All of us can see lessons from the coronavirus, regardless of our area of expertise. Project managers have seen the planning problems, marketing experts have seen the communication and subject framing problems, and supply chain managers see the logistics problems. I’m a change manager and I see a whole plethora of problems.
Change management is about helping people adapt when they are faced with a change in circumstances. The adaptation in this case includes adopting different behaviors: washing hands, socially distancing and wearing masks. Change managers support adaptation using a range of tactics: leadership support, robust and thoughtful communication, outreach, training, monitoring adoption metrics, and the list goes on.
To stay with adoption metrics for a moment, we have largely tracked and broadcast that which is easy, and not necessarily that which is helpful. By the time we get numbers on cases, hospitalizations and deaths it’s already too late. We need to measure earlier in the process: assess the extent to which people feel Covid-19 represents a threat, assess a person’s willingness to wear a mask, understand how much people appreciate the tactics needed to keep themselves and others safe. They are clearly harder to measure, and can even be somewhat subjective, but you can see that if you can monitor and take steps to improve these leading metrics, you can improve the lagging metrics.
We don’t seem to be anywhere near this level of sophistication in change management across the U.S. and so we need to address the basics, which begins with understanding where people are and then meeting them there. This is going to vary from person to person. Contrast an introvert couple with a very hospitable family who have grown up with an open door policy and nearby relatives who are used to dropping in daily.
Our response to the pandemic is shaped not only by the logistics of how and where we live, but also by our trust in those giving the message, our experience of how well we have adapted in the past, our culture, and so on. Our leaders can can be as organized as you like but they still run up against us.
Culture eats strategy for lunch. ~ Scott A. Mason (Health Care Strategic Management, December 2000)
A recent Guardian newspaper article speaks to the topic of national cultures, and posits that cultures who live more permissively have fared far worse than cultures who are tighter. The article begins by comparing Japan and Mexico, who have similar populations (126.3 million vs 127.6 million respectively). As of the date the article was written Japan had seen 5,000 coronvirus death, and Mexico had seen 150,000.
The key here isn’t that one culture is good or bad, there are benefits to each, but every strength is a weakness in the wrong situation. The more relaxed and entrepreneurial culture of the U.S. leads to incredible creativity and innovation when there are no threats to address, but allowing everyone to choose whether (and even how or if) they are going to deal with the threat of Covid-19 when a common approach is required has been a fatal liability. When New York was suffering during the first wave, other states continued doing their own thing and remained wide open. It was like watching the person in the sinking rowing boat refusing to help bail because the leak was at the other end.
Bringing people together to act in concert – to extend the boat analogy, having everyone rowing in the same direction – is hard when everyone is in a different place. It can be done. The article in The Guardian goes on to single out the case of New Zealand. The Kiwis are, by all accounts, a loose culture, and yet they exhibited the necessary cultural ambidexterity to suspend their natural inclinations and went into ‘lock-down mode’ to navigate the crisis.
We need to be more like New Zealand, and not just because New Zealanders are amazing people living in a gorgeous country. They have shown we can evolve. Here we are facing an immediate crisis with an immediate threat but too many of us have shown an unwillingness or an inability to adapt. If we can’t adapt when the threat is months or even days away, what hope do we have facing down the climate crisis, which is only a few years away?
I began by saying everyone will be able to do my job. If that’s true then that’s a good thing, because what we need to be able to do is manage change within ourselves – to exhibit individual ambidexterity, if you will. We have seen what happens when our leaders fail to manage change. If we can rise above our wiring and develop our capacity to adapt, even if it’s just for a time, then we stand a chance.
Yes there are tactics leaders can deploy to help us collectively, but ultimately, change is on us. It’s not easy to get comfortable with ambiguity, but know you’re not alone. What you are feeling, what we are all feeling. But also know that if you choose to live only with the factory settings you were born with you are failing to engage your capacity to evolve when the situation demands it. I think we’re better than that. I also think not enough of us have lived up to my assessment of our collective potential.
