Wham-Bam-Thud-Sputter...

I've lived a long and productive life. Seen many places, done many things and gave everything I could to helping where the opportunity presented itself. My resilience has been very good and I lay credit to creativity and adaptability. But as a realist I have always recognized that there are limits and as a result major catastrophes simply become a matter of damage control and not a matter of idealistic avoidance.

2020 has become a year in which a global pandemic (COVID-19 aka Novel Corona Virus) has been set upon the world. Whether by intent or human error I will leave to the sleuthing pungents that are far too many for me to list. My concern and the focus of this writing is to get us out of the quagmire of substantial disruption.

We are skilled at routine disruption as it occurs regularly during the course of business and personal life. Our ability to adapt and overcome occurs as a result of choosing paths in which we either address or avoid the disruption. Unfortunate the extent of our abilities is limited when having to address large disruptive situations. As examples would be in facilitating plans for business interruption or choosing alternative market strategies as ways to soften the blow of much more incident specific disruptions. During one of my many engagements some time ago a government regulator asked me how an institution might address nuclear attack and my answer was simply "survival". In many ways we are at this juncture today... to survive whether as human beings or as businesses. My advice for people is to survive and this entails protection, preparation and operate in a extremely reserved fashion (due largely to a lack of duration information).

For businesses we were caught off guard and were further confronted by government directives that impact our companies. As a result our ability to control has been subjugated leaving us with workaround approach choices. Businesses will first face the issues relating to the workforce and in many cases having to permit work from home conditions. Were we prepared for this? Some would think so because they have done a bit of this on occasion. What we weren't prepared for the entire workforce to be placed in this particular situation. As a result as managers we have to readily accept a shift from a command-control situation to one of trust. While trust may have always existed it now has to be pervasive and in order to build this rapidly our views towards work need to change. Rather than measure pay-for-time we need to align our thinking with pay-for-performance. This in many ways is a good thing since for the last decade people have expounded their beliefs about value generation and work based justification. Now we are forced to put words into action. Another element that we see flourishing on the fly is the technologies being used in order to stay in connection with others that represent the fabric of a company. Our observations and inquiries have shown that;

• A hodgepodge of technologies being used.
• Some of the technologies are old and although commonly used are a bit unstable and undependable.
• Other technologies are new and would be best considered as first generation experimental.

Despite these listed conditions we must use what we have, adapt where necessary and be willing to shift where appropriate. These conditions will put us in a situation where were are forced by necessity to consider the way we do things. Do we really need to hold this many meetings? Should we consider doing a particular job in a different way or give added authority to responsibly expedite efforts? One added consideration is to reexamine your tactical and strategic plans from the perspective of the catastrophic disruption. This will involve removal of some and considering positive opportunities created by situation.

The re-examination of corporate plans leads us to the second part of the catastrophic disruption and that is business generation. It is not business as usual. Marketing will fall dramatically short of value because of the catastrophic disruption. People's attention is diverted by the catastrophe and therefore we need to look at ways to stay in the minds eye. This means you need to understand who that minds eye is. It's one thing if you are a consumer product company, this permits you to show your contributory value to catastrophe resolution. But what can you do differently if you are a industry vertical supplier? Will your marketing efforts flounder because you are a foreign entity and not a domestic one? The message has to be recast, creativity becomes an essential element, fear reduction needs to be employed. An important part of sustained positive business activity is through open communications and transparency with all customers whether engaged at present or from past and future parties. This is extremely important. Efforts to contact past customers and suppliers produced disappointing results.

• Some were not reachable
• Those reached were unaware, uniformed (by their own company), generally perplexed

The reason for this is caused by the shock and the lack of commanding controlled response. It's not the lack of a plan because a plan could never be sufficiently adequate to address catastrophic disruption. Experience may guide some but it often remains a very small element in even the most sophisticated companies.

Conclusion

We are still in the throws of a major catastrophic global disruption. Our immediate attention must be directed towards our human capital and to establish a unconventional work environment, inclusive of technologies and operational protocol. Secondly, we need to reach out and establish an operative relationship with our customer universe (current, past and present). Transparent communication is essential. Underscoring it all is the need for truth and not the creation of illusions and certainties that challenges probabilities.

At no other recent juncture are we facing success or failure in real and immediate terms. It will be a time in which leadership and honest solutions will percolate to the surface. This will leave behind ideologies that are big on hype and short on capability.