Will the world be that different after Covid?

I know two things for sure: 

·      wet markets are over

·      bats and research-funding are not likely to co-exist for some time

About other things I am less certain. 

When I read all the optimism about a new world full of joy and love and harmony in a touch-free world, I am left groaning, like Lurch in the Addams Family. 

I may be seen as merely playing devil’s advocate, but I really do not think the changes will be as intense as others are imagining. 

Yes, we have a new world order...for now and sometime perhaps? There are those with health and those that have not; those who have enough money to live and those who don’t; and those who can zoom and those who can’t or, perhaps more to the point, won’t!

Of these, those who can’t zoom are the deadest of us all. Last week, as fate would have it, I was sent an email by mistake. It was from an organisation distancing itself from (a polite way of saying ‘getting rid of’) a Board member who is struggling with technology. Beware if you are a Baby Boomer with a deadly, dead-hand understanding of contemporary technology challenges – you will be dropped from a height without a farewell.

When it comes to other changes though, I would like to posit five challenges: 

1. We don’t want to be separate, we want to be accepted (in, anywhere)
2. We don’t have the skills to be separate, they must be learned (welcome to the world of AI coming to a computer screen near you!)
3. The virtual world breeds lack of trust – no better exhibited than the separateness and inclusivity at all at once required to ‘Zoom it’ and the accompanying exhaustion accumulated from the intensity of it all!
4. We need touch – of all types: from the physical caress or handshake to that from voice or breath, or from vibrated air that many have heard me speak about over time…
5. We are nothing if not creatures of habit – change is not as easy as it sounds

I have a colleague in Government, who, at a recent morning briefing announced with enthusiasm, “I am never going back to the office again!” To which her director replied “Oh, I hope you enjoy your new job”. Suffice to say she did not lose her job but the option of staying at home was not sanctioned. 

So, firstly, managers are not set up in a  mindset for managing staff off-site. The don’t want to think about it. This is a MAJOR unmanaged, actually as yet to be identified unidentified RISK within the newly calibrated risk coming our way! 

Secondly, there are many who, for a variety of reasons, say they will be not be returning to work until there is a vaccine. For this situations maybe we don’t have the skills virtual relationships. One sales director told me her reps were at home in bed and became cantankerous when pushed on the morning calls.  She was bereft of ideas to deal with the situation.

Many other examples persist and solutions range from the radical to the non-solution “head in the sand” more of the same (it will soon return to normal).

I am reminded of the Monty Python sketch where a cart is rolled around a medieval village laden with bodies with the head of the ‘hygiene unit’ – I think it was John Cleese – singing out: “…bring out your dead, bring out your dead…” when all of a sudden in true Python style one of the characters laying on the cart springs to life and says: “…but I’m not dead”!!

Cleese immediately lays into him with a wooden mallet and says: “Now you are…!”  

Not only are we unable to manage them at a distance but listening to clients who have persistent webinars on a daily basis they squirm at recalling the boredom they are enduring. 

Many webinars are mundane, generic and not specific to need (issue or problem) and just do not “cut the mustard”! As a result I am being begged to show others how to include others, how to engage with voice and what to do when the game has changed from body-language to micro-expression. We just haven’t brought our nation up to date with performance skills (huh… buy shares in my business!) and we are worlds apart from being equipped to get where we need to be to be effective.

Thirdly, the virtual world has two major negative kickbacks. Personally I am loving it, but beware, as noted above, while revelling in its intimacy people are faced, at the same time, with an inherent lack of trust – it is endemic, entrenched and it is exhausting!

Silence may be golden at other times but in a virtual medium its death.  One 2014 study by German academics shows that delays on phone or conference systems of 1.2 seconds make people perceive the responder as less friendly or focused and showed that delays on phone or conferencing systems shaped our views of people negatively. This is clearly something that is experienced by all Zoomers, daily notwithstanding the excellent service delivery product that it is…

Contributing to the exhaustion says researcher, Shuffler, is that if we are physically on camera, we are very aware of being watched. “When you're on a video conference, you know everybody's looking at you; you are on stage, so there comes the social pressure and feeling like you need to perform. Being performative is nerve-wracking and more stressful.” 

Additionally: “The video call is our reminder of the people we have lost temporarily. It is the distress that every time you see someone online, such as your colleagues, that reminds you we should really be in the workplace together,” he says. “We’re all exhausted; It doesn't matter whether they are introverts or extroverts. We are experiencing the same disruption of the familiar context during the pandemic.” It is about the stress and, through that experience of stress, the distress of disruption as visited upon us via daily reminders.

Another researcher, Petriglieri, tells us the exhaustion and negativity are added to by the fact that aspects of our lives that used to be separate – work, friends, family – are all now happening in the same space. The self-complexity theory posits that individuals have multiple aspects – context-dependent social roles, relationships, activities and goals – and we find the variety healthy.  

When these aspects are reduced, we become more vulnerable to negative feelings.

Fourthly, we do actually NEED contact. The hand has been called the ‘second brain’ and our need for touch has been enacted over the centuries by the demand for artefacts and relics, by sending lockets of hair to loved ones and, the handshake, which, despite health warnings has survived two thousand years. 

Not to mention the sex doll business, booming with the advertising slogan 'Naturally antibacterial'.  These dolls blink and make noise and attempt as close as possible to replicate human interaction. Yes, it is a worry. Again, welcome to a dumbed down AI world of a ‘like’ or close proximity, but in reality nowhere near, experience rather than the genuine thing! (OK, Ive never tried one, but I can imagine)

Lastly, we are people of habit. If you can’t break the human need for interaction, you also cannot break the habits of a lifetime in two months of isolation. We did not choose to isolate, we were never trying to disconnect ourselves and disconnection was indeed never our choice. Think of this with reaction to someone stopping smoking. It would not get off the ground.

NOTE: as one small example, on every single survey done about what people missed most – Q. “Did visiting the grand kiddies ever come out on top of wining and dining with friends? 

A. No, not once! Not ever!”

None of this screams: ‘therefore the change will stick’.

Touch did not stop after the Spanish flu. 

Touch did not stop after Ebola and group meetings. 

…and face-toface engagements won’t stop now.

Despite the fact a new poll has found that 2/3 of American believers feel that God is telling humanity to change how it lives, the news from Louise…

We will shake hands again.

We will hug again.

We will kiss each other again.

We will dive into the electricity of a large group with a united objective, live… be it theatre, cinema, a church, a music event or a conference.

When the restaurants open I am taking a helicopter to Oakridge in the Yarra Valley and then back to my favourite French restaurant in Melbourne.  

Are you with me!