INSIGHT | Post Covid-19 world is one of exponential change

The world is grappling with a global pandemic at a scale last seen in 1918 with the Spanish Flu.

This crisis has led to tectonic shifts in what we understand about business risk and has brought into stark focus where our vulnerabilities lie. With every global crisis comes far-reaching changes to how we do business and to public policy.

The world we will limp into post-coronavirus is one that will be volatile, uncertain, filled with complexity and ambiguous.

We will be unable to keep up with the rate of change, the multiple key decision factors we will be faced with, the lack of clarity about what these events mean; or clarity on the present, let alone the future.

It is crucial, while we have the moment to do so, to define the kind of leadership we need in our organisations and institutions to take us into the future.

It is equally crucial that we identify the new design for our organisations to thrive in what will be our new normal.

To contend with this volatile and uncertain future, our organisations need to be agile, innovative and collaborative.

Transparency and policy co-ordination will be critical and there will be a need of a new kind of leadership.

We will need leaders who can think in “technicolour” terms. This means when faced with options that are seemingly at odds with other, rather than making the quick decision of one over the other, we will need leaders who can find the middle path towards getting the best of all of the possibilities.

The world will need leaders who have learnt the art of receiving feedback.

Organisations and institutions in a post-pandemic world would have to be organised as communities with strong systems of engagement to survive the new normal.

We will need leaders who can set the context having studied the data, who are flexible, analytical and multi-skilled. There will be a need of leadership that understands and thinks in exponential trajectories.

Businesses will change forever. Employee costs have arguably been the largest cost to companies in the wake of this crisis.

With employees working from home where this was possible, an emerging trend has become an operational necessity.

This has forced companies into the grand experiment of remote/virtual work. This will stick. Companies will adopt a “staff on-demand” model where permanent employment will be kept at a minimum and with professionals being engaged on a project by project basis.

This allows the business to be redesigned for acceleration in what will be a very difficult operating environment. It will take us at least two years to get back to the pre-crisis growth path.

For SA and many other African countries, that path won’t be rosy at all.

Businesses will need to be built to capture value at accelerated rates. The antiquated and linear operating frameworks will not be appropriate.

We need to bend and keep bending the curve upwards. This will mean building and redesigning companies and institutions with a high degree of flexibility and agile organisational structures, feedback loops that work, removing limits to growth allowing the business to scale with low marginal cost, a culture that allows experimentation and focused on objective and key results.

We will be forced to and need to build exponential organisations.

Welcome to the unknown future. Though it is one of extreme changes the future is still bright. Brighter still if we are deliberate in understanding what thriving in it will require and then being deliberate in making the necessary investments. Investments in young people by skilling them for the future, not the past or even the present.

The role of public policy and investment in creating the environment for exponential organisations to thrive cannot be overstated.

Public investments into primary research, skills development and training (of the right skills), as well as into the economic infrastructure we need is critical.

By building exponential organisations we will kick-start economic activity and by so doing, create opportunities for entrepreneurship and self-employment.

There is a silver lining to this global pandemic. We have a moment to think about our shared future and how to create it.

The world also has a moment to think about how to be better prepared for the next pandemic ... There will be a next one.

Cuma Dube is the Eastern Cape secretary of the Black Management Forum. He writes in his personal capacity 

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