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Becoming Covid soft is possible

Dubai - If anything, companies will collapse like battle-weary troops not because they did not realise that they have to adapt and remake boundaries, but because the human factor kicked in.

We hear a great deal these days about the new deal and how the corporate work ethos will have to reinvent itself in the post Covid-19 era. Survival of the fittest and now the flourishing of the most flexible. This sounds very challenging and brave on paper with visions of everyone gliding smoothly into their new roles.

In reality it will be a lot different. If anything, companies will collapse like battle-weary troops not because they did not realise that they have to adapt and remake boundaries, but because the human factor kicked in. The functional hierarchy didn't know how to bring about that dramatic transfer to the new order. Those who were once delivering will now be floundering, their inability to grasp the new ways making them inept and marooned in the wilderness of the past. The result halfway measured, neither here nor there. The big question then being whether they are adept enough to adapt.

Humans hate change. That is why the more things change the more they stay the same. You see it every day. People resist change because it makes them uncomfortable, even vulnerable and exposed. They find virtue in how things were done, not how they should be done. The clash between the obstinate mindset and the high speed 'get cracking' demands of the new world currently still largely formless and without much awareness of its depth will be an undoing for many. My impatient friend says it with vehemence: if systems change then so must the attitude of the people manning those systems. We cannot expect results if we endure the rules of yesterday and mobilise them to the call of today. Selecting the right manpower will be of the essence. How many will see that imperative and cut through the flab?

The past has gone and not everyone belongs to the future. Let's not get Covid soft and impale ourselves on the cusp of compromise and half measures.

Anyone listening?