Management post corona: Do not let a good crisis go to waste

The corona crisis has accelerated changes that have been under way in a long time in the labour market. Young generations had new desires for their working day and careers, and new, digital tools for collaboration and knowledge sharing was requested. Covid-19 created an urgent need for working from home and distance management, and the hybrid and flexible working conditions we had been talking about for years became reality from one day to the next. And in line with working from home and digitalisation, new requirements for collaboration arose – thus, also to the management.  

The list of positive changes during the shutdown is long, and we can learn a lot about management and development, which we can use when the labour market reopens for good. The new conditions will, on the one hand, challenge the current approaches to management and in other areas provide new opportunities for creating progress and results.

1) Choose the good changes you want to maintain

Change is difficult, but the corona crisis has actually helped us along the way by both getting us to articulate an urgent need for change and creating real change in behaviour – something that for many of us happened overnight after 11 March 2020. In order for the change to succeed, we must according to the German-American psychologist Kurt Lewin, ensure that the good changes are anchored and sustained.

The big management task is thus, to maintain the new behaviour and make it a norm if we want to avoid falling back into our previous pattern of behaviour. In this connection, it is central as a leader to define, articulate and support the new habits and good changes you want to maintain post corona.

An important question for management is, therefore, what new habits we would like to maintain:

• Virtual meetings?
• More flexible working hours and acceptance of, for example, go for a run in the morning and working in the evening?
• More flexible resources instead of permanent employees?
• Online check-in sessions between managers and employees?

2) Re-onboard employees and focus on cultural change

During Covid-19, most HR departments have solved tasks they thought were impossible – such as hiring new colleagues without meeting physically and ensuring the start-up and integration of new employees, while everyone sat in their own home office. IT has been a great challenge, which has created awareness of how to receive new colleagues through digital solutions.

It hits a management core task after the closure of an ever more dynamic and flexible labour market. Here, structured and digitally supported onboarding is a vital task that often takes up to a year before the new employee can fully unfold in the new organisation.

After the shutdown, it is often necessary for the new employees to be picked up and onboarded properly. At the same time, returning to work after many months of homework can be like starting a new job again for many. Here, too, there may be a need for re-onboarding with a focus on creating a new culture, secure relationships, developing new competencies, etc.

3) Re-visit the strategy and switch to GPS-control

The corona crisis has shown us that planning is difficult – yes, almost impossible. From one day to the next, strategies and goals had to be scrapped, as the conditions had suddenly changed. It is a clear manifestation of what business researcher Søren Schultz Hansen calls the paradox of planning: It is important to have a strategy and set goals, but we must avoid steering according to them. In a digital world, the conditions will change continuously, and it is therefore problematic if a company sets a precise goal in its strategy. 

In business, there is a growing awareness of not setting too specific or long-term goals. For example, Danske Bank chose years ago to switch to a ‘fairly right strategy’, which is flexible just like the surroundings. Covid-19 is an extreme game changer, but in a changing and digital world, it is still central to have a flexible approach to strategic work and to be more inspired by its GPS-control – to have a short-term focus on when to turn and adjust the direction. Therefore, there may be a need to revisit the strategy and ensure that it is up-to-date, flexible, and changeable to a world that is becoming increasingly volatile.

This article was published in Ind§igt #24 in June 2021