Bouncing Back from COVID – Do Something Radical. Be Responsible.
It’s time to do something radical. We have a once in humankind opportunity. There have been 108 billion homo-sapiens that have walked this earth, and none have been faced with the multitude of challenges that we are faced with today.
Our current predicament has arisen mainly because of the behaviour of the 20 billion since the industrial revolution. On multiple fronts, we’ve attacked this planet like a virus attacks a body. We have weakened its immune system and won’t rest until we have suffocated its lungs. But blame and criticism won’t move us forward.
The COVID crisis is hitting us all long and hard, and we’ve seen huge short-term efforts to recalibrate business to help out during the pandemic. Medical research and science have come into their own. We’ve appreciated just how technology can bring us together. And we have relied so much on music and film to help get us through.
But looking beyond this promising start, the immediate reaction of most businesses has been survival and cost cutting. In pretty much every crisis, CFOs take the opportunity to rebase everything by declaring losses, so they can start building up another growth story, quarter by quarter. Then the next reaction is finding a way back to ‘business as usual asap’, to achieve favour with investors and shareholders.
Yet most people agree post COVID, that the reason we have got ourselves into this mess is our addiction to BAU and growth at all costs, without paying attention to people or planet. In a pandemic the real key workers are not ad men, private equity partners, CEOs, tech entrepreneurs, or sportsmen. They are binmen and supermarket colleagues, carers, ambulance drivers and hospital workers, who are the ones we really need in a crisis. Round the world we stand outside our homes, and applaud them every week.
So everyone’s frame of reference has changed. For the first time in a while, the whole world has the chance to take a step back and think about how to do things differently. But are we thinking radically enough about how to rebuild the economy in a more sustainable way?
Sectors like travel, retail, food service, fashion, and advertising are all facing uncertain futures, with old business models and infrastructure no longer fit for purpose. Many have responded with lay-offs, closing stores and cancelling investments. But that won’t help rebuild the economy. Yet there are signs of changed consumer behaviour, which can help inspire a more positive, uplifting, and responsible way of doing business:
After the early mayhem of hoarding loo rolls, people are buying what they need, and even accepting rationing.
They’ve stopped travelling wantonly for business and pleasure.
They are using video-calls to connect with families, colleagues and loved ones, without leaving their sofas.
They are reducing waste, recycling more, and like the Wombles, making things they need from what is lying around their homes.
They are even buying extra for others to help everyone get by.
All of a sudden health, climate, environment, community and family are becoming key factors in how people think, shop and what they value the most.
The win-lose economic model is under threat. People and businesses are opening up to win-win models of collaboration and mutual appreciation. Supply chains collapsed in the early phases of COVID, causing governments, aid agencies and companies to get together to find a way forward. Terms like pre-competition are now being used to promote collaboration amongst businesses, who previously would have been at each other’s throats. After all what’s the point of trying to win market share in the chocolate market, if you have no cacao to make chocolate in the first place.
What the world (and business) needs now is true creativity and radical innovation, moving us towards a better way of working, buying and selling. Blending consumer insight, with economic understanding, emotional appeal and command of technology, to deliver breakthrough solutions, which make money without damaging the planet.
Fortunately, these skills exist in abundance in the marketing and creative sectors, but they will need to be deployed in a different way, if they are to really help businesses to recover and thrive. We need to move further upstream to make a real difference; you need both left and right brain thinkers to crack this problem. And once the solution is clear, we can still use our creative skills to win hearts and minds, to complement the work of those who thrive on building systems to make it all a reality.
The post COVID recovery gives us all a chance to be part of this more responsible way of doing business. There is no one size fits all solution, which will work for every sector, business or scenario. But there are ways of thinking, working, and producing, which can be adapted to deliver lasting social and environmental benefits as well as profits.
The key to delivering this more balanced performance is not to abandon financial discipline all together, but to move towards a balanced scorecard, which values people, planet and profit in equal measure. That’s the way to get business back on its feet, and to stay there.
Surely this is the chance we’ve all been waiting for. The alarm has been going off for a while. It’s time to get up.
The question now is can we do something radical? Be responsible.
