduce our NO2 emission.

According to WHO, air pollution kills an estimated seven million people worldwide every year. 91% of the world’s population live in places where air quality exceeds WHO guideline limits. The question is will we want to go back to these levels or will the pandemic wake us up to explore radical and rapid ways to reduce our pollution?

World' resilience and solidarity

We are REFINED not DEFINED at time of crisis and adveristy or by our mistakes and failures ~ Avi Liran

There are more stories of support and solidarity during the pandemic than nasty media feeds, fake news, and harmful acts against others. (With one mystery, why people were fighting over toilet papers). We are wired for empathy and feel immediate gratification when we help other people. Our communities grow stronger and friendlier when we reach our to help each other. We have seen a massive wave of generosity around the world to take care of the needy and provide food and shelter, hygiene products, and support. Despite the fact that many of us have lost their jobs or as SME owners suffered a halt of operations and many had to fire employees, still find the joy of transforming our feelings to positive emotions as we shift our mindset from feeling HOPELESS to becoming HELPFUL. There are dozens of studies that confirm that increase in happiness when we give to others. Research of giving conducted by Grafman and fMRI showed that donating affects two brains "reward" systems working together: the midbrain VTA, which also is stimulated by food, sex, drugs, and money; as well as the subgenual area, which is stimulated when humans see babies and romantic partners.

In our small organization, we had managed to raise funds while giving value to the donors with our MOJO sessions. We teamed up with the Center for Women Rights to serve 600 needy people who are locked down in Manila and can't go out to earn their daily keep. We all felt moments of joyous optimism, sense of purpose, and meaning while doing our work for the benefit of others.

Humanizing work conversations & higher empathy

Working remotely when the entire household is in quarantine can't be always professional. Kids may shout and play in the background, dogs will bark, and sometimes you can get to see gorgeous smiles with the background of their beautiful wardrobe like in a conversation that I had with Michaela from Mulesoft. We became more humble, more accepting, less judging of others because we are exactly in the same situation. We had to increase our empathy levels so we can give ourselves and other permission to be ok and safe just the way they are. Like the famous and funny BBC interview with the interruption of the expert's two kids, we find it charming and amusing. Organizations worldwide are much more tolerant now to the new "professional environment" of working from home.

From military use to civilian aid

"...and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks" ~ Isaiah 2:4

Defense companies and armies are called to help with the pandemic. For example two of Israel's biggest defense electronics companies joined the race around the clock to translate the extraordinary tech capabilities of the defense establishment, to the fight against corona.”

• Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) in collaboration with a medical company, Inovytec, have completed the establishment of a first-of-its-kind production line for Ventway Sparrow ventilators. IAI’s missile and space engineers are producing the lightweight, turbine-powered ventilators. In recent weeks IAI engineers are working to developed a prototype of a machine that uses ultraviolet (UV) light to kill viruses and bacteria on hospitals' surface. The device will allow medical centers to speed up the sterilization process of their rooms and ready them for treatments of new patients. This will be a more environmentally friendly way as today this sterilization is done with chemicals, such as chlorine or alcohol.
• Elbit Systems and a new startup called LifeCan Medical teamed up to produce emergency automatic ventilators that are designed for non-hospital settings to support breathing in less severely ill patients.

Perhaps as bill Gates anticipated, armies and defense industries will contribute to the fight of the global pandemic with their strengths. Armies can also help with their logistics capabilities and command and control strengths.

Humbling Globalization & the Power of Virtual Communities

The Mad Cow started in the United Kingdom, Ebola and HIV originated from Congo, MERS in Saudi Arabia, and both SARS and COVID19 in China. It would have happened near you and me. Natural disasters are the fairest in nature. To the virus, the tsunami, the earthquake, or storm we are all equal. They do not care about religion, race, sexual preference, gender, or any other thing that sets us apart. For them, we are just one race - the human race. We are all interdepended on each other to fight for our survival and find a solution, otherwise, we are all at risk.

It is encouraging to see so many gestures by individuals and organizations to support the people in Wuhan. I had the pleasure to participate in a virtual meeting of improvisers, initiated by Coen Tan and Audrey Lee. For a couple of hours, they led an improv session that allowed everyone to share and act their fear. Participants from China said that they needed that cheer as they did not smile or laugh for a long time. They expressed that the session made them feel not alone, supported, and loved.

Sense of Humor

In our conversations with many companies, we found out that one of the ways that they deal with the accumulated stress of working from home is that they have a specific channel for memes and jokes about the situation. Ever since the crisis had started, we had uploaded an album with some of the funniest memes on the FB page of Delivering Delight (Click on the photo):

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Working globally from Singapore, TEDx (IDEASx) global speaker Avi Liran (Economist, MBA, and basketball coach) is the Chief Delighting Officer of www.deliveringdelight.com. On a mission to delight the world, one person, one organization, one community at a time, he travels the world to inspire, and entertain with his refreshing keynote talks and edutainment programs Delivering Delight. Avi helps leaders and managers worldwide to tap into their Inner Delight to Lead With Values, Purpose, Joy, and Care. When leaders walk the talk, they cultivate a Delightful Organisational Culture (DOC) that nurtures Delightful Employee Experience (DEX) which empowers Delightful Customer Experience (DCX).