Strategy, disrupted

Future tense

A good strategy should be responsive to the various scenarios that could plausibly materialize, but even the most tightly crafted ones get blown apart when their subject is hit by an asteroid. In our current situation the object wreaking havoc on a planetary scale happens to be a microscopic bit of encapsulated genetic information containing less data than an image used as website filler.

Starting in an animal market in a city that is larger than many globally prominent ones and yet unknown to the average person outside China, the newest coronavirus variant has managed to vaporize years of effort and planning. Retail, hospitality, and travel businesses have watched their markets disappear overnight, the wealthy are packing off to second homes away from the urban crush, and politicians are unleashing fiscal and monetary interventions at a scale unprecedented in history.

Workers are understandably concerned about resuming the jobs that sustain them, and if they will have companies or even industries to which they can return. Governments worry about the strain on healthcare systems. Most importantly, the infected and their loved ones are preoccupied with basic survival. Several of the support beams underpinning modern life seem to have fallen away.

The question of when everything will go back to normal is generating lots of speculation, including the kind that rattles financial markets, but in one sense it has already been answered: never. Once the curve has been flattened and flareups of infection have been tamped down, what remains is a world with the knowledge that it can all be upended in an instant.

Emerging threads

In the wake of coronavirus some things have changed, others have accelerated, still others are essential to the human condition and are likely to persist. Sorting them out will help inform the best response.

1. Behaviors will change. Like an earthquake powerful enough to jolt the earth on its axis, the collective economic and social disruption of COVID-19 will be enough to change behaviors permanently. Such effects persist across generations even as external circumstances return to normal. Those who came of age in the Great Depression of the 1930s lived out the rest of their lives with an orientation to frugality and saving even when their economic circumstances no longer required it. Some of this thrifty impulse is passed on to future generations, allowing a discrete historic event to reverberate through the decades. The more people are personally touched by this disease, the more the center of gravity will shift. We’ll have to reconsider social conventions like shaking hands, unremarkable acts like riding a bus, basic choices like eating in a crowded restaurant. All will feel different, and for many these differences will become part of their new identity.
2. The seams are showing. A television news broadcast is impressively slick for a home viewer, but just outside the frame are the humdrum elements that keep the machine running, with cables hanging from the ceiling and a crew that’s seen it all. Once you’ve seen behind the curtain, some of the illusions melt away. The unprecedented reordering of the global economy and forced adoption of remote work and teaching have knocked down traditional views of decorum and professionalism. Not long ago the hapless father whose BBC interview was thrown into memorable chaos by the appearance of his children captivated the world. Today such disruptiveness is a regular occurrence for many who spend their days in Zoom. Lives outside of work are full of the mundane and messy stuff of life, and it’s harder now to demarcate the two spheres. We always knew the seams were there. In the future it will be harder to pretend that they aren’t.
3. The system is fragile. Our exquisitely tuned supply chains were designed to get goods to consumers right when they needed, and for years six sigma black belts across the corporate world have been beavering away at eliminating waste or excess capacity. That’s great until social contagion convinces populations en masse to hoard canned goods or paper towels or milk.1 Shopping for necessities suddenly takes on a vaguely apocalyptic edge, as our expectations of abundance and unlimited choice bump against bare shelves and delays. Even Amazon is unable to meet its usual standards—it turns out their products come from warehouses stocked and emptied by people, as human as the rest. So far these are largely first world problems, as seeing your local bakery go down to four flavors of muffins from its usual ten has nothing on the privations many experience daily and will continue to, whatever trajectory this disease takes. Most modern lives are built around a huge set of assumed conveniences that ignore the complexity enabling them. We understand conceptually that tropical fruits don’t grow anywhere near Canada, but Torontonians are still miffed if the local supermarket is out of pineapples. Post-pandemic we may be better at remembering this reality.
4. The system is robust. In countries under quarantine citizens are still being fed, power is supplied, the water is running and potable. An extraordinary global mobilization is underway to rush scientific research such that human trials have already begun for potential vaccines only a few months after the virus was first discovered. Given the typical pace of pharmaceutical research this is a remarkable achievement. Several manufacturers across industries are repurposing their lines to manufacture much-needed protective equipment for frontline personnel. Humans want to create and make valuable contributions, and that impulse has been channeled in admirable ways. In another era a complete cessation of public economic activity could have led to hunger and anarchy, and our world seems to have escaped that.2 Aside from the personal inconveniences, most basic needs are still being met. Lifesaving medical equipment has been in short supply in certain cities, but many more have learned the lessons from the hardest-hit places and thus far managed to avoid similarly tragic outcome.
5. Our lives are inescapably embodied ones. Contra Ray Kurzweil and his visions of a hive mind that merges human consciousness with technology, the stubborn fact remains that human existence is designed for presence and relationships. Arenas for sports, theaters for the arts, classrooms for education—these were necessary not for transmitting information but for the weaving of the human web. Solitary confinement is exceptionally damaging to mental health, and the mind can only take so much self-numbing via passive entertainment.3 There’s a lot of signaling involved in most organizations, which takes the form of face time. In organizations whose business models are relational, which is most of them, sacrificing is the first indicator of commitment. Few really believe those Ivy Leaguer graduates still in the office at 4 am in some investment bank’s Manhattan tower are generating profound insights, nor that they’re especially productive.4 They are there to show total commitment, at the expense of the other elements of their lives. In vocations, in personal relationships, in social interactions, we demonstrate this through physical presence. At the deepest level, that won’t change.

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