Why the Best Post-COVID-19 Leaders Will Embrace Ambiguity
Randy Moon
The pandemic will change every organization’s culture. It’s up to leaders to understand how their cultures will change—and to get comfortable with the uncertainty that change will bring.
BRG Managing Director Randy Moon recently advised business leaders to pay close attention to the ways their corporate cultures are changing in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He compared the need to “mind your culture” with reminders to “mind the gap” when stepping off a London subway train: Leaders who don’t pay attention are far more likely to trip and fall.
ThinkSet spoke to Moon about the wellspring of new challenges leaders are up against, and how this crisis could change business leadership.
You held leadership roles in human resources at global Fortune 50 companies during previous crises like the September 11 attacks and the 2008 financial crisis. Based on your experience, what effects do you believe this crisis might have on corporate workforces?
Every organization will have an entire workforce impacted by this event, just like after 9/11. They will emerge with a shared experience, and from that will come stories—about challenges, perseverance, heartache, family and friends, and coworkers too.
Those shared experiences can bring a team closer together. But they will also change the organization’s culture—and leaders need to be aware that change is coming. Culture encompasses the values, beliefs, underlying assumptions and attitudes shared by a group of people, and a crisis like this is bound to cause it to shift. The shift will be unique to every organization, but the most important thing to be aware of is that things are never going back to the way they were before this crisis. That awareness should help a leader stay attuned to the changes as they’re happening.
What hazards could leaders face coming out of a disruptive, traumatic crisis like this?
Most hazards will emanate from a leader’s failure to recognize change. The good news is that it’s in the leader’s control, and good leaders are already highly attuned to the ways their culture is changing, starting at the individual level. The bad news is that it’s much harder to stay attuned to those shifts if you’re a leader who is very directive and noncollaborative. Many will have to learn how to get out of their comfort zones and engage with their teams, or they won’t know what is happening within their workforce.
And again, it’s hazardous to assume that things will go back to the way they were. We don’t know yet what changes will be permanent, but we know that the pandemic will leave its mark both structurally and personally.
On a structural level, it could change the way we organize meetings, commute or treat childcare. It will impact our view of remote work; many employees will feel they’ve proven they can be just as productive, if not more so, from home and push for more flexible work arrangements. That could be a good thing for companies that embrace it—reducing real estate costs, expanding the talent pool beyond your geographic area and potentially driving greater productivity. Or it could be damaging, particularly if leadership doesn’t acknowledge the mindset shift and take steps to accommodate it.
It will be equally important to address the personal, or psychic, toll. By the time this is over, few of us won’t have been impacted personally, through either our health or the health of someone close to us, or economically. I’d encourage leaders to listen to their employees’ stories, understand what they’ve gone through and think about how those individual experiences will shape the team’s shared experience—and thus its culture.
How might the qualities that make a good leader look different after this crisis?
We’ll look at the whole definition of leadership competencies anew when this is over—in some ways, we already are. Many fundamental attributes of a good leader won’t change, but I can see certain qualities becoming more important. Agility and empathy, for instance, will likely be key traits for leading large groups.
If I was out recruiting leaders now, I’d look for someone who’s a relentless learner, who’s always scanning what’s going on in their industry and adjacent industries, both to understand what’s happening and to seek new ideas. I’d look for someone who is driven by results but highly collaborative. Perhaps most of all, I’d look for someone who’s not afraid of ambiguity, but who embraces it.
We are in a time of unprecedented uncertainty, but just as great investors profit from volatility, the great leaders of this era will be those who find opportunities in ambiguity, who face uncertainty with the belief that the magic happens in the grey areas.
Can leaders look to any precedent for help in navigating the changes we are seeing and will see?
As I mentioned, there have been events like 9/11 or the financial crisis that impacted everyone, and that impacts culture. Then there have been outbreaks like the H1N1 flu in 2009 or SARS in 2002; those impacted global organizations that had workers in the hardest-hit areas, but for many others they had almost no impact.
It may be helpful to look beyond crises and global events. I’ve seen examples of the kinds of cultural changes leaders will be facing in large corporate transactions. Mergers and acquisitions create cultural challenges. Any time you bring two separate corporate cultures together, there will be tension and change. As a leader, your top priority should be to assess the two cultures to anticipate how each will impact the other, and then work collaboratively with both teams to help individuals adjust. In that way, you can influence the creation of the new culture.
It all starts with recognizing that the change at hand will lead to new culture of some kind; you can either help shape it or let it happen on its own. But if you sit idly by, you might not like what your new culture looks like. I’d argue the same is true in the situation we’re in today.