“Change means traveling in uncharted waters and this causes our insecurities to rise.” – John C. Maxwell
I’ve had a number of conversations with friends and colleagues recently where we try to reconcile what’s happened in the last 60 days with our personal and professional life experiences.
These discussions follow a consistent story arc: They typically begin with some topic around our current COVID-19 reality, then bridge to how quickly and dramatically things progressed from the pre-COVID normal, and finally end with some conjecture around what the post-COVID “new normal” might look like.
This pre-COVID/COVID/post-COVID framework will likely shape many discussions in our personal lives, and the world of business and politics, as we move forward.
It is human nature to seek out a frame of reference, something from our past to compare with current reality. Not only does it provide us some comfort that we’ve been there before, but it can also yield some clues about how best to move forward.
Reality check – for almost every one of us there has been nothing in our lifetime like COVID-19, with its profound impact on almost every aspect of our daily lives and shattering impact on the global economy.
To put this into perspective, most professionals in the workforce today can remember the Great Recession of 2007-2009. It was caused by the subprime mortgage crisis, which itself was caused by the unregulated use of complicated financial devices called derivatives. If you weren’t in the workforce then, you likely remember it.
Some of us have heard stories about the Great Depression from our parents or grandparents. It began after the stock market crashed in October 1929, which destroyed the life savings of millions of investors. Over the next several years, consumer spending and investment dropped, causing steep declines in industrial output and employment as companies laid off workers. This is generally held out as the “worst case” example in modern history.
Unfortunately, the current COVID-19 pandemic is not like either of these past two events. I say unfortunately, because what we’re facing now is not just a significant stock market decline, but also a health crisis, and labor market crisis, and political crisis, and oil crisis…to name a few.
It is a perfect storm of issues. There are still many unknowns, and we don’t yet have a map.
Like the great explorers who set out to “discover” the new world, we are heading into uncharted waters. They likely wondered, “Is the world flat?” or, “Will our ship fall off the edge once we sail beyond the horizon?” Today many are likely wondering things like “Is there going to be another virus?” or, “Will we find a vaccine?”
COVID-19 has done a great job of illustrating just how interconnected our global economy is. It not only caused the rapid spread of the virus, but also its financial impacts.
Which leads us to our economy, which is driven largely by consumer demand and government spending, and powered by complex global supply chains.
How will we re-start it?
It would be really convenient if there was a simple on/off switch. But it’s not that easy. Perhaps the best analogy is a hyper-sensitive dial that must be slowly and carefully turned so as to not overly stress any part of the machine. This will be the next task at hand for our government and business leaders. How to safely get things going again…
Against this backdrop, we can’t just sit and wait. We must also begin looking for new strategic planning frameworks to help us navigate and succeed in this uncharted territory.
For the foreseeable future, volatility and uncertainty seem to be the only two things we can count on.
-Onward
