Is COVID-19 Rewriting the Future of Business?

Over the years, I have enjoyed meeting my clients in person for our coaching sessions. Mutual relationship is the most fulfilling experience of my profession. We meet to have goal-oriented conversations, and in the process, a relationship emerges. My local clients place value on in-person sessions; it has its roots in the local culture. As the pandemic effects wreaked havoc in Eswatini, some clients adapted to online sessions. Some clients insisted on in-person sessions. Their greatest fear with online coaching was losing all the benefits of in-person coaching sessions. So that was the past.

Below are some rich experiences derived from the adaptation process. Some clients would ask for the zoom link sent to them a week before the session and ask for it again just 5 minutes before the session. Others would not even accept the meeting but were readily available for the session. I resorted to Whats App to check the availability of a booked session. I thought to myself, what a time in the corporate coaching profession. I realized that we had all entered tough times in the history of organizational development. Most of my clients were finding it hard to cope with the work from home concept. The most common perception among my clients was that working from home made them double what they would do in the office and was causing high stress levels.

On top of driving their work goals, there was also the fear of the COVID-19 virus alone. The reality that someone in the office or a neighbor has caught the virus was incapacitating some employees. Let alone the news report on the number of deaths. Note that it is not the workplace that has changed only, but the society too—the government's efforts to curb the virus from spreading constrained freedom of association. Most employees experienced anxiety and depression.

The COVID-19 pandemic is an Unplanned Revolutionary Change (URC)- an external force altering a company's deep structure. The progression of the impact of the pandemic reveals that change is a system-wide phenomenon. Whether you prepare or not, change in one part of the environment will ripple through the entire system in a global business environment.

The undisputed lessons to ponder on:

1. COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the patterns of economic and social development.

2. COVID-19 pandemic is rewriting and shaping the future of business.

Leader Reflection

• Are you waiting for the pandemic to pass and go back to the conventional way of doing business?

• Is your organization exploring and recognizing the emerging trends?

• Is it participating in the rewriting of the future to enable it to adapt and compete?

Join me in the upcoming conversation as we explore leadership lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic