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Leadership
What Does It Take to Not Only Survive But Thrive During the Pandemic?
The road to post-pandemic leadership.
Posted March 22, 2021 Reviewed by Lybi Ma
Historically, the biggest winners in the high-tech startup world tend to be companies that are born during periods of extreme duress and difficulties. For example, when the markets bottomed out in 2009 following the mortgage meltdown, companies like Airbnb and Uber managed to use the downturn to refine their business models and ended up establishing revolutionary new billion-dollar markets. In Silicon Valley, these tenacious ventures are also known as "roach startups"—they never die, they can even survive a nuclear holocaust.
What are the companies that might emerge from the wreckage of the pandemic? Where are the deep tech woolly bear caterpillars, that can survive deep freeze at 90ºF below zero to reanimate in the Alaskan spring? What does it take—in terms of vision, strategy, and resilience—to not only survive but thrive during the worst economic downturn in a century?
Leadership will make the difference. And not just plain old leadership. What’s needed is an entirely fresh take on leadership that is configured to work in the post-pandemic era. Of course, we can learn from visionary leaders—like Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, FDR—who didn’t just react to the most imminent threats confronting them; they were skilled in looking beyond those dark horizons, and they were guided by their vision of a better tomorrow.
Here's a mnemonic for what it takes to move forward, something I call Leadership for the 21st Century™ — Resilience, Example (as in leading by), Science (which is based on truth), Equanimity, Adaptability, Reducing Ego, Cohesion, and Hope. These spell the mnemonic RESEARCH, which is a nod to the need for doubling down on the scientific process, whether you run a company or a country.
Of course, a thorough discussion of each of these principles would require far more than the 1000 words here. Let's review three of these nine principles: Reducing Ego, Cohesion, and Hope.
Reducing Ego: A terrific example of post-pandemic leadership was demonstrated by Joe Biden in his first televised address to the nation halfway through the first 100 days of his administration. In this speech, instead of crowing "I alone can fix this," he asked America to come together: It wasn't even "we" need you. It was "I" need you. The reduction of ego is a key tenet of the emerging new model for leadership in the 21st-century. The top three countries that managed the pandemic most effectively—Taiwan, New Zealand, and Iceland, were led by effective and remarkably modest Presidents (all women, by the way). And the three worst leaders were from the US, Brazil, and Mexico—who were macho braggarts who over-promised and undelivered. And when failure was clear and indisputable, they were eager to redirect blame at others.
Societal Cohesion. I talk about his at length in my recent post on the analogy of multi-cellular coadunation—how single isolated cells learn to organize into multicellular organisms—as the basis for a new theory of societal coadunation for humans. At a societal level, it’s vital to develop trustable group sensory function, to help us collectively learn how to see reality clearly to make more effective group decisions. Just as predators forced early multicellular organisms to develop better sensory function, it may be that conspiracy theories are teaching humans how to develop societal sensors for improving group cohesion. Improving the capacity to see in a new way, what I call trust-intrinsic community perception, may be that the most important goal for humanity.
Finally, let’s consider this last requirement of hope. Hope is the secret sauce for business success. As Thomas Edison said: "Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time. If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves."
In many ways, entrepreneurial hesitancy is a bit like vaccine hesitancy. Vaccine hesitancy is based on fear and degrades the group cohesion required to fight against a virus and its variants. Depending on how infectious the virus is, if over 20 percent of a societal group refuses vaccination, it becomes difficult to achieve herd immunity. Similarly, if over 20 percent of a slime mode—a eukaryotic organism that can coadunate when needed to seek distant locations with more nutrients—fails in cohesion, the organism will literally fall apart. And so, startup hesitancy can lead to uneven group cohesion, which is needed to power your business resilience.
This means that there are actually two key resources for strengthening resilience: Hope and vision. When downsizing, management needs to balance resources that preserve both knowledge and hope. Knowledge leads to better vision, and hope leads to group cohesion.
If your startup is one of the lucky and strong that has managed to survive the pandemic, then here’s a tip of the hat to ya. When revenues collapse, and your customers and investors batten down their hatches, it takes some serious business macgyvering to keep it all together, like a slime mold trying to maintain a barely coadunated state. Take a minute to reflect that whatever doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.
If you have time, send me your personal story of business survival during this pandemic.
