to get their businesses ready for disruption.
We said that a disruption would come and
shake them to the very foundations and
would make some of them irrevocably
irrelevant.
The interesting thing is that I met with
many leaders who were great in talking
about disruption but when faced with the
reality, they had no clue what to do. Some
listened and others sneered at the thought
of it. They had the titanic mentality that
even God could not sink their ship. Well,
it has come and like any typical disruption,
no one could have predicted where it was
going to come from and how it was going
to play out.
Coronavirus has come to disrupt life as
we know it. Indeed, for a very long time
to come, the world will be viewed in pre-
corona and post-corona terms. Remember
that it is not the strongest of the species
that survives, nor the most intelligent
that survives. It is the one that is most
adaptable to change. The dinosaur did not
make it while the cockroach did.
We are going to see a lot of post-
corona casualties in the sense that many
companies that appeared solid pre-corona
will have fizzled out with corona. Many
are already thinking of how to send people
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home. Ironically, others are increasing the
size of their workforce because business
is so good.
Some business models are going to be
changed forever after this. A generation
might come in future that will be told
stories of how people once used to shake
hands. A generation might come and
not believe that there was a time when
cleaning of hands in public places was not
always there.
I don't think there is anything in modern
history that has disrupted and altered the
way we live like the Coronavirus of 2020.
Is there a way anyone could have prepared
for this level of disruption?
Perhaps it might help to look at where
it all started. In Wuhan, China. In days
they had put up 16 hospitals that could
attend to thousands. They had a whole 60
million people on lock-down. That was
probably one of the largest lock-downs in
the worlds’ history. Ironically, we are now
told that they have managed the situation
and the worst is over for them and they
have even started closing the hospitals
and discharging the last of the victims.
The United States on the other hand is
still struggling to come up with a clear
path on how to deal with the problem
as things get out of hand. They have
conflicting reports coming out every day.
People complain of not being able to get
tested.
In one moment of disruption we have
seen the difference between a hype driven
system and a fact driven, capacity ready
system. China does not have the hype
that America has but what is obvious to
all is that they had the facts and capacity
to deal with the situation as it emerged.
One might argue that if their response
had been faster the situation might not
have gone as viral as it did.
The fact however remains that once they
stood up to it, they displayed a rare level
of capacity and in what appears to be a
moment of global reset, China has now
become the place to look to for leadership
on how to deal with such a pandemic.
Anything built on hype cannot stand the
test of time. There is a parable of two men
who built houses. One built on a rock and
the other built on sand. Then, the storms
came and destroyed the one built on
sand. Note that the one building on sand
did not have to blast rocks or dig a deep
foundation. He just built. His building
would have been ready long before the
one who built on the rock. Do not be