A COVID-19 Snapshot Captured in 30 Webinars over 60 Days

What if we could capture massive business upheaval in real time, holding up a camera to rapid-fire change?

A series of educational webinars, called The McMaster Collaboratorium, has taken a diverse community of more than 2,000 executives, board directors health professionals and academics from over 20 countries on a tour of the shifting economic landscape. Out of a blizzard of ideas and live case studies, a handful of slogans have emerged that capture the uneasy, exciting tension between what our business leaders used to do and what they must now learn to do.

Glocal — communities go global and local at once

More than ever before, we can draw on global communities of colleagues, experts, and partners, all just a Zoom click away. These networks already existed, but now we share a common facility for accessing them — “unmute” is in almost everyone’s vocabulary.

Yet while our on-line connections have expanded our personal footprint has never been more localized as for many the home has become the office. As several Collaboratorium speakers noted, the virtual universe provides exciting new market opportunities but also creates many unforeseen pitfalls. Managers and employees with the “right” skills and attitudes will be in high demand in the “Glocal” workplace while many others who can’t or won’t adapt are at risk of being left behind. Businesses will have to develop long-term strategies to support those dealing with the psychological (and physical) traumas posed by disruptive change so that we all feel safe in our interconnected world. That support must be credible and inclusive, breaking through the “echo chambers” of fear in a stressed workforce.

In the words of Collaboratorium panelist, Jessica Nordlander, 2019 Swedish Entrepreneur of the Year, leaders must “make sure there aren’t pockets of isolated, worried people that are starting to interact only with each other in virtual channels.”

In some cases, older workers will be snubbed, and yet it is not age, but a thirst for continuous learning that will define adaptability in the Glocal environment with its easy access to knowledge and shared experiences. As Collaboratorium contributor, Mangala Rao-D’Sa, VP Innovation, Second Cup Canada, aptly stated: “The people that will survive and thrive are the ones that are curious and are not afraid of change — both young and old.”

Agile — the future belongs to the nimble

Agility was already an organizational imperative, but now it has taken on a new urgency as companies have to be incredibly nimble in responding to disrupted business models and shrinking balance sheets. However, business agility is about more than doing new things, it is also about letting go of old habits and practices — something many board directors, executives and employees will struggle with.

This will require many organizations to have a frank review of their executive teams to ensure they have the bench strength to deal with the complexity and change now confronting them. Their boards will also need to update their competency matrices, the measure of directors’ skill sets, to put greater emphasis on digital literacy and an openness to embrace new models and mindsets. Governance will be non-stop, continuous engagement to deal with rapid change, rather than built around the scheduled quarterly board meeting. This constant connection will hasten the end of individual directors sitting on multiple boards. Most will not have the time, further opening up boards to a much-needed injection of diversity in its many forms. As Collaboratorium contributor, Barry Libert, CEO of AIMatters, commented; “Boards will need to be prepared to turn over 50% or more of their Directors.”

Boards and their executives will also need to be more adept at working together to navigate a series of competing pressures. They must balance organizational risks in areas such as cybersecurity — now an even more critical concern — with the need for potentially more rapid and disruptive forms of innovation. As several Collaboratorium panelists cautioned; boards must learn to practice strategic foresight to prepare their organizations for future what if scenarios.”

Not for the faint hearted or the over-committed.

Phygital — the blending of digital and physical

It may not be poetry, but “phygital” captures the balancing act as organizations dip their toes back into physical interaction, without abandoning hard-won digital capabilities. This delicate balancing act will be fraught with tension, sometimes generational. Says one academic leader: “Humans are social animals who want to connect face-to face.” Contrast this to the student who says: “We are perfectly comfortable connecting socially through digital means — so what’s the big deal?”

Rob Siegel, who lectures in innovation and strategy at Stanford’s B-School, explains that the pandemic is accelerating the blending of digital and physical in many organizations. Businesses that get the balance right will prosper; the others will struggle.

A defining issue for many organizations will be how many people of their employees will want to go back to working in physical proximity. For those who stay home, there is the dangerous potential for a constant 24-hour barrage of data, meetings and emails, as opposed to discrete moments of contact. It may be a seemingly mundane issue: If you cut your finger with a bread knife making a sandwich in your kitchen, is that a workplace accident? On a bigger scale, it means the massive redeployment of resources — the reduction of office rents while allocating much more budget to home-based technology and physical and emotional support.

In this vortex of change, above all, leaders will need to explain the complex in clear language that people can grasp. Story telling, always valuable, is essential in navigating the phygital world as it can help to create a sense of common understanding and shared purpose.

The New Normal — all 1,000+ versions of it

So how much of this will stick and how much will be discarded? It depends on where you sit — which bubble you inhabit. Never has the future looked more ambiguous as society has become increasingly fractured along fault lines of age, gender, ethnicity, geography…. As Collaboratorium contributor and international business ethicist John Dalla Costa, commented; “It will be a daunting challenge for leaders to bridge these divides unless they can use the current moment to undertake an honest reflection of their own ethical blind spots in a more deliberate way.”

Many of the panelists who joined our discussions believe that navigating the “new normal” will require new models of leadership and governance. This general sentiment was captured by Blair Sheppard, Dean Emeritus of Duke Business School, who said that the great leaders of the future need to meld two sides of a paradox — to be “tech- savvy humanists,” capable of understanding technology’s applications but also grasping its unintended consequences for society. Indeed, as stated by Chris Ernst, former Global Head, People & Organizational Potential, Gates Foundation — leaders must become adept systems navigators who can look beyond apparent boundaries and barriers, and see instead frontiers, those unexplored areas with potential for innovation and new ideas.

A crisis often brings forth leaders who can inhabit the historical moment. Before the pandemic, leaders in all walks of life were already grappling with extraordinary change — technological, environmental, societal. Then COVID 19 shattered any hopes of incrementalism. The future came much more quickly than we thought it would and it is not we expected but perhaps what we needed to spark real change and prepare us for the greater challenges that lie ahead.