The coronavirus pandemic features a lot of dark sides. round the world, people fall ill and die, schools close, the healthcare system is overloaded, employees lose their jobs, companies face bankruptcy, stock markets collapse and countries need to spend billions on bailouts and medical care . And for everybody , whether directly hurt or not, Covid-19 may be a huge stressor shaking up our psyche, triggering our fears and uncertainties.
No matter how serious and sad all of this is often , there are upsides also . Therefore, along the Monty Python song “Always look on the brilliant side of life” let’s not forget those and make the simplest of what the crisis gives us. because the good old SWOT analysis tells us, there aren’t only threats, but also opportunities. With opportunities I don’t mean that the crisis provides extra business for companies like Zoom and attend Webinar that enable virtual meetings, or for Amazon, which is getting to hire another 100,000 employees. The latter is perhaps more a threat than a chance for many , especially for the mom & pop stores that undergo difficult times already.
With opportunities I mean general opportunities that are available for many people suffering from the crisis. the present crisis offers a minimum of seven of them:
Opportunity 1: longer
In today’s overheated economy time is usually seen because the most precious and sparse thing we’ve . Covid-19 shows why: because we’ve stacked our week with social gatherings and entertainment like getting to stage , birthdays, cinema, restaurant, bar, sportclub, gym, music, festivals, concerts and what’s more. Suddenly, all of that’s cancelled or forbidden, giving us significant amounts of additional time. And still, live goes on. This shows us how easy it’s to clear our calendars. Obviously this doesn’t apply to the health-care sector and other crucial sectors, but beyond those it applies to an outsized majority of sectors.
The opportunity is that we will spend this point on other things—or even better, on nothing and luxuriate in the free time. watching the crowded parks, waste collection points, garden centres and DIY stores within the last week, many of us seem to possess a tough time with the latter. rather than enjoying the additional free time, they fill it immediately with other activities. To seize this first opportunity though, re-arranging how you spend some time and reserving time for nothingness is vital . Not just during the crisis, but also after it. The advices in my previous article on the Covid-19 crisis could help in realizing this.
Opportunity 2: Reflect and reconsider
The fact that the coronavirus disrupts our day-t0-day lives provides a chance to reflect on things and to reconsider what we do, how we roll in the hay and why we roll in the hay . Things we took for granted—like getting to the gym—are suddenly impossible anymore. Furthermore, many of us have had to vary their mode of working and work from home rather than at the office. this suggests that tons of our routines are interrupted.
This offers an excellent opportunity to rethink our habits and routines and make changes. Now that you simply haven’t been ready to attend the restaurant twice every week , commute 2 hours per day, hang around together with your friends or attend a celebration every weekend, you’ll reflect on whether you actually want to continue doing so after the crisis. The virus forces you to form changes to your lifestyle that you simply might actually want to stay also after the crisis.
Opportunity 3: Speed and innovation
Many organizations suffer from slow procedures, complex bureaucracies and rigid hierarchies making organizational life but pleasant. The coronavirus has forced many of them to interrupt through these rigid systems and act instantly. Suddenly procedures are often skipped or accelerated, rules are often side-tracked and decisions are often made more autonomously without formal approval. And suddenly employees are allowed to figure from home without direct supervision.
Covid-19 shows that, as soon as there’s a robust enough stimulus, things can change. This results in remarkable innovations. Not being allowed to open their doors, restaurants, for instance , are shifting to delivery mode. And schools suddenly do much of the teaching and even a number of the testing online. This brings the chance to make innovations now which will be maintained after the crisis. And it can also help to stay the present speed and innovation mode afterwards.
Opportunity 4: Better meetings
As mentioned in an earlier article, people spend up to 23 hours per week in meetings, half which are considered a failure or waste of your time . the present crisis has forced us to rethink how we affect meetings. Because in many countries it’s not allowed anymore to satisfy with a gaggle of persons, many meetings are cancelled. And once they still happen they’re mostly virtual and shorter.
As such, it provides a superb opportunity for resolving one among the foremost disliked parts of organizational life. The technology for this is often already present and mature for a few of years, but the coronavirus triggers a sudden need for it. the important opportunity here is to form systematic changes in order that meetings are going to be simpler , also after the crisis.
Opportunity 5: Reconnect and help
Challenging times offer an excellent opportunity for social bonding and other ways of connecting to and helping people. Of course, not having the ability to go to friends or family has increased isolation and feelings of loneliness in some cases. But the sensation of “we’re during this together” has also triggered interesting ways of connecting. a number of those have gone viral—such as Italians singing together from their windows and balconies—but there are many small, local initiatives too to attach and help people that need it.
In the individualized societies many folks sleep in , this provides opportunities to reconnect and make more social coherence. Not only during the crisis, but also afterwards. this chance comes with an enormous caveat though. Parallel to those nice initiatives we also witness how far people attend protect themselves and their families. People hoard food, medicine, toilet tissue and guns stupidly a second of others. However, while it triggers self-serving egocentric behavior too, the Covid-19 crisis does provide us the chance to reconnect and show our social side.
Opportunity 6: Cleaner environment
The virus caused a shutdown or dramatical decrease of commercial activities. Factories are closed or operate far below their capacity, road traffic has reduced radically and traffic collapsed, and therefore the lack of tourism has emptied the streets in overcrowded cities like Venice, Amsterdam and ny . While this might be bad news for many people and particularly those working within the affected industries, this is often also excellent news for our planet. Covid-19 causes a big reduction in green house gasses and other air, water and land polluting outputs. In Venice this has allegedly led to dolphins return after just a few of weeks (although some argued this to be a hoax).
Whether the actual example may be a hoax or not isn’t so relevant. the very fact is that the shutdown and lockdown of huge parts of our economy is sweet for nature—at least on the short term. the chance this provides, is to stay parts of this in situ also after the crisis to form long-term improvements. Along the road of the previous opportunities, the present crisis provides us a chance to reconsider our lives and reorganize it during a way that has less impact on our planet.
Opportunity 7: Modesty and acceptance
The final opportunity that the Covid-19 crisis offers, may be a chance to make awareness for the moderate role we play on this planet and accept that things cannot always go as we would like them to travel . The Covid-19 pandemic may be a global crisis chat is unprecedented in modern peace time. We had other pandemics like SARS, but their impact was less substantial. and that we had the 1973 oil crisis, but that was a man-made crisis. The coronavirus isn’t man-made and yet disrupts lives across the earth .
As such, the virus shows us that, regardless of how well-planned and arranged we are and regardless of what proportion we sleep in the Anthropocene—the era characterized by significant human impact—we aren’t on top of things . One simple virus is disrupting everything. This offers an excellent opportunity. In almost every aspect of life we would like to be on top of things . Whether it’s health, airline safety or our calendars, we sleep in the illusion that full control is feasible . The virus can help us create awareness that this is often not the case. It provides a chance to require a smaller role and accept that a lot of things are simply beyond our control.
Once again, the Covid-19 crisis features a large dark side. But as these seven opportunities show, it’s positive sides also . Since all seven opportunities require a quite fundamental change in how we approach the planet , seizing them can take substantial time. therein sense, and if we keep it up watching the brighter sides of life, the longer the crisis lasts, the larger the opportunities are and therefore the bigger the probabilities are of truly making changes to our deeply rooted habits and convictions.
