Accelerating the Future
COVID-19 is wreaking immeasurable suffering, loss of life, mass job losses and shutting down huge portions of the global economy. It's accelerating changes in human and economic behaviour that people thought were five or 10 years away to becoming normal within months - from billions of people WFH overnight (and knowing what WFH means), to national telehealth schemes being rolled out in weeks.
At Integral we have accelerated our own digital projects launching new live online workshops & customised training with clients. Like a restaurant, we're going dark on our F2F services and focussing on our digital leadership development services – here on Able. We've also found we're practising meditation as a group more frequently and sharing that with the community through drop-in mindfulness sessions – join here (download ics-file).
But we continue to explore how we best grow through & beyond the immediate present and what life looks like on the other side? Which professional, personal and communal behaviours will become the new normal and how do we help build a better future in this context?
Despite the immediate pressures of COVID-19, we see the best leaders and teams are carving out dedicated time to develop their strategy. Ensuring the work they do now is aligned to the emerging future they are passionate about building.
All the best,
Jonah
💡 Live Public Webinars
Join or share our series of free live webinars:
Meditation Sessions: our chairman Dr Ron Cacioppe runs these 15 minute guided mindfulness sessions. Ron has been meditating for 40 years and founded the Zen Group of WA way before meditation was hip. All welcome - beginner or experienced. Join Ron every Tuesday at 9am (GMT +8) > join here (download ics-file).
Learning Sessions: on wellbeing, team collaboration and leading through crisis. Our next session is today (Friday 24/4) at 10:30 (GMT +8) on How to stay productive when working from home with Peta Main. Download calendar file here and join us. The webinars are weekly every Friday from 10:30-11:15 am (GMT +8) > register to receive updates here.
📗 Reading
As the saying goes "necessity is the mother of invention". Some articles on how COVID-19 is changing human & economic behaviour and several thoughts on the future:
How will COVID-19 impact business? McKinsey has an executive briefing they constantly update > link here.
Envisaging the Future: Great article from HBR on developing your strategy by envisaging the future post-crisis and working back > link here.
Pandemics as Crucibles for Change: If history is a guide, this pandemic will spark a wave of innovation > link here.
Everything on Zoom: Zoom has gone from 10m to 200m daily users and everybody from the UK Parliament (link here) to Llama's are having Zoom calls (link here).
Live Communal Culture: live cultural experiences are moving online. Vogue has live public Zoom calls with senior industry figures (link here), massive Las Vegas conferences are now online only (link here) and Shanghai Fashion week recently streamed live to 2.5M viewers (link here).
Forced Experiments & Innovation: Prior to COVID-19 a lot of services were online, but now we don’t have a choice - we’re shut indoors for weeks or months. What does that mean for work, health, education and the people left behind? > link here.
Kick Starting Future Vaccines: Bill Gates is accelerating innovation by funding 7 new factories for potential coronavirus vaccines even before we know which will be successful > link here.