HOW TO FIND A NEW VISION TO COMBAT THE COVID-19 FATIGUE

When you ask people how they are doing and get beyond the usual answers of “I’m fine” or “I’m managing through it,” a deeper level of challenges emerges: “I’m anxious, overwhelmed, and lonely,” “I’m completely burned out,” “I’ve lost my sense of optimism,” “I’m not sure how much longer I can keep going like this.” Personally, I believe that most of us are losing the energy and the adrenaline we had in the past months to respond fast and surprisingly well to unprecedented challenges. Companies which didn’t adapt to the opportunity suffered the consequences of the pandemic, in a nutshell, businesses with no clear vision to combat the outbreak, are eroding the adrenaline and the high-energy sprints that employees had in the previous wave. Thus, people are trying to sprint through what has become a marathon, but an unsustainable pace. This is why we find ourselves in the early stages of a potentially prolonged period of disillusionment, grief, and exhaustion—a period that may get worse before it gets better, a fatigue period.

In my personal experience, I have noticed that successful organizations are experimenting with different approaches, most notably in the pharmaceutical environment where the biggest challenge is the “vaccine”, which is such an important race that we cannot afford to lose. So, how are organizations going to thrive in the future, in particular how do they keep up the energy and spirit of their employees? I said in my last article (follow the link https://simonerebora.com/this-the-time-to-react-we-are-born-to-defeat-covid-19) that we need to:

- Focus on what we can do, rather than what we cannot do

- We must forget what we already known about transformation and change management doesn't matter anymore, because it is no longer applicable in this reality

- Be creative and start to imagine positive outcomes even if they look strange

- Before reacting, imprint in your mind that we can’t thrive on the chaos, but we must thrive in the chaos

Today, I would like to give you another important reflection point to help organizations and employees to defeat the pandemic fatigue and create a brighter future: essentially, we must develop a new vision and a different strategy.

I’m often amazed at how many “Leaders” try to transform a Team group or worse an organization using methods that are like authoritarian decree or micromanagement. These approaches have been effective since the industrial revolution, but today, in a complex modern environment where societies work in a matrix, this approach doesn’t work well anymore. Authoritarianism, without monarchical or totalitarian power, is unlikely to break through the forces of resistance; micromanagement tries to get around this issue by specifying what employees should do in detail and the monitoring compliance. We can have the power to break the status quo, encouraging people to overcoming fatigue and disengagement by the sharing of a new vision that empowers rather than disempowers.

In a complex period and difficult process, a good vision serves three important objectives:

1) clarify the general direction of change, which eases goal setting and objectives, as well as the inability to make decisions can disappear

2) motivate people to take action in the right direction, making clear that sacrifices done now will take more benefits in the future

3) coordinate the actions of different people in a remarkably fast and efficient way, helping them to work with an acceptable degree of autonomy and yet not trip over each other

Recently I’ve been reading an interesting book called “Leading Change”, written by John P. Kotter, Professor of Leadership, Emeritus, at Harvard Business School, in that book there is a chapter on the importance of having an effective vision. He says that without a vision, strategy making can be a much more contentious activity and budgeting can dissolve into a mindless exercise of taking last year’s numbers and changing them 5 % one way or the other. Kotter identified the relationship of vision, strategies, plans and budget dividing into two different areas Leadership and Management:

We could consider vision as a sensible and appealing picture of the future, directly connected to strategies, a logic for how the vision can be achieved. Nevertheless, strategies are correlated to plans (specific steps and timetables to implement the strategies) and budget (plans converted into financial projections and goals).

Generally people say that vision isn’t a skill that can be trained or developed, and they are right, but what we can do is training and developing the features of the vision, in order to focus on the characteristics that sustain vision so as to make leaders able to influence the future and increase the awareness of their means. In accordance with Kotter and his thought, vision should be underpinned by:

- Imagination: conveys a frame of what the future will look like

- Desire: appeals to the long-term interests of employees, customers, stockholders, and whoever has a stake in the company

- Feasibility: comprises ambitious, but realistic and attainable goals

- Concentration: is clear enough to provide guidance in decision making

- Flexibility: allow individual initiatives and alternative responses in light of changing conditions

- Communication: is easy to communicate, it should be explained within 5 minutes (a little bit more than an elevator pitch)

Effective visions are always focused enough to lead employees, but not enough to lead them in the best way! After detecting an effective vision, it is crucial share with people how the company can create it; vision creation is almost always a messy, and sometimes emotionally charged exercise. I’ll talk about that in the next article.

What do you think about that?

let me know your feedback!