On this International Women’s Day, we’re celebrating our women leaders and their key insights about how organizations can navigate towards a new better.
Team-building will be huge. In this environment, the ability to collaborate and stay connected with others will become more critical than ever. When we think about building high-performing teams, that skill is important to me — how people develop teams that work well together, even virtually, and how they build teams around their goals. Setting goals in “the new better” will require a new way of thinking.
We’re adapting to this new reality and doing a lot more virtually. This experience is helping us provide new perspectives and problem-solving approaches for our clients. We’re getting more creative, rethinking how we do things. A lot can come out of this that will be extremely powerful, as long as we stay flexible and creative.
Read more: Authenticity, Collaboration and Listening: Making the New Better, Together
Think about iPhones. If, 10 years ago, I had a flip phone, and you suddenly gave me a current iPhone model, I would be completely overwhelmed. I’d want to go back to what I knew. But Apple has been the master of gradual, guided change. Now, we demand new releases. We want what’s next, because they’ve built trust and continue to deliver.
The pandemic has given us a moment like this. Many of us had a flip phone culture, and are now being given an iPhone. Our work in talent development and company culture then is to navigate this new world step by step. We need to build trust that what’s new is better. And we need to create an environment in which individual colleagues will clamor for the new elements that will make the employer culture more fulfilling.
It’s difficult right now to see what this will fully look like, so there may be some fear and a desire to go back to what we knew. But with agility, trust and continual adaptation, and an openness to pivot and evolve, the new world can be better.
Read more: How COVID-19 is Changing Company Culture
Consider how cities functioned before, and how the large-scale shutdowns driven by the COVID-19 pandemic have changed this. There may be no going back to the same ways of a city working. Transportation, travel, local businesses – all will be impacted, and will fundamentally change how cities work. This necessitates a strong partnership between private firms and public governments to meet the challenges – as well as the opportunities that we may face.
In addition, many of the issues private entities are experiencing as they reimagine how they work are also challenges for public organizations. Whether it is how our health system may be transformed, or how we view cyber risk, to challenges such as our ability to respond to natural disasters and longer-term issues posed by climate change: public-private partnerships will be critical.
Read more: Public and Private Partnerships: Key Collaborations That Can Lead to A Better Recovery
