{"id":1049,"date":"2020-03-17T10:42:51","date_gmt":"2020-03-17T10:42:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/?p=1049"},"modified":"2020-03-17T10:42:53","modified_gmt":"2020-03-17T10:42:53","slug":"this-is-not-the-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/2020\/03\/17\/this-is-not-the-end\/","title":{"rendered":"This is not the end"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Image by Peter H from Pixabay\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

All of Europe, as well as the rest of the world, is in the throes of the Corona virus and some people I meet are comparing it to the start of one of those apocalyptic movies where the world is going to hell in a hand basket. Of course, nobody can ignore the human suffering that comes from getting sick and potentially even dying from COVID-19. It is terrible and my heart goes out to those that are affected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The current actions, including avoiding large gatherings, \nquarantining geographical areas, closing schools and recommendations \nconcerning washing your hands, limiting travel and so on all make sense.\n However, these actions will only slow the rate of infection in order to\n decrease the overloading of the healthcare systems (even more) by \nspreading the cases out over time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the companies I work with, the impact has been unprecedented. All\n travel that\u2019s not absolutely business critical has been suspended. \nVisitors (and researchers) are no longer welcome. Employees are asked to\n work from home wherever possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dark COVID-19 clouds can have a silver lining for companies. The \ndisruption of normal work practices offers a great opportunity to review\n and evaluate all processes and activities in the company and between \nthe company and its ecosystem partners. This allows us to determine \nwhich processes that earlier required physical interaction can also be \naccomplished by virtual means. Similarly, we can review all activities \nand processes that were performed by humans by virtual means but that \ncan be automated and be achieved without any human involvement. Finally,\n we may even identify activities that are obsolete and that were only \nconducted for historical reasons and we can shut those down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second benefit that companies can seek to exploit is a step \nfunction change in the adoption of digital practices. In many cases, we \neither figure out how to do things remotely and virtually using digital \nmeans or it doesn\u2019t get done at all. This includes holding meetings, \nmanaging daily standups for agile teams and running the operations of \nsystems. In fact, I could easily see the efficiency of companies \nsignificantly improve due to the forcing function provided by the \ncurrent situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Third, many organizations are built on the principle of aligning all the gears in the machinery as closely as possible in order to optimize operational efficiency. The consequence tends to be very brittle systems that are unable to withstand adverse circumstances. Situations as we\u2019re experiencing now force us to rethink things in terms of risk management and should encourage you and your organization to think in Taleb\u2019s anti-fragility principle where systems get stronger in the face of detrimental developments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fourth, although the short-term economic damage is significant, the \nremoval of business travel and working from home does provide some \nbreathing room in the lives of many professionals. This space can be \nused to think strategic rather than tactical, to reflect and introspect \nand to find smarter ways to accomplish the same if not better outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Concluding, COVID-19 is terrible from a humanitarian, as well as from an economic perspective. Although the short-term impact on revenue and margins is undeniably bad for most companies, we can use these circumstances to realize at least some benefits that may help our companies going forward. This is important as this is not the end. In the same way as the Spanish flu in the early 1900s, SARS in 2002 and swine flu in 2009 weren\u2019t the end. As the poet Rumi wrote centuries ago, this too shall pass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To get more insights earlier, sign up for my newsletter at <\/em>jan@janbosch.com<\/em><\/a> or follow me on<\/em> janbosch.com\/blog<\/em><\/a>, LinkedIn (<\/em>linkedin.com\/in\/janbosch<\/em><\/a>) or Twitter (<\/em>@JanBosch<\/em><\/a>).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All of Europe, as well as the rest of the world, is in the throes of the Corona virus and some people I meet are comparing it to the start of one of those apocalyptic movies where the world is going to hell in a hand basket. Of course, nobody can ignore the human suffering … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1049"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1051,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049\/revisions\/1051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}