What can you thank the Coronavirus for?

This week my wife assigned her nieces and nephews some homework. 

She asked them to write two letters to the Coronavirus. In one, she wanted them to start, “I hate you coronavirus…” and then write down all the crummy things that happened since the shutdown. 

In the second letter, she asked them to start with, “Coronavirus, I’m so thankful for…” and write down all the good things that happened during the quarantine. 

I was curious about that second letter!

We’ve all got a lot of complaints about the Coronavirus shutdown, but what could be good about it?

We’ve made a LOT of changes

Our organizations have gone through unprecedented transformation in the last two months! Some have said that we’ve done two years of digital transformation work in 8 short weeks! (OK, the weeks did feel long, didn’t they.)

We’ve all had people on our teams who have learned new things, and thought up new ways to deliver. People who may have resisted change were we not in crisis.

We’ve tracked down ways we were wasting time and money and found some new ideas for ways to do things, in record time. 

Over the last two months, the pace of innovation in many of my client companies has been incredible. 

That’s something to be thankful for!

How did we do it?

How were you and your team able to find solutions to these problems? 

You got everything up and running in this new way without holding a bunch of meetings and examining every angle and setting up a project plan with weekly status review meetings? 

It’s worth stopping and looking at how that happened. 

Maybe you, as the business owner, just took it on yourself, made a bunch of decisions and got stuff done. OK, now you know you can do that. 

You may have found a few team members who were resourceful and stepped up to help others. Recognize that. 

What did we learn

• Are there some ways of working together that you want to hold onto? 
• Are there some tools that you found that everyone’s embracing?
• Are there some things you’ve left behind that you don’t want to pick back up?

This might be a good topic for discussion in your next leadership team meeting. What can you learn from this crisis that will make you stronger going forward?

Shoot me back a reply; I’d love to hear the answer to those questions!