Living and Leading in the Covid-19 Economy

One thing is clear listening to the news these days, whether we get back to normal sooner or later, “normal” won’t be normal for a while. Scott Gotlieb, former FDA Commissioner captured for me what to prepare for: the 80% economy. In the 80% Covid-19 economy, there will be no massively packed parades, sports events, conferences and entertainment gatherings. We’ll spend more time at home than any of us remember. What we used to spend on these things will go elsewhere. 

So some INpower strategies to think about living and leading in the 80%, COVID-19 economy.

Getting Your Head Around the 80% COVID-19 Economy

The 80% economy, just like we’re experiencing today, will shift everything into a new balance. In the last few weeks, investments of money, time and energy of all kinds have flooded online and into isolation, sucking support from some activities and businesses and flooding it to others. 

If you happen to be in a position of plenty for the moment, many of your colleagues, employees, customers and friends will not be. For some, their suffering will only grow, and their ability to contribute to you, with their focus, time and purchases will come under strain. 

If you’re in one of the harder hit positions, your work, employees, customers and colleagues have already begun the response to the hard new reality. You may experience fear and anxiety and working to rebalance it with hope. 

Many of us have instinctively adjusted to the reality of the rebalancing, but most of us are unconsciously acting as though this is a short-term constriction. We want normal to return so we imagine the future to look something like normal. It is not. Over months and even years, the rebalancing of the 80% COVID-19 economy will affect us in new, hard to predict, ways. 

What this means for you, your family and your business, of course, is probably still becoming fuzzily clear to you, as it is for all of us. While I don’t know what the future really looks like, I know that when we adjust by aligning to the following principles, the future will be easier to live and lead in.

INNOVATION: Less Will Have to Be More

While this seems obvious on its face, we’ll only find our way in the 80% economy when we’ve truly accepted the principle that reaching our objectives isn’t possible by reducing or reallocating, we must reinvent. We must solve the puzzle of achieving our core objectives in dramatically new ways. We must imagine new ways to mobilize the resources we have to find the most executable path to where we want to be. If your mission is to:

True innovation is one part creativity and one part discipline. You must throw the box away. And you must demand realism and excellence in both conceiving of, and executing, a new path forward.

Not sure how to begin? Get a blank piece of paper. Put your core mission on the right. Put your actual resources and capabilities on the left. Draw a new line between them. 

If your mission is only to make money–reconsider your mission. The world needs more from you. Find a way to make money and grow your soul at the same time. There’s always a way..

COMPASSION: Helping Others With Our Hearts and Minds

We’re used to helping each other in ways that usually boil down to action. What can we do for them? What can we give them? We pay our employees. We have one-on-ones and meetings with our customers and colleagues. We send things to our customers. We build a playground or deliver a meal for volunteer day. We contribute money to those in need. We buy our kids video games. In many ways, all these actions take on even greater significance in the 80% COVID-19 economy.

And we will take fewer actions like this than we did before. The reduction in social time, commuting and interaction will, whether we want it or not, give us a little time back in our days. And with that time, comes the possibility of more mental and emotional energy, if we allow it in. This is true whether you’re out of work, or slammed with even more work. It’s true whether you’re on the top or the bottom of the leadership ladder. It’s a new fact of life for all of us.

Being able to spend less physical energy with other people does not mean their need, or our own, is any smaller. It’s probably larger. Especially for people who live alone, or with children requiring more parental entertainment, the new balance brings new needs for relationship. And even so, without spending so much of our energy socially, we can reallocate some of that energy to acts of compassion and mindfulness. We can choose to spend it:

• On ourselves and those we love. 
• Getting to know our customers better.
• Coaching and mentoring our employees.
• Rebalancing how we prioritize our stakeholders.
• Learning the value of things we can give without doing anything at all.

Not sure what you have to give without doing anything? Ask your heart and let it guide you.

LETTING GO: Only What Matters, Matters

Making room for new ways of being and doing, like those outlined above, means dumping the leftover assets, investments, assumptions, beliefs and emotions that no longer promise a return in the 80% economy. This always sounds easier than it is, because we’ve all made huge investments of money, time, expectation and energy in the stuff we need to dump. 

It’s like getting on the life raft with only what you can take with you. Especially when you have to dump closely-held dreams and numbers off your balance sheet, whether in the form of prospective income or sunk costs, this hurts. A lot. 

And yet, dump them we must. No one will get away without dumping something. So prepare for the discomfort and pain. Accept and lean into it when it’s time comes. Bear your pain and help others bear theirs. Be prepared to dump:

• Financial assets.
• Future investments.
• Travel plans.
• Years of retirement.
• Employees.
• Dreams.
• Busyness.
• Excuses. 

Dumping hurts. And choosing to let go so you can clear the path to what matters most is cleansing. 

Choose the cleanse. Let go over whatever you must, without dumping that which matters most.  Let it all go with compassion, for yourself and for everyone else affected. Do what you can to ease the pain for everyone along the way, and dump that which you can’t take forward. 

Not sure how to let go? Give it to someone else, rather than letting it go to waste.

TRANSFORMATION: Wanting the Future You Have

No butterfly ever came into being without a fuzzy little caterpillar dissolving into goo. I’m pretty sure that caterpillar wasn’t too happy about its future, and yet today it flies. And it does so by allowing its most core and life-giving DNA to do its job without resistance.

In our daily business life, this analogy will work on many levels. What is the most life-giving “DNA” in your job, your team, your company or yourself? How can you find it and give it room to grow into what it must become? 

You begin by being willing to innovate and let go with compassion, but how do you actually DO the thing that will transform your life and your business? It starts by letting go, stripping it all bare and finding the bones of the thing. In your:

• Self, the bones are in your purpose, passions and gifts.
• Family and community, the bones are in the people and your love for, and commitment to, them.
• Career, the bones are in your purpose, talents and skills.
• Team, the bones are in your collective purpose, talents and skills.
• Company, the bones are in your mission, culture and employees.

Focus on the bones and then build yourself and others around you back up in ways responsive to the new environment. Talk to others, your family, your employees and your customers, about what their needs will be in the 80% economy. Build yourself back up to provide that thing, even if it looks different than those other things you dumped and cleansed yourself of. Be ready to look different when you’re up and going.

There will be some point in the days ahead where the discomfort, anxiety, worry and fear part just enough to give you a glimpse of what could be in your future. When you see it, be prepared for your heart to lift. All you must do in that moment is let your heart lift. Allow yourself to imagine a positive future and become the person, the business, the leader it demands of you. That’s how you win the game of the 80% COVID-19 economy.