Thoughts for the aftermath

Until recently (perhaps March) there were many who thought that the “after” would be like the way things were "before": once the “storm” had passed, we would have slowly resumed the previous social and economic behavior and models. And therefore also the managerial behaviors and qualities consistent with that environment.

Fewer and fewer think that way now, and I am among them.

Of course, it is easy to imagine, for example, that smartworking will take up evermore space, the same as social distancing, in our daily as well as in our professional relations, or that the use of technology and the emergence of distribution models will be increasingly intense, as well as the use of different services (think of the sites that already "read" books today).

But what will the managerial behavior and key personal aptitudes in a (semi) new world be like?

First of all, the ability to operate/manage/decide in conditions of uncertainty and instability.

We will have less information on the environment and the competitive scenario. The information will not always be homogeneous, not always synchronous or certain, but nevertheless it will still be necessary to decide and do so with fewer and more random variables available.

Instability and uncertainty will, for a long time, be structural characteristics of every company, every entrepreneurial initiative and every managerial decision.

We will have to develop new abilities to adapt quickly to changes and unpredictable, changed conditions.

What does it mean?

Exercises and risk analysis practices will have to be much more frequent and extensive because the risk gradient inherent in each decision will be higher.

Such analyzes will not necessarily lead to early interception of exogenous and immense risks (such as the current pandemic) but will be indispensable because they will stimulate mechanisms of flexibility and reflection on possible alternatives, and on the weight to be attributed to each risk due to the probability of occurrence and impact of the same, and therefore they will compel us to quickly evaluate the uncertain alternatives possible.

These analyzes will be more frequent and must lead to a mitigation or evaluation capacity that is as correct as possible of the consequences of each business choice.

And of course, we will be wrong a lot, lot more. So we will have to be much faster (and much more lucid and sincere) in learning from mistakes. Learning will be daily, continuous.

Mistakes will be inevitable, and the sooner we will be able to recognize them “admit them”, identify the causes that generated them and correct them, the sooner and more surely we can start up again to pursuinf the objective, the path of choice defined.

The ability to learn from error will have to become an intangible asset for businesses.

The roads that we will decide to take, whether they are investments, new products, organizational development or cost containment projects, may not be adequate or not be enough and pursuing them will be much more complicated and uncertain.

The hypotheses underlying each choice will have to be quickly reviewed.

Finally, we will have to invent new metrics to measure industrial and economic processes.

It will be necessary to have more intuition and speed in identifying the key variables and interpreting their progress, in many cases renouncing on consolidated measurement and control habits.

Will the budget still be a useful tool? And the three/five year plan? And the analysis of the deviations? Maybe yes maybe no.

Not only will the quality of the product be rewarded, but also the quality of the process and of the relationship with the environment, the overall ecology of the company.

The prince of Salina in Visconti's film "The Leopard" said: "Everything must change so taht nothing changes"... But here it is different: everything has changed and nothing will be the same as before.