Tag: corona

THE VIRTUAL EXISTENCE CONUNDRUM – PT 3: YOU, ME & EVERYONE IN-BETWEEN.

So the “New Normal” is moving the BCP dials to a whole different level. Let’s call it BCP++. The first + standing for extending the BCP and the ++ is make BCP THE Modus Operandi, THE defacto standard, encompassing the whole business cycle, from Business Prospecting, to Prospect Conversion, to Marketing, Market Intelligence, Contract Negotiation to Signing, Execution – Development, Deployment, Post Production Support, moving Money around and Human Resources. All Virtual. From a business point of view, Out of Sight is Out of Mind so a Digital POP’s – Points of Presence is the ONLY way. Easier said than done as we’ve come to realise and as we’re continually realising, that sustainability of this whole WFH – Work From Home thingy isn’t exactly a walk in the park! But, its beginning to work, albeit fraught with challenges. We’re figuring it out as we go along. Solutions come from trying out different things and tweaking to make them fit the need of the hour. Business carries on “as usual” but using “unusual” approaches.

Perhaps the best insights come from personal experience. As this thing broke, I get a call from the CEO, early days, no complete shut down yet. We discuss precautions, sanitizier, surface contamination and such. Two weeks later we are compelled to decide on a total shut down of physical proximity.

Here’s how it all went down. People from the organization are out in the field, in different parts of the world, airports are shutting down, last flights out or in are announced, as are evac flights and that leads to a scramble to get people back home, ticket prices and hotel costs be damned. In parallel we are shutting down several offices, putting in place arrangements to continue work, calls, meetings, both internal and customer facing. Getting people to work outside the office, connect remotely, lock down devices, access development and test environments securely, hit us all at once. I run ops amongst other portfolios, so keeping all the balls in the air moving at full throttle, the initial thoughts were, woah! 

I sleep over it and with the help of a some really amazing people, we were like, heck, we manage enterprise class implementations for so many customers remotely, isn't this just a case of taking what we do for customers and get those processes to work for us internally? We do this all the time to save customers and ourselves money and reduce the TCO of customers. Truth be told, we liteally just flipped the switch and voila, we were up and running, all thrusters firing at peak, all remote, all virtual. Sweet! The CXO team get onto calls twice a day, keep the morale of the troops, make sure there is no panic and execution does take a massive hit.

We just settled into the rhythym – BAU, equilibrium, status quo maintained. We’re a FinTech startup in the Digital Transformation space, so all apps and solutions are mission critical. Not being able to service our customers would have had a cascading impact. Our customers, banks and finaicial institutions, would not have been able to serve their customers. The really cool thing is this…..all our solutions are not merely COVID ready, but are solutions that not just serve purpose as the perfect BCP strategy, BUT outlive and indeed lead the charge to play in the “New Normal” space and give our customers’ that edge, that competitive advantage, not just to keep the lights on, but to grow despite mobility restrictions. And to think that they were conceptualized almost 4-5 years ago does us really proud! This is easily one of the best teams I’ve worked with, with very little need to direct. Almost the entire team, especially the Founder Members need little pushing, just some gentle (and sometimes aggressive) intervention, which enable us to focus of bringing in new business, that all important need for any company these days, especially startups.

My interactions with various teams, individuals, customers and others within our ecosystem and outside of it, give me an insight into their readiness and capability to deal with the situation. I’ve seen the skill, will and tenacity of both large and small organisations tested to the core and some still aren’t anywhere close to adapting to the “New Normal”. They’re the ones who were not thinking Digital in the first place.

So let’s talk about this “New Normal” and “BCP”, but first BCP.

Look at it this way. Almost everyone has some semblance of a BCP – Business Continuity Plan, even if its all theoretical and has never been tested like BCP is being tested now. In any case, conceptualizing and testing a BCP for an event of this magnitude is someting that armed forces do looking at doomsday scenarios, most organizations don’t. So net-net we did pretty good, all factors considered. BCP is intended for a particular time horizon and I seriously doubt (maybe a few) were designed to persist.

What is this “New Normal” anyway? Normal, for me, is walking up to someone and figuring it out. The new normal is not having the luxury to do that. It also means that the efforts spent to maintain even keel has grown exponentially. Let’s not even talk about growth right now, but that said certain business models, lines of business, products and services are brilliantly poised to capitalise on the situation. Sounds very opportunistic, but thats business, its all about being in the right place at the right time with the right solution. Opportunity.

So the “New Normal” is moving the BCP dials to a whole different level. Let’s call it BCP++. The first + standing for extending the BCP and the ++ is make BCP THE Modus Operandi, THE defacto standard, encompassing the whole business cycle, from Business Prospecting, to Prospect Conversion, to Marketing, Market Intelligence, Contract Negotiation to Signing, Execution - Development, Deployment, Post Production Support, moving Money around and Human Resources. All Virtual. From a business point of view, "Out of Sight is Out of Mind" so Digital POP's - Points of Presence is the ONLY way. Easier said than done, as we’ve come to realise and as we’re continually realising, that sustainability of this whole WFH - Work From Home thingy isn’t exactly a walk in the park! But, its beginning to work, albeit fraught with challenges. We're figuring it out as we go along. Solutions come from trying out different things and tweaking to make them fit the need of the hour. Business carries on "as usual" but using "unusual" approaches.

The real impact however, is on people. How we act, react, communicate, lead our daily lives – work, home, family, friends, relationships, lesuire, fitness, hobbies, downtime, food habits, pray and just about everything we did before the “New Normal” became the norm. Regardless of where people are in the pecking order, we’ve all been affected and we could say, its a COVID infection of another kind, indirect yet having material bearing on behaviours.

Man is a social animal. (Not intending to do the female of the species any particular injustice), but I’m loathe to call the female of the species an animal….far too risky you see!

Remote working has several sides to it, too much proximity or then too little. Those living alone are feeling the impact of prolonged isolation and those living with family or friends or roomies, face the outcomes of being in each others faces over prolonged periods of time. We all need our space and thats a luxury few may have. Kids at home, pets at home, sounds of water running, cooking, cleaning, the doorbell ringing (something we’ve ordered online is getting delivered) are almost commonplace on calls and were all frowned upon, but more accepted these days. In many cases the WFH is an impediment to privacy, concentration and focus often extending working hours into the late nights or then early mornings before everyone is up and about. Everything demands scheduling, everything demands meticulous planning. The lines between personal life and work life have blurred, making it difficult to get that work-life balance right, yet we must to ensure that we last the course.

There are just so may sides to this!. On the one hand, you have the time and space to sit back and reflect, take up a long outstanding project of hobby, and on the other hand the spirit of spontaneity has taken a huge hit, as have collaboration, teamwork, networking, less formal channels of an exchange of ideas over a coffee, a meal or a drink at the local.

Prolonged work from home, isolation, the uncertainities of business, job insecurity (am I going to be axed next), worries about income continuity, concerns about seperated family and how they are impacted by community spread of the virus, have such a huge negative impact on people. Depression, irritation, mood swings, laziness, lack of discipline are all now manifest and are or at least will affect both professional and personal lives and threaten to reverse the initial euphoria of having the freedom to work from home.

Sure, we’ve moved everything to the ether. Video calls and a myriad of communication channels are the very backbone of the “New Normal”. It’s a mad melee, an urgent and all important need for people, businesses, governments, all manner of organisations and individuals to keep abreast, to exist and survive. No more gentle handholding, coaxing, cajoling, meeting over that drink, cup of coffee, meal, a game of golf or tennis. In person counselling, forget it. Sizing up people, opportunities, situations are a tad more challenging. Right?

Let’s touch upon comms via the ether. Dunno about you, but this the list of aps I ended up with for professional and pesonal reasons: Skype, Viber, WhatsApp, Teams, Zoom, Hangouts, Telegram, Meet, Slack, Signal. Phew! Betcha my list is arguably the longest! There’s more, but I ran out of breath! Probably not a good thing to say “ran out of breath”, COVID you see? Each one of them just DEMANDS that they shall not be ignored.The biggest threat to moving out of traditional comms channels and opening up too many is having to exchange official documents and artifacts out of company domains. The other real menace is taking decisions and recording them via messenger apps and not documenting things via emails and other official channels of communication. Even worse is that all decisions taken via chat and messages and all artifacts are duly deposited into central repositories for reuse and easy retrieval. I operate on an “evidence on no trust basis” when it comes to work so for me, BIG RED FLAG this one.

“Perhaps one of the most irksome things I encounter on a online meeting, is when I ask someone to pull up a document or spreadsheet using screen sharing and I get a response, “Sir, I’ve logged in using my phone!”. Its a friggin’ official call, at a pre-designated time, you should be on your laptop, why in the heck are you on your phone? I don’t say this, but that is what I’m thinking when this happens! Then there are real issues of call drops, network fluctuations and power failures. Not exactly fun“.

We were looking for collaborative tools that are suited to the times we live in and during evaluation I came across two really cool solutions, worth noteable mention. https://monday.com and https://www.journyz.com/resources/. Journyz is a startup and has this collaborative thing down pat, whereas Monday.com is more established. One covers the collaborative aspects via gamification and employee engagement (so essential and central to People) whereas the other takes more of a Project Management approach.

On the other side of of too much or too little distance, coupled with comms via the ether, is a whole new paradigm! We are in the direct path of this digital onslaught. Webinars as opposed to seminars, which can be great, given that you don’t need to travel to attend. Then there are online gym instructors, fitness coaches, life coaches, self professed home chefs (self included), product promotions and what have you. No fault of theirs, but they are all online, we are all online, we’re all spamming, each craving and demanding attention, in your face, like it or not, interested or not. Just like I’m in your face right now! We can’t be seen or heard in person these days (in the traditional physical sense), so we do the next best thing, we take it all online. Heck, spamming has taken on a whole new meaning these days! 

There is the good, the bad and the ugly side of online, of digital. On the one hand, all we need to do is sign up, or hit subscribe and we have access to a body of knowledge that we really didn't have time for before, but on the flip side, we have huge distracting forces, that threaten to diminish focus and can be very invasive the ugly side of which is manifest if we permit it to take over our lives completely.

The real trick is to get virtual to work for you, to discipline its ability to invade and take only what’s conducive to achieve the most essential things, work related efficiencies, social interaction that is necessary and new learning. Just get it to work for you!

In ending I will repeat what I ended the last article with, that this is the time for compassion, to be more sensitive to People, to their dilemas, to the limitations faced and wholeheartedly recognize that there are People out there, who are making a difference, contributing at times when its much more difficult, for without People, without You and Me and Everybody In-Between, we just won’t make it!

The Virtual Existence Conundrum: PT 2 – poison pill defence.

In the hostile takeover business there is this thing called The Poison Pill Defence, where the target company usually comes up with a plan to thwart the hostile takeover. Whats happening now is very similar, except this isn’t a corporate game, its become a simple matter of survival! So when the magnitude of this “thing” finally manifested, au naturalle, everyone cut back = Poison Pill Defence. Cut back spending on just about on every possible bogey on the radar.

Picking up from where I left off in Part 1, this piece is about the impact on Business. Though I initially thought to make this one about People, I reasoned that adversity affecting Businesses and the Economy in general, is the very source for the unprecedented angst, anxiety and uncertainity in the minds of people and therefore reversed the order of release (watch out for the People issues in Part 3 in this series).

That Economies are in dire straits is now a well established fact and its also clear that initial forecasts fell short of realities now emerging. India seems to be leading the charge, what with a 23% drop in GDP, Britain and France following closely and other leading countries in the double digits.

Let’s look at the recently published numbers and compare them to initial forecasts from back in March’20 or thereabouts. The World Bank forecast a contraction of 5.2 % for 2020, predicting a shrinking by 7% of advanced economies and emerging and developing economies shrinking by 2.5%. The latest Q2 numbers in the infographic below provide strong indication that the period end numbers will be far worse than the initial forecasts. There is some debate and discussion on how the published numbers should be interpreted, but whichever way one chooses to interpret, the situation is far worse than was earlier guaged.

Economies are all about the Green or whatever colour paper or plastic your currency notes are printed on. Printed? Think surface contamination! Now think, contactless, paperless. Think DIGITAL! A completely different paradigm. Interesting though, as Chris Skinner, an authority on FinTech and Digital opines, Digital is just 1 – 2% done and these estimates are Pre-Covid. Meaning what exactly? Simply this, that the need to accelerate digital has gone up by a factor of 10? 100?

Looking at the big names who have gone almost bust, we see that those having a strong digital presense are the ones who are weathering the storm (not the teacup variety) much better that others. Despite that this thrust for Digital is no longer something that can be relegated to a future date, decision making has slowed, budgets have been slashed, cashflows seem not to permit investments despite the clear need. And then there is the fact that Digital encompasses a relook and rethink from the ground up and that presents a challenge when you can’t get all in the same room at once.

And then we have China, putting out numbers that suggest that it is unaffected? Go figure! Whats more? There is a whistleblower virologist who claims that this virus is man made, that it was already spreading was a given and did naught to act in time and supressed the facts. If indeed this is the reality isn’t this nothing short of mass genocide and akin to war crimes?

Of course her claims are being disputed by all concerned parties (naturally), but Dr. Li-Meng Yan promised to release incontrovertial evidence. Let’s see how that pans out, but let’s keep in mind that China still posts numbers that are contrarian to the global decline in GDP! So what seems to have insulated China? Are the numbers even real?

It’s been one hairy ride thus far and there’s no saying how much longer this lasts. Think mutation, think community spread, think “we’re all going to get it” kinda magnitude or so they say. But hopefully we will all have developed immunity by the time it hits those who have not yet been affected.

In the hostile takeover business there is this thing called “The Poison Pill Defence”, where the target company usually comes up with a plan to thwart the hostile takeover. Whats happening now is very similar, except this isn’t a corporate game, its become a very matter of survival! So when the magnitude of this “thing” finally manifested, au naturalle, everyone cut back = Poison Pill Defence. Cut back spending on just about on every possible bogey on the radar.

What do the people upstairs do when faced with looming reversals? Business ain’t growing so increasing renevues is not a viable option, but cutting cost is. Typically the cost centre’s that go under the lamp are People Costs, Travel Costs, Real Estate, Benefits, Incentives, Variable Comp and carrying cost of inventories. Three main approaches? Either you look at the pecking order and start high (I’ve been at the receiving end of this in a past life and barely survived), or then you look at the bottom of the pyramid and lay off enmasse or then you do a bit of both. Travel costs went out the window anyway and did save up oodles of cash. Business continuity was maintained on the backbone of digital communication channels (look out for my article covering this all important lifeline).

Laying people off, salary freezes, salary deferments, pulling out of projects and such measures were frowned upon by many industry stalwarts (all well intended I’m sure) on every channel, social, professional, the tube, print and online. I however have a nagging question now and indeed had this nagging question then.

Most of the comments, opinions and the preaching from the pulpit kinda advise not to lay off etc came from as I said, industry stalwarts and perhaps they have the luxury to say these things. But what about smaller companies? Ones that do not have deep pockets, who have not had the opportunity to shore up cash and build contingency reserves? What about startups? If I’m not mistaken, startups don’t have much more than 3-6 months of a runway (depending on what stage they are in) AND now by the by there is this business downturn…. So many startups are in the quick app space, relying on downloads and mass market usage for their survival (and the potential of obscene valuations if the idea sells to the deep pockets). Don’t forget the statistic that 80% or so of startups fail and now this! Startups that were frugal, kept their cost base and ops costs minimalist will have longer runways and have so much more of a chance to weather this, but even they will look to be even more minimalist at times like this. Poison Pill Defence again.

Governments, Organizations, both big and small, as well as solely owned businesses are the ones generating employment. So isn’t it better to do the cost containment measures and ensure survival, albeit with a sustainable resource base, as opposed to letting the whole thing go Kaput? I mean how many companies or for that matter governments have pockets that deep, that they carry on as if nothing happened? Organizations can’t possibly raise funds nor increase revenue. Governments can’t rely on increasing tax revenue nor increase the tax rate. Banks can lend, as some banks are doing aggressively, but what about when its time to collect? What about the NPAs and delinquincy rates as incomes dwindle?

See the graphic from my previous post, where I’ve made an attempt to depict the domino effect, so I won’t go on about it here…

Will not “the greater common good” approach rule the roost? It’s war as I said in my earlier article, nary a bullet fired. Well maybe it was engineered as this whistleblower seems to suggest and if that’s the case then that is something completely different.

Chanakya Pandit (Circa 321–297 BCE), a renowned Brahmin (not a popular thing in India these days, to say you’re a Brahmin), thinker, philosopher, political genius (Author of Chanakya Niti), guru and kingmaker (seems I’m from his lineage – no jokes) asked Chandragupta Maurya (the King he made), What is the FIRST DUTY of a King? Everyone I ask, almost everyone, says things like, take care of his subjects, protect his subjects, create wealth, be just and so on. Hell no! That’s NOT it at all. The FIRST and FOREMOST duty of a King is to guard his throne. No throne, no subjects and no subjects means the King can’t do squat!

Similarly, Organisations need to survive, ie: they need to take care of themselves first, so therefore the cutbacks, layoffs and so on. In war, innocents fall by the wayside and we are in a war, innit? So either live to fight another day or then go out with a bang! There it is! Take your pick.

Mighty unpopular, these utterances. I’m sure I am being called insensitive right about now. But hey! Don’t shoot the messenger, cause this particular messenger is the “going out with a bang” kinda messenger and sometimes messengers are required to deliver unpleasant messages and that can potentially end up with noggin rolling and being sent back to source packed in a box.

We want to sit safely in our comfortable homes, watching Netflix and Prime, ordering takeaway and yet we are sending Doctors, healthworkers and others who keep the lights on for us, our networks up and running, out into battle DAY IN AND DAY OUT? We want our farmers out in the fields sowing and harvesting while we don’t want to step out.

I have this really cose friend, a Doctor. She doesn’t have the CHOICE to stay safe. She’s been commandeered! If she wants to stay safe she looses her licence to practice. So you see the dilemma? Throw away years of hard work, experience, knowledge and a lot of cash invested in med school fees, or show up to save others! Simple choice, its BINARY. She’s no less than a hero or heroine, she’s an Avenger, no less, fighting Thanos. Doctors are being given targets I hear and in Mysore a Doctor committed suicide, alledgedly due to this.

Some of us? All we want is our Veggies and then there are others who still want their luxuries. We want to order online (Digital is great is it not?) from the saftey of our homes. We want people to show up for work so we can be serviced with no inconvenience. There is a real person at the end of the last mile. We need those people to save lives and treat patients, we need those people to produce our luxuries and conveniences, we need those people to fuel the food industry and we need people to deliver stuff to us safely. We can’t teleport stuff from the shop floor or for that matter the farm, to our homes and neither will our groceries and staples materialize before us, at least not yet!

  1. Lockdowns, both local and international as the numbers are now tellin’ us, created the first wave and entire industries Travel and Tourism, the Restaurant Business, the Airline Industry, were all hit.
  2. The next wave took out the supply chain, supplying to and feeding off those industries.
  3. The third wave set in when cash became scarce and the cascading impact of the cutbacks came into our homes compelling many to curb spending and only take care of essentials. That took out the fashion and glamour and so many such industries.
  4. The next BIG one is Real Estate, so when we figured that WFH and Remote Working is something that can be made to outlast temporary BCP Ops, Real Estate suddenly became a pariah. There you have it, another one bites the dust!

Not all businesses can be run remotely, nor can all services be rendered remotely, with some needing that physical contact, yet physical contact is taboo. This is further amplified when we’re taking about countries who still have a largely agrarian economic model and support structure purely based on cash for daily livelyhoods.

Of course the long term sustainability of 100% remote working, even if theoretically within the realm of possibility, remains to be seen, not just in terms of practicality, support and operational models, but also in terms of impact on people, families relationships. That’s the hidden impact not often forming part of the math (coming up in the next part).

The Global Economy cannot just shut down and even if COVID does not dissapate as quickly as we’d like or just disappear like a bad dream, businesses that did not die completely will pick thmselves up, morph, adapt and start working under a new set of rules, a new set of realities, albeit fraught with risks. Money needs to start flowing again, people need to work to earn and survive. Mouths need feeding, students need to continue learning.

As I said in Part 1, Business Models are rapidly polarizing depending how big the ship is….sooo much harder to get a BIG ship to turn around. Economic Models are changing, the way we do business is changing and in cases have already changed a while ago. The fundamentals may not have changed a lot but, everything around the fundamentals has changed and perhaps in some cases the fundamentals too! The old rules need a serious dose of refresh. Read more about this in an interesting article on Management Theories, here is the link: https://thefinanser.com/2020/09/does-management-theory-work-anymore.html/

Therefore we’re seeing lockdowns being lifted, curbs on travel are being relaxed and this is really the worst possible Catch 22. Damned if you do – Damned if you don’t! Poison Pill Defence once again. The numbers don’t lie. Harsh realities need to be faced, risks will need to be taken and we will all need to move on, stop living in fear, remain cautious and take every possible precaution, BUT STOP living in fear.

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