Every time I stepped out of the house, as a young child, my mother emphasized on one thing:
“Here is another N50, “she would say.
“ What for? I’m just going down to the store opposite the house.”
“ Just in case you pour oil on someone’s shirt, “she would reiterate.
I guess we should trust our mothers more on disruption.
So what really is Disruption?
The past few weeks have been bittersweet times for us. I’ll start with the sweet. There has been no better time to consume opinions from articles, videos, forwards, papers, podcasts and webinars at no cost than now. That is exactly why I’m mounting the soapbox to have my piece on this topic (considering I don’t write often, you might as well hear me out while you are at it).
The internet has provided us with a wide range of competing information about the current state of the virus and our way of life. I will break the information in three categories: the obvious, the controversial and the unsaid.
An example of the controversial will be whether it was a white, a black or a grey swan. While the famous writer of the Black Swan doesn’t consider the recent pandemic a black one, I’ll simply say it is all relative to him, I and everyone else. I hope we can spend less time forcing other people to have known what they claim to not have known because you knew (I enjoyed writing this part).
A perfect example of the unsaid is the great question: WHAT IS THE NEW NORMAL?
Slight digression…Many moons ago, an organisation I worked for embarked on a Digital IT exercise – remember SMAC. My big boss at that time was beyond excited at the prospect, and any given opportunity would remind you “This is the new normal”. It was such a big deal then. Those were good times…. Can this be said for today? You be the judge. Back to the now.
As an individual, this lockdown has left us with a things-I-cannot-wait-to-do-with-my-friends list (I will call it TICWTDMF for later reference, but you can also create your acronym and replace in the comment) for the moment it is all over. Now the lockdown will be over in a few days and we have ‘It’s time to use my TICWTDMF list‘; ‘Government does not get this virus thing‘ and ‘I will probably stay at home and keep building my TICWTDMF list till a vaccine is ready.‘
Here is my unsaid:
How fast will a vaccine get to us, when it is ready? Will we see a V curve or a W curve? Where will you be at each part of the curve (or perhaps through you, we observe the start of the next line in the / of V and W)? Will it just vanish like never before in our environment or maybe just in our minds, as SARS-CoV-2 virus takes a permanent place in our lives? What’s your best/worst case scenario?
Okay. That’s a lot of take home assignment but since you’re home, you can start now.
For a business and our economy (I did not forget you), there have been interesting charts placing industries in ‘Winners‘ and ‘Losers‘ boxes as a result of the lockdown. I should have put this under the controversial with a reply somewhere around the point that rolling dice, zero-sum game theories and other form of win-or-loss approach is not in itself strategic thinking. But I’ll have it as unsaid. Why? Because what is more important to ‘winning or losing‘ is not dependent on your industry more than on what the new normal for your employees, your suppliers and your customers are. And since these are all individuals, please refer to my point on individuals. Even the Telcos that may probably be doing great at this time had/have to worry that a few customers out there truly believed in 5G‘s relationship to the virus.
And now the obvious. This I will spend more time on.
I reserve a significant part of the bitter in the bittersweet for the amount of deaths we have had and we continue to observe as a result of the virus and more, nationally and globally. The other part of the bitter [news] has been the convenient play on the word ‘disruption‘ by many. The idea of disruption is ‘obvious’ all of a sudden.
So here’s what I say:
1.) If the user of the word starts with the idea that it is not obvious and then goes ahead to make it sound like it was obvious, then it’s less likely as disruptive. Please disregard.
2.) If the user of the word makes leaves you less actionable but paranoid, then disruption has served the purpose of fear. Please disregard.
The idea of disruption for my team and I is simply a reminder of the unexpected and unpredictable: the less probable but not impossible. And in being unexpected and unpredictable, we comfortably do not know the end of it. We may simply become over prepared for the next health crisis but the next crisis may not be a health one.
Another important thing is the risk and reward it bears. The only problem is that how much time you spend mitigating risk in comparison to finding the opportunities truly depends on where you are as it takes place. Here’s my suggestion on a slight way to be on the latter.
The complexity of our society provides a degree of uncertainty on which the potential of disruption can only be responded to with deep simplicity. An unexpected financial crisis pushes us to respect the art of saving and destroys non-value creating businesses. An unexpected health crisis pushes us to respect healthy habits and reprioritize our medical facilities.
I’ll stop there to play a game with you. Let’s call it the ‘Questions: simple-or-difficult‘ game. Prior to this crisis, were the following questions simple or difficult to understand:
Is the principle of eating and living healthy reasonable for my long-term wellbeing? Is health insurance just a scam? Is saving money really about becoming Warren Buffet or just a habit of survival?
As a business, was a higher debt the norm of a healthy business? Was your business better off in a position (as a stand-alone or within the value chain) that provides more customer value than waste? Could technology have helped you on a journey to differentiated value creation and not cost cutting (don’t go remote working without assessing this)?
The idea of a response to disruption is not to avoid getting hit but not to avoid getting hit, HARD.
This is my ‘obvious.‘
So take that N50 next time you are offered. My children will not hesitate to take my offer in these times. This time I win the young-person-standing-old-person-sitting argument (in this game, there are winners and losers apparently).
