War Against the Crown (Corona Virus)

Emerging Themes and Best Practices to Make Sure You and Your Company can Effectively Combat this Pandemic.

This is not just a war against the virus. As the virus made the world virtually stand still for weeks and months and created economic uncertainties, some erstwhile and seemingly succeeding companies find themselves now at uncharted waters. It is expected that many companies would fail or at least falter if they are not able to navigate the impact of several segments of their supply chains bogging down. With the world previously turning to international interdependency and interconnectivity in an effort to both create competitive supply chains and avert wars, this virus pandemic has also heightened risks when those connections are impacted.

In the next few days and weeks many countries will be gearing towards opening up trade and easing up lockdown restrictions in an effort to jumpstart the national and world economies. We will not be tackling the wisdom of the timing of such government decisions, but one thing is certain, until a cure for Covid-19 is found (and probably even way beyond) we are looking at a new normal. I will be listing down a few common themes that emerge as the best practices for the new normal.

1) Top-down management needs even more to create the appropriate Vision for the company. Leaders need to make sure this Vision is understood by all. Radical empowerment of teams to turn that vision into reality could spell the difference between success and failure.

It’s been said that Carl von Clausewitz took his inspiration for the concepts of Fog and Friction (where we now get the concept of Fog of War) in his Theory of War from the exploits of Napoleon. Napoleon in history was characterized not as a “micro-manager” but rather as a visionary that provides radical empowerment to his soldiers to turn that vision into reality. His was a perfect example of a synergy between strategic actions and tactical adjustments. This means that creativity, innovation, informed risk-taking and top-down command-and-control is well-balanced, creating synergy. The strategic actions that support the vision come from management and sensible tactical adjustments are allowed and expected of the people on the ground where they have the latest information. For this to work however, it is of utmost and primary importance that the vision from above should be well understood by the people below. In some agile scaling frameworks this is the concept making the people understand the intent of management. People are then empowered to adjust the plan of actions as necessary in a timely manner as long as the intent is realized while accountability is properly shared and decentralized.

This pandemic has indeed put us all under a fog of doubt. There are emerging plans on how to return to normalcy and stability. This give us leaders all the more reason to ensure our people understand and have bought into the vision and the plan of action.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Photo taken from History.com

2) Virtual / online meetings have become more acceptable. 

It has been observed that many high-level interactions now happen online. Many of those used to be scheduled weeks apart at best but are now becoming more common. There are many tools available both free and subscription based. It is recommended that we find the appropriate approximate tool that caters to our company’s unique culture and way of working and not make our decision based solely or mostly on cost. It may even be that the best solution is a combination of tools and not a single suite from a single supplier.

3) Focus on providing as much visual time as possible during online virtual meetings. This means both turning on your video cameras whenever appropriate and sharing screens for quick feedback.

We are social beings. What this pandemic primarily impacted is our social connections. Seeing the familiar and even the not-so-familiar face on screen as we talk to them during meetings helps us cope with the physical distance. The non-verbal cues you communicate with your facial expressions means a lot in making sure we are all in the same page during discussions.

The second part is equally important as well. Rather than just talking and simulating the face to face conversation by turning on the video camera, it is also beneficial to screen-share and use tools that would allow all participants to see progress as well as annotate or draw diagrams and illustrations.

?4) Pair work

In the software development world, there is a common practice referred to as pair programming. In many unrelated industries, it is now common to see tasks being shared appropriately by two or more individuals to both harness the benefit of i) two heads are better than one, and ii) encouraging virtual socialization and collaboration to avert employee disengagement and loneliness. As social beings, this contributes to our mental well-being, productivity and involvement. We just need to make sensible and pragmatic considerations when deciding who gets to pair work with whoever. 

Stay safe. Agile on!

About the author: Chris is a movie fan who happens to be a new dad. Now that his daughter has turned two, he hopes to get more movie time (when this pandemic blows over), enjoy the story and glean insights about Agile and life in general. When he's not busy watching a movie, he's working as an Agile Coach. He has been coaching since 2013 -- mentoring & training teams, fellow Scrum Masters and companies become more Lean and Agile. On top of his regular work duties on project teams that span the United States, Australia, UK, India and Bangladesh, he has on shore Scrum and Agile coaching experience in the following countries and territories: Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Hong Kong.

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