Home from the Office. Or off to Starbucks

Within just a few days, the changes caused by the coronavirus pandemic have been numerous. I need to have the pretense of being an actual historian to safely allege that the world has never changed so drastically in such a short period after reading so many books and reports. Yes, that is correct, within just a few days. Many people continue to believe that even though they or their employees are working from home right now, this will change soon, and everyone will be back in their offices. Back in 2014, a year before I became the President of the global PR association ICCO, I spoke at our annual summit meeting in Paris, and I made the forecast that by the year 2025, some 70% of the consultancy business will be out of the office and working from home, or coffee houses. I even used Starbucks as an example of a place where you can drink coffee and be more beneficial to your company than sitting at the office with all the noise and clutter around you.

In the same way, you can work from home or in some restaurants. That was just plain logical. Why contain a creative person in an office when they could fulfill their responsibilities more successfully and peacefully with their laptop at home with a cup of coffee? The Morning After Could I have even imagined that COVID-19 would rapidly accelerate the reality of my forecast…? Of course not, yet it has happened. This certainly has been one of the significant advantages of this incredibly swift change.

Every Team Member Is Now Becoming a Leader

The main change brought about by the pandemic doesn’t have to do with the fact that we no longer communicate live in person to the same degree as before. Instead, the main change lies in the fact that every team member is already becoming a leader. This is nothing to be amazed at. Everyone is already a leader in their projects and tasks, and, most importantly, professionally, they are leaders of themselves. Yesterday’s office used to work this way: a team of 50 to 60 people had one manager whom everyone followed. However, when we work remotely and practice independently, everyone controls their time, ideas, and work. That’s an enormous responsibility for every employee who, until just yesterday, only had to execute their tasks and, today, have to be leaders. In this sense, the notion of a “leader” is acquiring a very different and somewhat peculiar scope. This notion is already playing out in an entirely different way, mainly because the leadership responsibilities of a big boss, or even of a small boss, are being transferred outward to every single member of the team. I am indeed concentrating mainly on the consultancy business. Nonetheless, leadership also has changing characteristics in manufacturing and the various production industries.

This transformation is manifested primarily in the fact that part of the obligations and responsibilities of the leader are being transferred to the very team members, who, regardless of whether they realize it or not, are starting to become the leaders of their micro-world.

Surmounting the Great Barrier

The newest type of communication through online videoconferencing platforms, which has seen a gigantic boost thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, is not new. The communication channels in question have existed for many years, but they have been ignored to a great degree so far because we have yet to realize their advantages. Now, all of a sudden, everyone is figuring them out and saying, “Oh, wait a minute!”. Just how much money we are saving, and more importantly, how much time we are keeping from travel, hotel accommodations, and meetings with questionable value, all highlight how little sense these extra expenditures make. Globally, less than 20 percent of business meetings succeed. This was the most recent piece of statistical data that I stumbled upon somewhere. So you go to Montreal, Las Vegas, Hong Kong, or Singapore, for example, you go to important meetings with lots of papers and business plans, you spend a week there, and in many cases, just come back furious and say to yourself, “I’ve just wasted my time and 10,000 Euros, with nothing to show from this business trip at all…” One is also capable of discovering that some endeavor will not be much of success just by having a one-hour conversation using any random video conferencing platform. Until now, however, that was not acceptable, and we all know why: life was different, and business had entirely different dimensions, customs, and rules.

If, just a year ago, I had proposed to a business partner that we meet on Zoom for an hour or two instead of traveling to the other end of the world, that would have undoubtedly been considered an insult and an enormous insult. In other words, you don’t mean business; you’re just seeking an excuse to leave the meeting. Only several weeks were needed to learn that there are other ways of doing business just as well, with more accessible, faster, cheaper, and more productive results. This is why I believe that reversing these changes is now not possible, nor logical, unless someone decides to waste their time, or likes traveling to Tokyo for some business meeting, invariably to take their secretary or assistant with them… at which point their spouse would tell them, “Hey, what about Zoom? There is Zoom, right? Why don’t you hold your meeting that way?”

This new type of communication has generated exceptional business benefits,

and I’m not talking about social media, even though it can be invaluable as an interactive platform. The pandemic has been chasing us so vehemently that we’ve managed to hurdle a very tall barrier without even wanting to. Communication was done through online video conferencing platforms even before COVID-19. I have often spoken to clients through Zoom over the last three or four years and have always wondered,

“Why Zoom? Why don’t they catch a flight to Sofia and come over so we can have a nice dinner and visit some of the numerous piano bars?”

A while ago, we used to work with this highly innovative Swedish company, and its managers always suggested that we use Zoom, and that was how we became somewhat used to this platform. Once, I asked them, “Why not Skype? It’s very convenient for me. Or why aren’t we using Facebook? Messenger?”

Of course, they didn’t even respond to me, but this was also why, several months ago, on that day in March, we could transition to an online platform that we had already become familiar with. Of course, all these new communication channels will now become dominant and be used to get a tremendous amount of work done quickly. On them, you can share presentations and video content, use them in your living room, if you prefer, and all sorts of other things. This is why I am convinced that business in its previous version, or, should I say already, its “old version,” is not coming back.

This, rest assured, is good news.

 

“The Morning After “ is available on Amazon.com and BeharBooks.com