Our communities, organizations and businesses can not return to the old-normal; there is a new-normal to be created. Some of the new-normal is being created now out of necessity, some will be formed by pivoting old businesses; and, some will come from new innovations that create new businesses.

For those who are anxious to stop this “hunkering down” and returning to the way things were, restarting the old economy and being done with this pandemic; I want you to change your perspective. We are not going to be done with this soon… and any effort to be “done” too quickly, will undo any early progress we’ve made to recover and create a new trajectory for our communities and economy.

The old normal got us in to this mess!

Let’s have a look and this in terms of the “old” ways of doing things or “
“processes” that we were using just a few short months ago. We’ve keep some of those processes, modified others, or just stopped or paused others. While some have had to stop entirely, many are now operating with “coping” processes that might be a combination of old, modified or new processes. (Working from home, customer ques, home delivery etc.) As we transition in to some future way of doing business we will have the opportunity to try to return to the old ways of running our communities and businesses, keeping some of the coping processes, or perhaps creating entirely new processes.

Let’s hope that the focus when we transition out of this “hunker down” period it is not just to return to the old normal, but a decision to retain the best of what we have recently created, and continue to support innovation and entrepreneurship that pivots to a “new normal”. We can choose to work for a new-normal that is:

• Able to recover faster,
• More resilient in the future to disruptions (second wave or the next bug), and
• More prosperous than we would have had without this massive reset.

What we had before failed us, and we owe it to the people and businesses that have suffered or died, as well to the people who will get the massive bill for the response, to be better in the future.

Updated – ADN story on how farmers have pivoted to grow their businesses – http://adn.ak.newsmemory.com/?publink=10aaff5b8

Updated resources https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/leadership/the-future-is-not-what-it-used-to-be-thoughts-on-the-shape-of-the-next-normal.

More on creating a better new normal with covid recovery business transformation – increasing resilience and efficiency. https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/jump-starting-resilient-and-reimagined-operations

And another on three stages to a new normal https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/rapid-revenue-recovery-a-road-map-for-post-covid-19-growth

Quickly scaling and learning the next normal https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-accelerate/our-insights/scaling-rapid-workforce-conversion-during-covid-19

Here is a healthcare view of the new normal build around the idea of “…the four Rs: responding, rebounding, rebuilding, and reimagining. Each R has a lot of work behind it. Responding is pretty obvious; it’s what we’re doing now. ” https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare-systems-and-services/our-insights/adapting-healthcare-to-covid-19-an-interview-with-the-ceo-of-boston-medical-center