The 5 stages of a pandemic reaction

Over the past six months we’ve lived a lifetime of change. But what did it all mean? And what comes next?

My personal digital transformation began at 30 with three major epiphanies.

First, I learnt from management thinker Eli Goldratt about how to understand complex systems simply.

Second, one rainy evening in Nottingham, I experienced my first virtual-reality console. I was in shock for days. How could I have been so immersed in the computer world that I forgot it wasn’t the real one?

Third, I found out why projects were in transition from closed to uncertain. Ways of working in place for 100 years that fit a world of incremental change worked only if we could remain in control and stay ahead by learning. But the pace of change had risen and all our assumptions were obsolete – and so was everything I was teaching.

So, I quit to seek this new world. I had a virtual-reality teaching facility built. I dispersed my business team, forcing me to learn virtual leadership and remote working. Around me everyone kept behaving rationally in response to an old world they understood and recognised, but which no longer existed. Sound familiar?

The best pandemic joke is: ‘Who is in charge of your digital transformation? (a) CEO; (b) CIO; or (c) COVID-19?’ Suddenly, no one can deny the presence of our new world. As a bystander, this is what I have witnessed:

Stage 1 Fire! Fire! Office closed

Systems you’ve relied on for getting your work done are suddenly inaccessible. Continuity must be assured immediately. Secretly you’re amazed how fast your normally sleepy organisation, suppliers and customers have moved. They finally began to use the digital infrastructure they have paid for, and have paid lip service to, for years. Overnight they discovered that work that can go down a phone line should, and work that can’t is called ‘key’.

Stage 2 Finding your feet

Talk about continuity, disruption and remote work is all well and good, but working from home isn’t. Home is shared with family and pets. How do you negotiate a place, time and way to work that is fair to all? Your family quickly goes through the stages of team development: forming, storming (really noisy rows), norming, performing. You realise your choice of devices to keep you mobile – laptop and phone – are awkward to use all day, with tiny screens that make your eyes hurt.

Stage 3 The false dawn

Today you spent seven hours on webcam staring at each other’s foreheads. Old world: meet to discuss then do the work offline. You play pass-the-parcel with a spreadsheet and pretend you are collaborating. These tools and methods were built to serve the old world. It’s not ideal but you’re getting used to what people are calling the ‘new normal’. This is your false dawn. You have just digitised your old actions. New world: meet to do the work, and collaboration means thinking together.

Stage 4 A sense of loss

The rumble starts as the gate-keepers realise that in our new, high-speed, innovative free-for-all, they are irrelevant. They start to plan how to return to ‘normal’, ie work before COVID-19. You want permanent change, but your experience so far has been pretty dehumanising, and the idea of spending the rest of your working life in the understairs cupboard fills you with dread.

Stage 5 Never waste a crisis

The pandemic has driven change at an amazing rate. Perhaps 10 years’ worth in 10 days. People now recognise how ridiculous the previous normal was and that it is obsolete. But gluing wings onto a caterpillar does not make it a butterfly. So now you need to imagine the possibilities and learn a different way – fast.

I’ll give you a couple of shortcuts to getting there. First, your thinking and habits will mislead you. For every activity or problem, make two lists. On one put your measure of success and how you would have tackled it in the old world. On the other, do the same for our post-COVID-19 world. Few items should be on both sides.

Second, with respect to remote working, imagine a three-legged stool. The first leg is ‘group culture’. How will people be together? How will people learn new behaviours? How will we include everyone?

The second leg is ‘aligned collaboration’. What processes and tools will we use? How will we collaborate and think together? How will we make decisions?

The third leg is the facility we will need. Previously we used the office, meetings and flew executives around the world. How will we do it now? I use a virtual-reality facility, QUBE, which I built to support executive education and run Pentacle. There are many other choices, like LearnBrite and ProtoSphere. It is important that, whichever facility you choose, it allows you to be agile and flexible, and will bend to suit your needs as you learn and change. Welcome to the new world.

Professor Eddie Obeng is an educator, TED speaker and the author of Perfect Projects and All Change! The Project Leader’s Secret Handbook. Read his white paper at eddieobeng.com/howdigitalwillsave theworld. Tweet him @EddieObeng or read his blog at imagineafish.com