This pandemic that is enveloping the world has taught us a few key lessons about business and life, and I covered a four of these in a recent COVID-19 post about things about actions we can take in the wake of it. Unfortunately, the didactic nature of this pandemic has also created some bad habits at best, and at worst some baggage we need to jettison right away if we want to prosper and enjoy life.
Believe the Pandemic Experts
If there is one thing most of us look for in times of crisis it is certainty. Most of us that invest in the markets know that uncertainty is what rocks the market the most with wild fluctuations. Once the facts are ascertained, the major indices tend to settle down as companies put plans in place as to what to do next. It’s cliché to say expect the unexpected (and I did just that last article), but the unexpected is the last thing we want. Ergo, we tend to look for leadership that is certain about how to behave in a crisis, or ‘experts’ to tell us what to do. It minimizes how much we need to think about things and takes that off of our plates to focus on something else. During a healthcare pandemic, our need for certainty is put on human growth hormone. How many of us early in this thing weren’t hanging on the edge of our seat awaiting instructions from Drs. Fauci and Birx about ways to save ourselves from the certain death brought about by COVID 19. And for a while, that worked for America. Then we started to notice something. There were other experts out there—MDs, virologists, scientists—that disputed the first set of experts. In fact, they often said the exact opposite actions would produce safety and the desired societal results. The scary part is, the experts that got the platform of influence on you depended in large part upon where you got your new. Different network, paper or (Oh God!) social media site—different experts. Let’s just all agree that information about this pandemic has been inconsistent.
You’re the expert that governs your life decisions. If you’re not, listen to all the pandemic experts from different perspectives and make your decisions. This applies to your business decisions just as much as it does to your health. Stop outsourcing your thoughts and evaluations about what things mean and what to do to others that just may not have your best interest at heart, or at a minimum may have a different aperture of focus. Fauci and Birx were tasked with how to prevent the spread of this disease and flatten the curve. Period. Others including the current administration ultimately had to open the lens up to a wider field of view and consider the impact of doing exactly what the experts were recommending, particularly over an extended period. You own the business, and you are the only expert on it. Determine how wide your aperture must be, consider all the inputs, then make your decisions and move forward.
Fear Other People
Life is a social experiment. Business is all about social interaction. Human beings are social animals. One of the biggest drawbacks of technology (boy we could write a book on this) given all its benefits is the “social distancing” it promotes between people. This happened long before the COVID-19 pandemic. How many times have you seen two people in adjacent cubicles communicate to each other with emails or SMS chat without uttering an audible word? The events of 2020 have ratcheted up this negative, counter-to-biology behavior of social separation to now dangerous levels by injecting fear into the equation. For starters, before March of this year, the phrase social distancing had a negative connotation. Scientists and practitioners of common sense alike knew this instinctively. It goes against how we’re wired. Now, it is a recommendation. We are told if we don’t social distance, we can die, and in many places state and local governments are actively encouraging ratting out your neighbors that have the unbridled gall to not social distance or wear facial coverings in every situation.
Unfortunately, the masks aren’t helpful either in this regard. 9 months ago, wear a mask into a convenience store and the clear is tripping the silent alarm behind the register. Today, walk in without a mask and inspire the same results. Things have changed an awful lot in America in half a year’s time. This makes no value judgement on the health impacts of masks or social distancing; believe what you want to believe (see prior section). But the mental and psychological impact of how this fear had conditioned us to see other people is undeniably dangerous. Many of us have learned to be suspicious, frightened, and maybe even disdainful of our fellow human beings. Don’t let this carry over into your business and unwittingly turn off your customers, suppliers, or employees.
Here is what I believe. People are basically good, and I don’t accept that people walking around and breathing the same air as I do is going to risk my life. Even if I did, I like people too much to alienate them by projecting my fears. It just leads to a happier life for me, living life being the operative phrase. Get rid of this subconscious belief, pronto.
I’m Right You’re Wrong
The COVID-19 pandemic has been polarizing if nothing else, driving people to see things as pure black or white when it comes to our health and safety. Families have split apart, friends have unfriended on social channels, and neighborhoods descended into hostility based upon these absolutes (and the pandemic is not the only wedge issue here). There have been more lines drawn in the sand than at a weekend beach volleyball tournament. We all believe we are right. No sane person walks around knowingly believing they are wrong unless there is some serious negative leverage influencing action (think blackmail).
But everybody cannot be right and those that think differently can’t all be wrong. Facts should be incontrovertible, and we have sure seen those twisted in 2020 for nefarious reasons, but our responses to them are governed by personal circumstance. When in public, I don’t know if that person wearing an N95 mask in her enclosed car has diabetes or emphysema any more than I know if the person not wearing one has breathing difficulty if he had one on. I can only speculate. We all judge a book by its cover, whether we care to admit it or not. That doesn’t mean it’s always wrong, it just is. If I’m walking past the graveyard at midnight and I see a seven-foot dude in a hockey mask brandishing a machete walking toward me, I’m crossing the damn street!
Yet we can really get into trouble when making snap judgements on the reactions to the pandemic. In the world of government contracting, I am beginning to see some COVD-19 fatigue set in, with many expressing a desire to get back to face-to-face meetings, live networking events, and conferences. I happen to be one of them. Zoom meetings are only so much fun. Yet I also see the hesitation of others to leave the confines of a confined, solitary space. Neither observation makes one group reckless or the other short on courage. If the pandemic of 2020 has you thinking of absolutes, unlearn this lesson immediately before it wrecks your personal and business relationships.
Exploit a Crisis
There is a fine line between offering an innovative solution to a problem and exploiting pandemic fear during a crisis. Going back to April 2020, about a month into the national awareness that we have a problem here, the US Air Force was soliciting ideas from industry on ways to help during this pandemic, ranging from stopping the spread to production of PPE. Other agencies had their own initiatives. Within a few weeks, the Air Force had received nearly 2000 submissions for ways to help, many in my field of technology innovation. During the same early period, I suggested to a friend of mine that owns his own HVAC business that he might want to seriously consider developing an air quality retrofit package for public establishments—better units, hepa filters, the works. My thinking was, these businesses are shut down and want to demonstrate how safe they are to the public in order to not only open more rapidly but to win customers over by providing a safer environment (lots of hotels in my area). My HVAC buddy thought about it and rejected the idea. His conscience felt that would be exploiting the pandemic for personal gain.
Now intelligent people can argue as to if the air quality idea was a solution or exploitation of the crisis. We certainly have seen those in public life that push the buttons of capitalizing on fear during this pandemic. The old Ram Emmanuel phrase, “Never let a good crisis go to waste” is now trumpeted by the media as a cool thing to do. It isn’t. It should go without saying to never purposely exploit anything. We learned this much in kindergarten. Keep a critical eye on how your business solutions to a crisis of any kind might be perceived, however, even when they come from a good place. We all want to be part of the solution and not commiserate about the problem. Just be sure to consider all the consequences and do no harm.
Major negative events like the COVID-19 pandemic can motivate ground-breaking innovation and unbelievable humanitarian goodness, yet they can also unwittingly teach us some destructive behaviors that don’t serve us long term. Recognize them and unlearn the bad lessons of catastrophe.