This changes everything

That phrase is been haunting my head for a week. It comes from the children’s series Dragon Riders and returns every episode as a kind of cliffhanger. My son of nine is addicted to Dragon Riders. Often I had to smile for that sentence. Because he is so dramatically pronounced and because something rarely happens that changes everything.

Until now.

The coronavirus grabs around the world. The invisible enemy not only breaks down our immune system, but also our resistance to change. Whereas until recently many organisations still had major objections to working from home in 2020, they have now closed the doors of their offices and asked their employees to go online. Even the most hardened digibites now spend hours every day in Skype sessions and Google Hangouts. Of course, only after they have helped their children to communicate online with the teacher and share their homework digitally. Does that happen without a fight? No, it doesn’t. I see teachers struggling with software programs and I am regularly stressful looking for the correct login names and passwords for all the children’s accounts. It’s tricky, it’s searching, but it works.

Working digitally is definitively broken through within one week. Wherever there is a need to go, the road suddenly appears to be there.

For now, it is important that we stay indoors and continue working digitally where we can. To train our children, to continue our work and above all to give the care providers the space and safety they deserve.

When we have defeated the invisible enemy with a vaccine, the world has probably changed. Not everything will be radically different, but some patterns are likely to be shifted forever. Of course, professions that require physical presence will continue to exist, but many organizations are now proving that there are other possibilities as well. Which of these employers will soon dare to claim with dry eyes that working from home is really not possible in his company?

Why would you want that? We are now learning that we can also get close to each other from a distance and achieve great results. Without unnecessarily wasting time or burdening the environment. We are learning that everyone has it in them to work in new ways. Moreover, during a crisis, we show who we really are. For example, in the actions that companies and their employees are now setting up to support our healthcare and hospitals. This social involvement also requires us to recalibrate the story that organisations and companies tell their employees and customers. What do you stand for deepest? What do you stand for when it really matters?

In this time of the corona crisis, the motto is not only ‘stay inside’, but also ‘look inside’. Self-reflection. Repositioning. Thinking about a new story. I wonder what we’ll come up with after this crisis. Because this crisis probably doesn’t change everything, but it does change a lot.