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The Post-COVID-19 Business World - Part 1: Overview

Surveying the changed environment in the wake of this epidemiological black swan event

By David WyldPublished 4 years ago 6 min read
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Photo by Qurratul Ayin Sadia on Unsplash

We are all living today through what history will undoubtedly look upon as nothing less than a watershed event. Yes, the COVID-19/coronavirus pandemic is exacting a terrible toll both around the world and right here at home in the United States. Sadly, the projections only get worse each and every day on how many will be infected and how many will die from this disease outbreak. In 2020, we have all been sadly reminded that, as the great musical philosopher Jesus Jones sang about the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of communism, that yes, “the world could change at the blink of an eye…

The Black Swan That Is COVID-19

In the business realm, we have talked for years about what are referred to as “Black Swan” events. As defined in Investopedia, these are:

A black swan is an unpredictable event that is beyond what is normally expected of a situation and has potentially severe consequences. Black swan events are characterized by their extreme rarity, their severe impact, and the widespread insistence they were obvious in hindsight.

While the “after action reviews” on the COVID-19 pandemic and how governments at all levels around the world responded to this event should be “interesting” to say the least, there will be months and even years for such reviews of this pandemic. However, it is safe to say that the current pandemic will surely qualify as the biggest Black Swan event to happen since finance professor and thinker Nassim Nicholas Taleb introduced the concept from the natural world into the financial/business realm just over a decade ago in his 2007 book, aptly titled The Black Swan. This was timely, since the book and the concept came to light right before the financial crisis of 2008 — what we thought would have been the biggest Black Swan event of this century — until now.

By Yulia Gadalina on Unsplash

Los Angeles Times columnist Victoria Kim recently wrote that the coronavirus pandemic presents us with a unique event in modern history, observing that:

It’s a grand social experiment of an unprecedented scale. When we emerge from weeks or months of distancing from one another, will we crave and relish human contact, or realize how comfortably we can live without it? What will that do to us?…The novel coronavirus has added to even the most fleeting of interactions a sense of peril, changing the risk-benefit calculus of the minute, mundane human encounters that thread our daily lives. Will that exchange with the store clerk, that brush on the subway, that elevator ride be the fateful moment the invisible virus makes its entry?

Yes, the COVID-19 pandemic is the very definition of a black swan event. Now, how can you, should you, must you react in your particular line of business with the resources — and yes, with the limitations — that you have?

By Dane Deaner on Unsplash

What Management Must Do in the Post-Pandemic World to Come

Whether it is a month or a few months — or hopefully not more — there will be an “after the pandemic” business environment. And all round the world, from the biggest retail companies to the local neighborhood restaurant, managers will be trying to navigate in the post-COVID-19 world. And let there be no doubt, it will be a changed — a severely changed — business environment. And that is why this series of articles will be trying to address a central question: What are the things that we did in business before the pandemic that will have to change — and change quickly — for companies to survive and even thrive in the post-coronavirus world? There are so many things that will need to be addressed — and addressed quickly — by companies of all types and all sizes — and literally all at once!

And so in this series of articles, we will examine how businesses must quickly change their thinking and, in many cases, their operations to cope with a very changed consumer base in the wake of this Black Swan event. We will look at industries as diverse as retail, restaurants, and hotels to banking and financial services and even manufacturing and distribution. We will see that across the board, companies large and small alike will need to adapt to changing consumer expectations and rethink many of the ways that they operated before March 2020 to attract and retain customers in the post-coronavirus competitive landscape. We will look at technical and not-so-technical changes that must be made — and made today — to better serve a very changed consumer in the wake of this pandemic.

In a nutshell, we believe, modifying the classic saying slightly for these fast-changing times, “cleanliness will be next to godliness” in the post-COVID-19 world of commerce — both on the macro level and especially on the micro level. The present hyperfocus on safety from germs and cleanliness/hygiene, as well as social distancing, will not diminish overnight once the initial threat is gone from the coronavirus. Indeed, it is highly likely that lasting, substantive changes will need to be undertaken by businesses of all types and sizes to serve what will be a far more health-focused, are we say almost “germaphobic” consumer in the wake of this pandemic.

We may well see a rush for people to “return to normal” and go shopping, go eat out, go stay at hotels, and yes, even get on airplanes again. However, after that “Day 1” reaction, how will people shop, eat, travel, communicate, work, etc. in the post-corona world? That is literally the trillion dollar question facing almost every business today. And the answers that companies will put in place may well determine their prospects for not just short-term recovery from the “instant recession” we are going through, but their outlook for success for many years to come.

Conclusion

This will be an interesting journey for all us as we go through this grand social experiment! Our goal in this article series that will be forthcoming over the next few weeks (yes, written in quarantine!) will be to provide valuable, actionable insights for managers to act upon in order to succeed in the very changed environment that we will have coming out of the biggest — hopefully — epidemiological Black Swan event of our lifetimes. Please follow me here on Medium for updates as each article is released on the necessary changes that companies both big and small will need to undertake now to survive — and to thrive — in the post-COVID-19 world!

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David C. Wyld ([email protected]) is a Professor of Management at Southeastern Louisiana University outside New Orleans. He is a noted business consultant and speaker/writer on contemporary management issues.

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About the Creator

David Wyld

Professor, Consultant, Doer. Founder/Publisher of The IDEA Publishing (http://www.theideapublishing.com/) & Modern Business Press (http://www.modernbusinesspress.com)

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