In these bizarre, shape-shifting days we live in, it seems that every second, every minute is scrutinized with an overly zealous eye. What small indicators can we find to understand better the effects and impacts of the COVID-19 rampage around the world? What tiny signals in the noise can we hold onto that help us make sense of what is transpiring? We are all desperately trying to alleviate an all-engulfing fear and a deep sense of insecurity and vulnerability.
This makes it very difficult to release ourselves from the NOW, the immediate, the next update, the next set of statistics that will (re)inform us, making us (re)evaluate, (re)think, and (re)plan what we had taken as given just yesterday. Our sense of identity is intrinsically linked to the NOW. This, as explained by a good friend of mine with a Ph.D. in psychology, is our human condition. Our identity is not based on what will happen 2 years out, neither is it based on what happened 2 years ago, it is anchored very much in the HERE & NOW.
This situation has made me reflect on time. How do we plan for the future? Can we transcend our own identity? How is it humanly possible to plan for tomorrow and for the next 5 or 10 years?
The headline “Two weeks straight from hell” came from an entrepreneur I greatly respect, whom I have known, followed, and invested behind for the last 5 years. He is thoughtful and very successful. But his business, like many other businesses, has been hit hard by the COVID-19 crisis.
As a leader, what do you do in this type of crisis? Mostly, there are no good choices. Cut too fast or too deep, and you may survive but could end up as one of the “living dead.” Cut too little or too late, and you may not survive the crisis at all. Most observers say we tend to underestimate the depth of crises. As our advisor, Esko Aho, the former Finnish Prime Minister who led Finland through the crisis caused by the collapse of the Russian economy, said in an interview we published this week: “We tend to underestimate the depth of downturns when they emerge. Every black swan has changed and will change the world dramatically. The values and functions of our societies are being tested.”
Our natural reaction when in crisis mode is to live minute to minute, hour to hour… Who cares about next year right now? I am busy surviving…
Jeff Bezos has famously been quoted as saying: “When somebody…congratulates Amazon on a good quarter…I say thank you. But what I’m thinking to myself is…those quarterly results were actually pretty much fully baked about 3 years ago. Today I’m working on a quarter that is going to happen way in the future. Not next quarter. Next quarter, for all practical purposes, is done already, and it has probably been done for a couple of years.” Granted, this quote was not offered in a middle of an immediate crisis, but rather around a standard quarterly result commentary. And this is how CEOs should generally operate, with hundreds or thousands of people in an organisation, you cannot implement a change in one quarter and expect immediate effects. Investing in R&D pays off several years later, and whether it’s acquiring real estate or building factories or warehouses, all investments like that take time to play out and show up in your results. There is little “coincidence” in Amazon’s quarters. Quarterly reporting, in my view, has led to an unfortunate “short-termism,” which, in many cases, is not leading to the style of thinking and vision that an Amazon has been led by over the years.
During his 26 years as a football coach, he won 38 trophies, including 13 Premier League, 5 FA cups, and 2 Champions League titles. He was knighted in the 1999 Queen’s Birthday Honours list for his services to the game. Yes, I’m speaking of none other than Sir Alex Ferguson. A remarkable manager, he was famous for his ability to manage collections of increasingly rich young men, many with big egos, even bigger self confidence, and larger-than-life ambitions. He took over as manager at Manchester United in 1986. However, his first title with Manchester United didn’t come until 1993, after which they won four titles in a row. No coincidence. Many players were promoted from the youth academy that Sir Alex helped build up. Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, and David Beckham were all youth academy players under Alex Ferguson’s reign, and have all been inaugurated into the English Football Hall of Fame. Only by taking a long-term view — developing and promoting players from the youth academy and constantly tinkering with the team — was Sir Alex able to reign so successfully for so long. And make no mistake, Sir Alex is no stranger to crisis management; as a manager, you have one at your hands every time your results slump or your players get themselves into a controversy — remember Eric Cantona?
“We live 100 years, but suppose we lived a billion years. A stone would be just a moment in which some sand gets together and then it disaggregates, so it’s just a momentary getting-together of sand.” So said author and physicist Carlo Rovelli. Carlo Rovelli is no ordinary physicist; he is a brilliant mind that can also explain, in simple terms, concepts like dark matter, quantum theory, and the bending of space-time. His main point is that time, to us mere mortals, is like water to fish. We don’t see it; it is just THERE in its inevitable march forward. Or, to use Carlo’s metaphor, we think earth is flat when we just look around us, but when we look at ourselves from further away, we see that the earth is a sphere. Similarly, with time, our intuition about time is not so much incorrect, but rather incomplete. When you look at time with the eyes of a physicist, it does not exist as a constant passing or inevitable flow, it is bent and warped in quantum gravity and, in fact, may not really exist!!! According to Carlo Rovelli, only interactions exist. For a deeper perspective, I can highly recommend reading his books, The Order of Time and Seven Brief Lessons on Physics.
So, if you are mired head-down in the hourly toil of figuring out how to manage through the COVID-19 crisis, take a deep breath, and take a few moments to reflect on how other great minds have managed, and how they relate to time.
You CAN transcend your own identity…and the NOW. Take your time! Stay safe, stay healthy, and Godspeed.
Have great week.
Bo
