Covid: The Long Goodbye

With cases falling, much of the business world is starting to return to prepandemic conditions. But the many disruptions COVID created will likely last far longer than hoped. How leaders can move forward—and be ready for business breakdowns at the same time.

By Tim Murphy Illustrated by Tim Ames

THE Problem

Eager to return to normal, many companies are missing indications that COVID-related fallouts won’t end anytime soon.

WHY IT MATTERS

Firms lost millions of dollars adopting plans to return to “normal” too early in the pandemic.

THE SOLUTION

Accept the difficulty, and design strategies and operations that can work well in a state of flux.

That posture is probably wise. Without a doubt, COVID cases are way down from the worst peaks, and many parts of the world are returning to a maskless normal. But a growing number of experts say they still foresee a protracted adieu to the virus—or at least the disruptions it created. Some feel this may not end until 2023 or even later. And amid the growing probability of a long goodbye, corporate leaders worldwide may need to regroup once more, without any pretense that they can plan for what’s coming. Thus begins yet another test—not just of agility, but of endurance. The temptation to deny the persistence of the virus can be strong—especially in COVID Año Tres. “These times are exhausting for managers, workers, and everyone else, including parents and kids,” says Shaun Truelove, an assistant scientist in the department of international health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “But the Omicron wave once again reminds us that this isn’t over, and that there’s still so much uncertainty about COVID.”

It’s not the first time a pandemic has been slow to depart. For instance, most histories state that the notorious Spanish flu epidemic ended in the summer of 1919. But in fact—as John M. Barry, author of The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, recently noted in the New York Times—there was actually a fourth wave the following year that killed more people than its predecessor. By that point, panic had long faded, and city governments, which were as weary of the flu as the public was, failed to mandate controls.

Trevor Doerksen was looking forward to a calm 2022 in which his augmented-reality company, ePlay Digital, would finally resume normal operations. The Vancouver, Canada–based company was teed up for a January appearance at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, and Doerksen was looking forward to getting back to his Los Angeles office. He’d last seen it in March of 2020, when he was rushing home to avoid getting stuck in the US.

It s a tug-of-war that only delays the timeline for the corporate worlD to emerge from pandemic fallouts.

READ THE FULL magazine

Finessing the Long Goodbye...

Managers need to realize that perfecting a hybrid office/remote system is going to take time, because anything short of full onsite or full remote gets intricate fast.

Smart companies are accepting the fact that COVID and its disruptions, while waning in some areas, aren’t going to evaporate entirely this year—or even next year.

Managers can give employees a sense of transparency amid flux by presenting a plan that outlines responses to multiple potential outcomes. That’s better than feigning total assurance or staying silent.

To retain talent in an all- or semi-remote workplace, managers must intentionally build in time for employees to cultivate social ties, whether in person or remotely.

The tech concept of the minimum viable product—trying ideas quickly in bare-bones form, then replacing them with new ideas if they don’t work—is highly applicable to management in fluid, foggy times.

“I was optimistic that I’d be visiting boardrooms and doing business lunches again, instead of Zooms and walk-and-talk meetings,” he says. He was even considering running the Los Angeles Marathon in March. Then, faster than he could say the words “best-laid plans,” came Omicron. “My colleagues and I all pretended to be optimistic—that we were going to see each other soon in Las Vegas and at a concert in New York City. Then we all canceled at the same time.” CES was called off. Canada issued an advisory against nonessential travel. In the many months since, Doerksen has slowly stopped believing that normality is just around the corner: “I fear that we’re going to be living between pandemics.”

A bright side to all this flux? The more than two years of COVID so far has already yielded myriad new techniques and systems for artful pivoting and contingency planning. Yes, in some ways, the current moment feels all too similar to 2020. “The difference, thankfully, is that with Omicron we were able to seamlessly transition to virtual work because we’d already figured out a system during the first round of COVID,” says Ravi Parikh, CEO of RoverPass, an online RV and campground search and booking service. “This time, we weren’t burdened by technology complications and bumps in the road, and instead were able to just continue with business as usual.” Back in Vancouver, those last three words sure sound good to Doerksen, the ePlay Digital CEO. But for the foreseeable future, he’s making provisions for employee safety, such as discouraging domestic travel in the US, where airlines don’t require vaccine passports, and rerouting itineraries through airlines that do (when possible), like Air Canada. “Hopefully, between this pandemic and the next,” he says, “we’ll able to do our business networking and sales and business development.”

For example, managers may be able to narrow down an area of uncertainty to three possible outcomes, and plan accordingly for each. “This way we’re managing the uncertainty, rather than just being surprised by it,” he says. Flexibility is as important as swiftness—not just at the top but down the chain of command. “Companies that have fared well through this have a strong middle-management tier empowered to make and act on decisions as they see fit,” says Hadhazy. In the case of supply-chain issues, she says, this might mean “rerouting a delivery even before it arrives at port.”

Korn Ferry’s Feldman suggests that managers take their cues from the tech start-up concept of the minimum viable product—launching the leanest, simplest version of something (akin to a beta version) to see how users respond. “If it doesn’t show promise, kill it right away and move on,” says Feldman, adding that the idea can be applied to management systems in a time of disruption. Supply-chain management has long held clues that may apply to other areas of leadership, says Cappelli. That sector has long known, he says, how to separate “which variables we’re pretty sure of from those we’re not—understanding which problems are worse than others.”

|

’

I fear that we re going to be living between pandemics.

’’

It’s a tug-of-war that only prolongs the timeline for the corporate world to emerge from pandemic fallouts. “People have options these days,” says Janet Feldman, a senior client partner in Korn Ferry’s CEO Succession practice. “Managers are going to have to loosen their grip and accept that there will be several iterations of working.” And perfecting those iterations could take several more years, according to Peter Cappelli, a management professor at the Wharton School and the author of The Future of the Office. He says it’s easy enough to shift to a fully remote plan, but that things gets messy when there’s a need for the in-person intimacy of agile projects and small groups. “Managers have to let employees have both options,” he says, “and I don’t think they are converging on any model that makes sense.”

’’

’

Goodbye

Long

The

Covid:

Finally, there’s the COVID-driven curveball of understaffing, the result of widespread job quitting that’s been widely called the Great Resignation. It’s a phenomenon with deep roots and repercussions that few experts think will subside anytime soon. In all, more than 40 million people have left their jobs since the onset of the pandemic—to move to other firms paying more, to take long breaks from work, or just to retire early. In their efforts to stem this exodus, companies have done everything from doubling bonuses to raising wages faster than they’ve done in years. Many ask, “When is this finally going to end?” Not any time soon, predicts Cappelli, saying that staffing churn will likely continue with the rise of remote work formats: “It’s hard to feel connected to people you never see, and hence easier to leave them.” He cites research showing that the single greatest factor that keeps people in jobs is social ties. “If you don’t have that,” he says, “there’s not nearly as much holding you.” Both leadership types and expert observers say that handling a long COVID goodbye is about forecasting and planning as surgically as possible—while still making room for the X factor of the unknown. According to Cappelli, the COVID era has pressured managers into acting like they are in control when they really have no idea what to do. “Yet it is possible to know how to manage uncertainty and be in charge,” he says, “even if you don’t know the precise action you’ll take in the end.” The trick, he says, is for managers to be up-front with employees about what they do and don’t know. If they say nothing, employees feel that information is being withheld from them “Then you get conspiracy theories.”

but dowN the chain of command

’’

_

Flexibility is as important as swiftnes

’’

Many scholars expect that the end of this century’s pandemic will also be a long goodbye. Indeed, earlier this year, many experts rightly predicted that new variants would start to spike in parts of the world. “As quickly as Omicron took over parts of the world, it receded,” said Dr. David M. Aronoff, who chairs the department of medicine at Indiana University, earlier this year. “But that shouldn’t give us confidence that we’re not going to see the same thing happen again this year or next year.” Or in any future year, for that matter. Says Truelove: “The science shows that we’re going to be experiencing pandemics like this every ten years or so.” What that could mean is anyone’s guess—especially on the worker-safety side. For example, while a growing number of companies have agreed to drop mask mandates, many have yet to decide whether to require vaccines as a condition of employment. Particularly if variants reemerge or anti-

vaccination movements grow, it’s a decision that could become increasingly more pressing for the C-suite, and certainly disruptive if it causes staffing losses. And that, say experts, is just one of many pandemic tentacles that could ensnare firm leaders for a much longer time than previously anticipated. For two years now, for example, companies have been struggling with the question of whether or not to bring workers back to the office full-time. A recent survey reported that 70 percent of firms in the US alone plan to implement a hybrid system that blends remote and in-office work. Yet evidence suggests that the vast majority have not come close to adopting such a plan. One factor: a Future Forum study found that executives were nearly three times as likely as employees to prefer a full-time return to the office.

From the start, COVID was at the heart of all this: it sharply reduced the people power that supply chains need. “A supply chain is the physical movement of goods, which requires human capital,” says Melissa Hadhazy, a senior client partner in Korn Ferry’s Industrial practice who focuses on this issue. A disruption as massive as COVID can take humans out of the supply chain at different nodes. That’s further complicated by how complex manufacturing supply chains have become— from one or two suppliers to up to a dozen or more, which means more subassembly. “Final assembly doesn’t happen until you’re pretty far down the chain, which means more opportunity for disruption,” Hadhazy says.

She doesn’t think the dust will settle anytime soon, especially as, amid the consumer shake-ups of COVID (less vacationing, say, and more buying of home goods), companies reconsolidate their suppliers to meet new needs. “We’ll continue to see lots of little nodes of disruption as small players get shuffled around,” she says. What this looks like right now is “fifty container ships floating in the water because there are no truckers to unload them.” But what it means for the consumer, Hadhazy observes, is, “I’m not going to get my high-end leather couch for another two years because of pipeline issues.”

.

5 Takeaways

not just at the top

Back in Vancouver, those last three words sure sound good to Doerksen, the ePlay Digital CEO. But for the foreseeable future, he’s making provisions for employee safety, such as discouraging domestic travel in the US, where airlines don’t require vaccine passports, and rerouting itineraries through airlines that do (when possible), like Air Canada. “Hopefully, between this pandemic and the next,” he says, “we’ll able to do our business networking and sales and business development.”

READ THE FULL magazine

Of the pandemic’s many repercussions, perhaps none has been more frustrating than the ongoing drama of supply-chain disruption. Nearly every industry and its consumers have been affected by unprecedented global shortages in everything from microchips to pet food. Earlier this year, the International Monetary Fund cited such breakdowns, among other issues, in downgrading its forecast for worldwide economic growth this year from 4.9 percent to 4.4 percent. “The chaos at ports, warehouses, and retailers will probably persist through the year, and perhaps even longer,” the New York Times predicted in February. From the start, COVID was at the heart of all this: it sharply reduced the people power that supply chains need. “A supply chain is the physical movement of goods, which requires human capital,” says Melissa Hadhazy, a senior client partner in Korn Ferry’s Industrial practice who focuses on this issue. A disruption as massive as COVID can take humans out of the supply chain at different nodes. That’s further complicated by how complex manufacturing supply chains have become— from one or two suppliers to up to a dozen or more, which means more subassembly. “Final assembly doesn’t happen until you’re pretty far down the chain, which means more opportunity for disruption,” Hadhazy says. She doesn’t think the dust will settle anytime soon, especially as, amid the consumer shake-ups of COVID (less vacationing, say, and more buying of home goods), companies reconsolidate their suppliers to meet new needs. “We’ll continue to see lots of little nodes of disruption as small players get shuffled around,” she says. What this looks like right now is “fifty container ships floating in the water because there are no truckers to unload them.” But what it means for the consumer, Hadhazy observes, is, “I’m not going to get my high-end leather couch for another two years because of pipeline issues.”

What that could mean is anyone’s guess—especially on the worker-safety side. For example, while a growing number of companies have agreed to drop mask mandates, many have yet to decide whether to require vaccines as a condition of employment. Particularly if variants reemerge or anti-vaccination movements grow, it’s a decision that could become increasingly more pressing for the C-suite, and certainly disruptive if it causes staffing losses. And that, say experts, is just one of many pandemic tentacles that could ensnare firm leaders for a much longer time than previously anticipated. For two years now, for example, companies have been struggling with the question of whether or not to bring workers back to the office full-time. A recent survey reported that 70 percent of firms in the US alone plan to implement a hybrid system that blends remote and in-office work. Yet evidence suggests that the vast majority have not come close to adopting such a plan. One factor: a Future Forum study found that executives were nearly three times as likely as employees to prefer a full-time return to the office. It’s a tug-of-war that only prolongs the timeline for the corporate world to emerge from pandemic fallouts. “People have options these days,” says Janet Feldman, a senior client partner in Korn Ferry’s CEO Succession practice. “Managers are going to have to loosen their grip and accept that there will be several iterations of working.” And perfecting those iterations could take several more years, according to Peter Cappelli, a management professor at the Wharton School and the author of The Future of the Office. He says it’s easy enough to shift to a fully remote plan, but that things gets messy when there’s a need for the in-person intimacy of agile projects and small groups. “Managers have to let employees have both options,” he says, “and I don’t think they are converging on any model that makes sense.”