Oaknorth/Management Today/BoltFor many, 2020 has been the most tumultuous year in living memory, with the coronavirus derailing most of our everyday activities.
2020 has been largely defined by the "black swan" event that has brought a stark death toll and upended the way most of us live, work, and interact with each other. When the disease sent most of the Western world into lockdown in the spring, there was a broad sense that things would be back to normal by the end of the year.
"On the upside, I have this job and I'm not looking for employment, and I'm aware a significant part of the US is just trying to make ends meet. "To me the key lesson is that we are vulnerable. Everything is optimized to the status quo. When you think about it, there is very little slack — in our healthcare system, or in many of our businesses."
"With COVID and remote working, this is exacerbated even further. So as we emerge from the stresses of the pandemic, our big re-focus will be on people and culture in 2021. As soon as it's feasible and safe, we'll be investing in making up for lost time – encouraging quality collaboration between team members and socializing in real life!
"Of course 2020 had an impact on a more human level, too. The switch to remote work has been well documented. I'm not sure that fully remote work is here to stay. Internal surveys we ran indicated the flexibility is appreciated but there's still power in discussions and relationship building that takes place in the office. As a result, we're opting for a hybrid approach where 20% of employees will have designated seats.
"This will involve more remote working and less presenteeism in the office. Done well, this has huge potential to boost productivity, give us all a better work life balance, protect the environment and boost the economies of local communities. It also gives us a great opportunity to boost regional economies, by encouraging remote working.
Nik Storonsky, boss of challenger banking app Revolut, says challenges like Covid-19 can't slow ambitious founders down"From a customer perspective, we are focused on launching products and services to support customers in these challenging times... "Reevaluate your culture in 2021 to ensure that you are adapting to the changing needs of your employees, and going the extra mile to support them. It's been a huge gain, and a lesson, to have pretty much our whole workforce move to working from home with no loss in productivity but massive gains in work/life balance.
"Communication, touchpoints, virtual coffees and listening are key to creating a culture of integrity and compassion; we are all human and are all in the same boat."Darktrace CEO Poppy Gustafsson"Focus now is more important than ever. When your business is moving fast and the world is moving fast around you, you must be laser-focused on what's right in front of you.
"The old ways of doing security have gone out the window and the urgent problem for businesses to tackle in 2021 will be ensuring they have best in class technology to defend their organization." "I remain concerned about the political divisions in this country and the spread of misinformation. When truth is defined by what news channel you watch or who you follow on Twitter, it strains our collective ability to have meaningful conversations with each other about how to make our world better.
"The lessons we can learn depend on what we think the point is of face-to-face meetings. If our job is building trust or a relationship then in all likelihood we will revert to the status ante and back to coffee and conferences. If the job is to exchange information or update a project status, then this will potentially stay on Zoom.
"The big lesson from 2020 is that any good or service that can be delivered over the internet serves a bigger, faster, more global market that we realized before. "It might be foolhardy to extract lessons from a situation that is ongoing, and where the consequences are yet to be fully felt and understood. However, what has been extremely impressive this year is how many businesses have dramatically re-configured the way they work to suit the changed circumstances.
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