“The comfort zone is the dead zone,” states Mike Manes, a business consultant in New Iberia, La. If we’ve learned anything so far this year, it’s that an unseen and deadly force kicked us out of our comfort zone.
Although the pressure is on to put the coronavirus behind us and get businesses up and running, it would be a mistake not to learn from this horrendous experience. Here are some takeaways for business:
We’ve found that going it alone is an illusion. Almost instantly earlier this year, everyone became sensitized to those around us, perhaps like never before. At our condo community, for example, there was concern for neighbors we didn’t even know. We were keeping tabs on one another. We went from being individuals living under a common roof to being members of a community.
Yes, there were outliers. One demanded that the pool be opened because it was why she bought her condo. But something good happened. Most of the voices quieted down, and we discovered we are not just an accumulation of individuals.
We’re more creative than we thought possible. If there’s anything we need to put behind us, it’s all the talk about the “new normal.” Just a few months ago, the nation’s offices emptied almost overnight, and millions were working from home and haven’t missed a beat. The crisis unleashed their creativity. Now many say they aren’t sure they want to go back to the “old normal.”
An equally impressive example of creativity occurred a few months ago, when the governor of Ohio, wanting young people to stay at home and practice social distancing, turned to Ohio-based Procter & Gamble Co. for help.
Almost instantly a #DistanceDance video, featuring an original dance by Charli D’Amelio, went viral with its stay-at-home and stay-safe message and reached 17 billion views, setting off a worldwide phenomenon.
It shows what happens when we turn on our creative juices.
We’ve faced up to our own ignorance. It’s been a long dry spell since we last got really excited about scientific knowledge. Now we’ve been hit with the coronavirus, which left us not knowing what to think. What followed has been an unending flow of technical information. It was then that it struck us that we were far more ignorant than we dared to think possible.
As it turns out, that was good news. We figured out, finally, that ignorance is not bliss. We are just now beginning to understand that customers are deeply interested in doing business with companies that reflect their values and concerns. All along, we thought they liked us and what we sold them.
The virus has taught us guessing in business leads to trouble. Or, as Harvard University psychology professor Steven Pinker points out, how easy it is to “surrender to the cognitive bias of assessing the world through anecdotes and images rather than data and facts.”
We’ve discovered what it means to be grateful. Why did it take a pandemic to become aware of those who literally work every day to support our lives? The number is shocking. It’s not just physicians and nurses but the faceless and nameless who deliver our packages, fix our cars, make appointments and stock the supermarket shelves.
Arguably, many are underpaid. But without them, we wouldn’t make it until Friday. Yet, what’s so amazing is that they have been putting their lives on the line for us every day.
Even though the experts had been warning us for years about possible pandemics, we didn’t hear them. Then came the coronavirus. Nothing has ever made such a total impact on our lives, plans, dreams and our future. All along we thought we were in control of our own destiny.
The coronavirus is relentless as it continues its devastation and pain. Even so, it will not win if we are smart enough to take advantage of what it can teach us that can make a difference in how we think, plan, work and live.
John Graham of GrahamComm is a marketing and sales-strategy consultant and business writer. Contact him at jgraham@grahamcomm.com.
