7 Covid Agility Lessons We Can’t Forget

COVID has taught us that we can and must be able to change rapidly, to transform on the fly if need be. We’ve had no choice but to go more completely digital, transforming our customer, employee, student and supplier experiences. Truly listening with empathy, and being agile became key not just for leaders, but for everyone. Change can’t just be a priority for a few people at the top. It needs to be a priority for everyone. And, honestly, that’s kind of exciting.

Now as WFH is becoming ‘normal’ and some of us begin to  go back to the office, we hear that people are reverting to older ways of thinking and behaving. Employees are waiting before they invent or experiment. People are holding back new ideas. There’s a return to more rigid hierarchy. Leaders are beginning to do more telling and less listening. And that’s not good.

As we’ve talked with clients and colleagues, we’ve heard that building the capability for continuous change is more crucial now than ever. But old habits are hard to break.

We’re committed to helping you break those habits. Over the next several weeks, we’ll be sharing 7 tips to help you build a team with the continuous capability – and energy – for change.

 

Lesson #1:  Change Your Mindset – and Your Team’s

Most leaders and teams approach the balance between executing on today’s priorities and continuous change as a problem to be solved. However, it’s not just a problem. There is no single or easy answer. If we focus too much on executing today, we will lag behind where the market is moving. If we focus too much on change and innovation, we will not meet today’s priorities. What we are facing is a dilemma

In a dilemma, you have two, interdependent poles (or forces) that create a natural and ongoing tension. Choosing to pursue too much of one and too little of another doesn’t provide a long term solution and leads to additional problems. Instead, we need to find new ways to manage the challenge; one that leverages the advantages and mitigates the disadvantages of both. Rather than either/or, we need to think both/and. And unless we’re prepared to lead entirely on our own, we know we need everyone to be thinking the same way.

One way to operationalize both/and thinking with your team is to use a dilemma mapping tool. This tool provides a format to discuss and capture the advantages and disadvantages, allowing you to determine an approach that maximizes the positive aspects of BOTH while avoiding the disadvantages.

 

 

COVID has provided us with many dilemmas. I was recently speaking with a leader of a large learning and development organization about one of hers. When COVID moved people to work primarily from home, they needed to adapt quickly.  Her organization created a solution that maintained client relationships and drastically changed their delivery model to meet the new reality. They involved clients in the assessment and design of a new delivery model. They quickly triaged their development services, focusing on the most critical ones. That allowed them to transition to an all-remote-delivery process and speed up their program design cycle time. They also amped up the development and use of tool kits and tip sheets to fill in learning gaps that the COVID crisis had presented.

Harming their client relationships was not an option. Just delivering as they had been, but doing it remotely, also wasn’t an option because it was ineffective. They created a solution that maintained client relationships and drastically changed their delivery model to meet the new reality. Their approach modeled both/and thinking.

I’m sure that over the past few months, you’ve also had situations where you’ve needed to apply both/and. As complexity grows, so will dilemmas. Organizations that continue to apply both/and effectively will succeed not only during a crisis, but on an ongoing basis in our fast-paced world.