3 Pandemic Takeaways for Boards and Committees in 2021
In 2020, businesses and nations alike were thrown into the deep end.
The COVID-19 pandemic, summer protests, and the fall election season all happened on top of each other in a year of change and disruption.
How many of us were truly ready? What if we had been?
In their excellent pandemic response postmortem, Chris Tyler and Peter Gluckman argue that governments all knew that a pandemic was likely. Those caught flat footed were those who did not believe in the magnitude of the problem, were not taking the potential threats seriously, and were rewarding short-term thinking at the expense of long-term planning.
Bill Gates, among others, had been pointing to something like this since 2015. He even gave a TED Talk called “The next outbreak? We’re not ready.”
Some were ready for 2020, some were not. Those who were understood the imperative to think and invest differently.
Boards, committees and organizations that want to be ready for whatever change and disruption most certainly lie ahead, must embrace three principles.
3 Imperatives for Boards and Committees in 2021
1. Think Differently About Change
The pandemic happened suddenly — and also in slow motion. Businesses that weathered the storm well, like this list of Forbes’ top 25 corporate responders, were demonstrably agile, acting swiftly and decisively. They were people-based. They had already invested in digital infrastructure that could flex with the crisis. They had prioritized change management skills among people because they understood the need to manage long-term for continuous disruption.
And it paid off.
The kind of continuous disruption that the pandemic has brought is deep and will be ongoing, and it requires a fundamental shift in our mindset. Now is the time to embrace thinking that can flex with constant change, not a time to white-knuckle the year with one hand and cross your fingers hoping for normal with the other.
2. Operationalize Change Readiness
Planning for disruption must become a standard part of our day-to-day operations. People need tools and processes that support resilient, adaptive action-taking — and this means integrating the rhythms of remote work at all levels of organizations. Even after a vaccine, there will be no going back to how things were — there will instead be a new wave of change and disruption. Our growing pains can, and should, be the growing pains of a new preparedness.
McKinsey reports that “75% of people using digital channels for the first time indicate that they will continue to use them when things return to ‘normal.’” Adopting a new technology is never as simple as pushing a button. There is always a transition period. We need to make room for these adjustment periods, expect and prepare for them, and build resiliency and efficiency into how we adapt. People will always have to learn, and processes will always have to change. That takes time, and the failure to actively manage for these kinds of ongoing transitions impacts effective governance, efficient operations, livelihoods and even lives.
3. Invest in Robust Digital Assets
If your board or committee does not have a comprehensive digital solution, now is the time. The time for patchwork solutions is long over. We built Cloud Concinnity® in 2018 because we understood that boards and special committees needed smarter software.
When the pandemic hit, the boards and committees using our software were ready. They could immediately meet and connect, no matter where in the world they were, with 100% confidence in the security of their video calls, the integrity of all data and documents and the certainty of their processes. Whether for a corporation or a clinical trial, losing a step is never an option.
Our team has all sat on boards and special committees and advised governance leaders for decades. We know the weaknesses and the strengths of this kind of work. We built our platform to support the adaptive action that the change and disruption in the world demands from today’s boards and committees.