Preparing for the world after COVID-19: leadership lessons from crises and discontinuous change

The COVID-19 crisis is not only “one step further” in an established direction, but it stops and even reverses most patterns of economic and social development, including megatrends like urbanisation and globalisation. Lorenz Graf-Vlachy takes a look at how firms have historically dealt with crises of discontinuous change: how pharmaceutical companies responded to organisational crises in the form of product-safety problems, recalls and regulatory threats; how newspaper publishers responded to online news; and the early reaction of hotels to sharing-economy platforms like Airbnb. He draws key lessons for leaders trying to steer their businesses away from irrelevance amid the pandemic.

 
The global COVID-19 pandemic is currently changing life as we know it. It is a change that—outside the circles of epidemiologists—few people anticipated and even fewer prepared for. Consequently, organisational leaders of all kinds are scrambling to adapt their organisations to the crisis—and the “new normal” we must expect once the worst is over.

Given how unprecedented the current situation is in recent history, we have limited insight into how businesses should best respond to a pandemic that is truly global and that disrupts business as usual at the present scale. But we certainly know a lot about how to respond to organisational crises and discontinuous change in general.

COVID-19 clearly represents both. It is undoubtedly a crisis not only on a human level, but it also challenges organisations to their core, be it by disrupting operational processes or by causing sudden cash-flow problems. At the same time, it is obviously a discontinuous change. It is not only “one step further” in an established direction, but it (at least for now) stops and even reverses most patterns of economic and social development, including megatrends like urbanisation and globalisation.

Here are some insights from three recent research projects related to firms’ crisis management and their adaptation to discontinuous change. All three projects yielded crucial lessons for leaders seeking to prepare their organisations for a “new normal” after COVID-19.

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Πηγή: blogs.lse.ac.uk