Is your company looking towards opportunities or containment? Are you looking towards the brighter side of this situation or to the darker side? Can you already see the new insights and positive chances right in front of your feet arising?
The current event with the outbreak of COVID-19 has a lot of impact on our daily lives and health. While we all feel the fear of possible contamination and most countries on lockdown, we also see a lot of new opportunities arising.
With the current situation we see the rise of typical change management hurdles. Normally people are open for change, but do not want to be forced to change. This disruptive situation forces us to work in another way. As we cannot change the situation people are more open for change and therefore it creates new insights, and chances to think out of the box.
I see a lot of new opportunities and possibilities arising. Some large Dutch companies are finally finding online connection methods like Skype, Microsoft Teams or Zoom. Distrustful organizations or teams now need to open themselves and rely on their employees that they will work from home in the best possible way. They might not be working from 9 to 5 with regards to the children, but they are finding more flexible timings during the early morning or in the evening to finish their work. Is that not the objective to get the work done? Instead of being present between 9 and 5, and be distracted by multiple colleagues during the day? Parents also have more time during their mutual breaks in the park to really connect with their children and see the early spring awakening.
I hear very good out of the box solutions and insights, where people cannot perform some parts of their work due to the requested distance between people, and now see opportunities for outsourcing some parts of the work and be more productive. It is also the time for employees to use online trainings to sharpen their skills. Something we did not had time for in the past.
NOW IS THE TIME TO CHANGE AND DO THINGS IN ANOTHER WAY. IT IS ALSO TIME TO PREPARE AND START IN A TOTALLY DIFFERENT WAY OF WORKING AFTER THE LOCKDOWN IS OVER.
Is your company looking towards opportunities or containment? Are you looking towards the brighter side of this situation or to the darker side? Can you already see the new insights and positive chances right in front of your feet arising? After the night the sun will always rise. But are you waiting for the sun to come up, or will you prepare yourself in an early stage and set sail for new opportunities?
Being aware of these positive opportunities and giving space to that thought will most of the time do the trick. Otherwise we can always get back to the same stuck situation we had before. But do we really want to waste such an opportunity?
Thijs Smit
Managing Director at Dutch Operational Excellence Consulting
#changemanagement #operationalexcellence #coronavirus
Published: 18th of February 2020