What I learnt when the black elephants arrived

What are black elephants?

A few months ago the New York Times used the curious term “black elephant”, attributing it to the London-based investor and environmentalist Adam Sweidan. The term crosses two already familiar expressions.

One is “black swan” — a name for something whose repercussions force you to throw out key theories that you took for granted, such as the premise that “all swans are white”.

The other term is “elephant in the room” — something whose presence everyone knows but nobody seriously addresses out of fear or embarrassment.’” Robert P Crease writes in Black Elephants, Physics World, 4 June 2015.

Black Elephant Art: Image: Shutterstock: Ivanchina Anna

Where were you when the black elephants arrived during 2020?

During February 2020 I said “hello” to a new consultant who occupied an empty workspace near me. Soon I learnt she was part of the business continuity team, setting up plans for managing risks of a potential COVID-19 crisis.

From that moment I started preparing for an inevitable lockdown, ignoring mainstream media, colleagues and naysayers.

On a Friday early March I tested remote work. The Monday after the weekend our entire team started working from home.

….And just like that, the herd of black elephants arrived on all of our doorsteps– globally.

Here is what I learnt from my consulting work

Lesson One: Luck favours those who are prepared (and whose service is deemed essential)

Similar to many traditional and well established enterprises, my clients already established strong digital cultures and resourceful workforces within an industry that was declared essential during the initial lockdown COVID-19.

Investment in developing corporate wide change management capability was paying off and organizations gained excellence implementing large scale and complex change. They were well along their roadmaps for implementing their future remote workforce strategies.

Now, almost overnight, a significant portion of their workforce, thousands of partners and customers moved and demanded business transactions on-line.

Changes in structures and cultural values transformations that took years to review and research, happened within two to three weeks.

As I was supporting designing and testing a change portfolio management capability at a client, the need and urgency for the success of our initiative became a “no-brainer”. Creating consistent and repeatable, digital change portfolio management and collaboration became urgent.

Our biggest constraint was finding time in over scheduled calendars. The new reality forced us to rethink our design and implementation approach to enable managing operational change in a complete virtual environment. We were, as a senior manager was fond of reminding everyone — building this plane while we are flying it through an unexpected storm.

Lesson Two: It's possible to radically flex the way we think, relate and play when it's for the common good

Almost overnight a culture of respect and tolerance arrived in the virtual office space, as everyone realized we are all impacted — although not always the same.

Imperfection was tolerated with great empathy, encouraging peers and leaders to stay open to learning and supporting each other. What was considered impossible, suddenly became the new way of work and relating to colleagues, partners and customers.

Daily check-ins became indispensable anchors for stability and continuity, developing its own localized styles of encouraging quotes, news about ordinary life matters (such as how to take care of bee hives or the new app for food deliveries) while carefully checking that everyone is included.

Deep listening skills gained a fresh appreciation with audio dominating online meetings and workshops.

Priorities shifted: Do I need to have that conversation right now? Effective cross-functional collaboration took place, and more capacity to empower employees with resources and support to participate in more tactical solution design that improve their work practices.

Organizational wellbeing was on many leaders’ minds, bringing about a renewed attention on the organizational leadership framework and values — recently refreshed and aligned to the longer term strategy.

The executive team put the needs of people at front and centre of their business continuity and communications. Financial impacts moved to the background while they stayed in touch with and put the voice of employee feedback in the spotlight of their communications.

Frequently addressing in-the-moment fears, issues of work safety, wellbeing and acknowledging the enormity of loss (including financial due to cancelled travel plans, needing to fly relatives back home, loss of jobs).

Human centric communication was able to provide a sense of certainty by providing a reliable structure, order and purpose with collective short term goals, while at the right time, pointing to the sustainability of the future.

Lesson Three: On the other hand, “Imagine Sispyhus working from home” as the health crisis continue to unfold

As I connected to various clients, and observed the conversations taking place on social media, I also learnt....

“Maybe if F. Scott Fitzgerald had ‘also’ had a son following him from room to room with an iPad playing Peppa Pig episodes he wouldn’t have written The Great Gatsby either.” Adam Rex on Twitter

While most leaders started with post-contingency, re-opening plans, they knew that going virtually exponentially did not provide sufficient time to shift the 20th Century factory-based organizational paradigms and behaviours.

These include familiar organizational challenges, such as trust, governance and accountability, command and control micromanagement (veneer theory), non-participative and hierarchical decision making, silos and internal competition for scarce resources, left hand not knowing the right hand, visibility of inequality (essential, in person work versus remote work) and absenteeism due to health and stress.

This was to be expected, and is well researched. For example, during 2002 MIT published research that indicated email communications tended to escalate conflict.

Scientists and researchers are now able to gather real-time data of the impact of virtual only, digital technology enabled communication on employee and organizational wellbeing. According to Don Pittis on CBC News, Canadian research indicates that “video chats short circuit a brain function essential for trust”, which raises many questions about how to design healthy and meaningful work practices that rely solely on “big tech” mediated platforms and automated algorithms.

In a short space of time, people started getting concerned about the health of their important relationships. For example, how do you take care of relationships with loved ones who are living with you in confined spaces during the pandemic?

How do you make sure you maintain positive and productive relationships with your colleagues when working online against a backdrop of a radical and future-uncertain shift in your organization, community, country and world as a whole?

Lesson Four: Its impossible to separate work life from the backdrop of fragmentation and tensions in the world

A Singularity happened. We reached a tipping point, and instead of finding ourselves in a unified wise, abundant and collective intelligence enabled by our digital (R)evolution, we discovered our world fractured and increasingly confronted with rapidly escalating tensions over values, power and morals in decision making, such as access to life saving health care, economic support and opportunities to live a quality life and getting through this crisis with as little loss possible.

With work shifting to home, it’s impossible to avoid these fallouts in our personal and work lives.

Physical health priorities changed, as most people’s homes were not designed for day to day remote work. Working full time from kitchen tables or bedrooms are not ideal.

Clients started mentioned the never-ending sitting from one online meeting after another, their struggles with having to become care takers at home while also needing to re-arrange family life around the new work place requirements, such as privacy for meetings.

We realized our technologies foster disconnection.

Lesson Five: New black elephants continue to arrive - change fatigue now impacts employees and their communities

More than halfway during the year fatigue has set in. Vast numbers of citizens (who are also employees) refuse to participate in simple health care protocols such as wearing of masks and keeping a safe physical distance. Contact tracing is not working as planned, and borders open and then close.

With no end to the health crisis, financial security has evaporated for the majority of people around the world, and social discontent is gathering steam.

Words such as “social contract”, equality, equity and justice entered the popular realm. The social internet is broken and now exponential technologies escalate conflicts between individuals and nations.

Political leaders make almost instant decisions upending years of relationship and business investment and strategies. After TikTok, whose next? Zoom?

For most people, this is a new experience, with apparently no end in sight.

While most of us are naturally resilient and adaptable, few have the means, resources and support to sustain this level of constant alertness, change, learning, uncertainty, strife and collapse of social networks and family support.

With these challenges in mind — somehow ensuring that a powerpoint deck is precisely formatted seem to be a luxury use of time and skills while others in the organizational or local community could be given more meaningful assistance.

Conclusion

Re-organizing workplaces to be responsive to a world of constant waves of unexpected change will require a rethink about the essential purpose of organizations. This includes workforce capability that can thrive during turmoil at work.

Getting things done does not always mean that you are actually doing the right things right. As my one client said — becoming agile and digital does not guarantee you are building the best solutions.

Leaders who encourage pausing and reflecting on the climate and not just addressing the weather, will be able to better anticipate and prepare for future black elephants.

#virtualorganizations #distributedorganizations #distributedworkforce #agile #changeportfolio

About me:

I am a leadership innovator and digital transformation expert who consultants to C-Suite and senior leaders on strategic and complex change that generates positive impact.