#reset
I’ve written more during the pandemic lock-down than in most situations. My writing is sporadic, unscheduled and not to a fixed pattern.
I sense when I want to write and it certainly helped when all the work I had planned for the Quarter April-June collapsed in front of my eyes.
#TeamPTHR and I have been busy as heck with a new product line of virtual ‘Labs’ being launched on 1 July. We seriously cannot wait to share what we’ve been doing with the world.
In previous posts, I’ve called for Reinvention (see here) over Reset and Recover. Whilst I appreciate some people want to ‘get back to normal’ the team and I have no such desire and nor do a lot of people I’m talking to as clients, partners and connections.
So Gaby Hinsliff’s Guardian article (here) about going back to normal (with hairdressers reopening and so on) intrigued me and I can understand a lot of what’s behind this feature. We DO crave some stability and comforting habitual elements.
This extract is telling and probably nearer to the reality than I’d like to admit to.
And yet here’s a small list of things I am not ‘resetting and recovering’ with all the energy I can muster.
- Commuting into London just to meet up with people or attend events
- Flying to locations for work
- Running all-day, or multi-day, workshops
- Going shopping in stores
- Going to coffee shops, restaurants, theatres, cinemas and bars with the frequency I used to, if at all.
- Having a co-working space in London
- Going to big gatherings more generally.
Truth be told, I did these things because I had to. I now know a lot of them were not really things I loved doing. I’ve no intention of adding them back into my life in a hurry.
Sure I had a choice but it wasn’t something I had to be so stoically against so I went with them. I was never a festival-goer; have never been keen on crowded beaches; would fly to places for work but rarely built-in sight-seeing time (it was a functional and brutally short visit most of the time).
I’d gradually adjusted to more internet-based purchasing and whilst I loved going to the cinema, I’ve not massively missed that experience. Eating out was lovely but again, my life isn’t a drab and dour thing because of not visiting an eaterie.
I miss going to the football but equally, had a joyous occasion on Monday night when my beloved Northampton Town overturned a 2–0 first leg in the League 2 playoffs to win 3–0 on the night at Cheltenham Town and would have loved to have been there.
So my adjustment to lockdown hasn’t been painful at all. I have enjoyed being at home more, helping out with the chores, sitting at the dinner table to eat, working remotely, calling and connecting online and building and creating my work through the digital channels we have all so readily adopted because we had to.
I’ve got used to using clippers on my own hair and trimming my own beard. I’ve even dyed my Wife’s roots and trimmed my Dad’s barnet.
So there won’t be too much of the ‘old normal’ I’ll want to return to. And I suspect I’m not alone.
And yet the beach scenes at Bournemouth, the clamour to go to a pub and the queues outside large stores show us lots of people want to go back to that as soon as possible.
It’s a choice, and those folks are welcome to it.
And whilst I challenge the ‘rest and recover’ agenda many businesses and people are planning for, I’m sticking with ‘reset and reinvent’.
I’m therefore not going to spend money on East Midlands Rail; Costa and Starbucks; Frankie & Benny’s; Wizz Air and EasyJet and the associated taxis, food outlets and casual purchases linked to that.
That is going to be a small but nonetheless noticeable shift and I’m sorry to all those companies and people who’ve served me well in those habits of the past. I don’t know how many are going to be like me but if, as consumers, we make similar choices to me, then there’s a real revenue and service provision shift that will be happening.
Of course, as Hinsliff’s article points out, those choices are dramatically affected by income and work. And whilst it’s OK when things are going well to make choices because you can; when there’s a dire need to travel somewhere to work because that’s the only job you can find; or get into the travel thing because a client insists, then that presents a different choice — of the Hobson’s variety.
I’m committing to a more digital-first, distanced way of being because I want to. Not just because of the socially, moral and ethical thing to do in keeping my distance from people because of the contagion effect. I’m inwardly pleased that many others — having mostly positive experiences of being in a more home-bound state — are also considering this. Of course, I have sympathy with the circumstances and choices people made that means home-working isn’t as comfortable as I’m experiencing. Yet I’m not going to bow to any pressure to return to the previous way life was. I’ve many reasons for this and choices are based on those conveniences and opportunities. The communal thing to do until we’re vaccinated or free from Coronavirus infection is affirming my choices.
Yet in a world that is rid of the virus, societal adjustments have been made and will continue to be made IMHO.
It will be some time before students from all over the world descend on the UK’s academic institutions.
It will be some time before commuting at set times is forced upon us again.
It will be perhaps permanent that around a third or even half of us in the ‘knowledge economy’ don’t have to commute to work again.
It will be stark that money will be scarce and we will be in some form of a major recession or even depression and arguably, we already are.
I don’t see a totally radical ‘new normal’ or the return to what was as preferences I’d want to select. I see some bigger shifts than some might despite the regressive behaviour of some of our fellow humans. Despicably leaving litter in their wake, disrespecting public servants still rightly wary of the infection rates and potential for second spikes.
I see the tail of COVID-19 being a longish one. And that we will see this year out in a severely adjusted way of being still. More enterprises are going to struggle and collapse because of this and that saddens me. Some are going to thrive and they are either geniuses at adaptive business models, or fortunate they were able to navigate a crisis like this because their business model was already operating in a way that wasn’t dependent on large numbers of people coming together in some shape or form.
We were already headed towards a more digital, automated world (4th Industrial Revolution and all that) and many people didn’t like that concept because of the loss of the human touch. NOW the human touch has become a life-threatening intervention and we’ve kept our shields of the digital screen as our window to the world and connections but a safe physical distance from any chance we could become ill, die or infect others and they also suffer as a result of our infectiousness.
What may halt the further charge into a digital world is the lack of investment around to automate and digitise. Yet that same thing might force more people to borrow now and pay it back later because they could become so automated and efficient they could not only survive but thrive exponentially.
Whilst I accept that there will be a clamouring to return back to a normal life pre-COVID-19, there will also be some permanent shifts and transformations that we will see and embed in our lives and our work.
What does this mean?
- Leadership that is less about control and more about choice.
- Working that is less about fixed routines and are about more flexible, connected and adaptable ways to do things.
- Business strategies that are less fixed visions of the future and are responsive and adaptive.
- Purchasing that is less about casual acquisition and is more considered, cautious and necessary.
- Connections that are less built on proximity and regularity of physical contact and are more about close but digitally cultivated and sustained.
Of course, people will still meet up. Of course, at some point, there will be big events and all those things that make up the human culture of our time.
Yet I don’t buy that things will return to normal. This has been too much of a hard-stop. Too many people have lost their lives to this virus. Too many people have worked harder than they ever thought they would to keep people safe and well. Too many people have made sacrifices to protect themselves and others. And I suspect, too many people, like me, have discovered that a lot of the things they did weren’t really what they loved doing.
So I still have the belief that it won’t be a new normal come, October or January 2021. There will be significant changes in how we are.
- We still have a climate crisis.
- We still have injustice and inequity and dangerous separatist views.
- We will have too many people without the quality of opportunity they should have and are prejudiced by their ethnicity, socio-demographic circumstances, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation or caring responsibilities.
- We still have an education system harking to the industrial era more than an enlightened, connected era.
- We still have politics mired by ego and agendas that aren’t in the interests of the people they are supposed to serve (and not just their backers and privileged few).
- We still have workplaces that haven’t looked after their people in this crisis.
- We still have homelessness, mental health problems and a stress pandemic that is likely to get worse as COVID-19 infections even cessate.
- We still have an economy that is, largely, broken and no longer fit for purpose (even more so post-pandemic).
So a return to that? Really?
I’m making my choice to create a reinvented world as far as I can that’s going to put right some of those wrongs listed above.
We have too much reinventing work to do to shift our focus on what we can do to slip back into comfortable norms of before-COVID19.
I won’t do that on the beach, getting an ice-cream from a parlour 120 miles away or popping into H&M.
Sorry, to all who provide those services.
And as the RSA’s research on economic model possibilities earlier this year gave us four options (Big Tech; Precision, Exodus and Empathy)…
…I’m choosing a combination of Exodus and Empathy as my reset and reinvent.
