LEADING IN UNCERTAIN TIMES – 1
Mohan G Joshi
When the virus cut short our vacation and the “normal”
On March 7, 2020, my wife and I were enjoying a relaxed family lunch in Barcelona, Spain. We were visiting our daughter’s family and we had happily extended our planned stay of one month by another 17 days. Then the viral panic caught up with us.
As the news got worse by the day, someone in the Indian embassy suggested we were better off leaving Spain as soon as we could. We rescheduled our departure to Saturday, March 14. It was a painful task to console my grandson, who was heartbroken that we were going away when there were “still so many days left.”
We landed in Mumbai and were taken to a hospital for quarantine. Soon, it was clear our vacation was not the only thing that had been cut short by the virus. The normal world that we lived in was no more.
The end of normal begins
Going back to January 30, 2020, when the first coronavirus case was reported in Thrissur, Kerala, there was no indication that the country, and indeed, the world as we know it was about to change. The numbers and warnings in news reports appeared distant and somewhat irrelevant to us, especially the business professionals in India.
When the name Covid-19 was officially announced by the World Health Organization (WHO) on February 11, business went on largely as usual, even after many Indians were brought back from China and other countries.
The numbers started building up and the slide into the uncertain gathered speed. On March 11, WHO declared Covid-19 to be a pandemic. It was time to take note and act. On March 22, The Prime Minister of India exhorted the nation to observe a 19-hour curfew. It was to prove a grim curtain-raiser to the first nation-wide lockdown that started on March 25.
That was the end of the old world. Business would never be “as usual”.
Looking back, taking a breath
We are not out of the woods yet and there are dire warnings of more destructive “waves” of infections and deaths as I write this. Human life is precious regardless of numbers and locations, but no conventional natural (or financial) calamity has flattened the entire world and redrawn the latitudes and longitudes of global business.
At least Covid-19 has taught us not to take the normal for granted. No one wants a repeat of this pandemic. No one wants to be caught unawares either. Not again.
There has never been a greater need for reassuring leadership. There are opinions and advices but no sure shot prescriptions. The best we can do is revisit a few lessons and draw on experience to throw light on the next couple of steps on the path.
These are testing times for leaders. They must cope with uncertainty and yet provide some hope and guidance to all those they lead. There are no answers; it’s a challenge to even think of the right questions. We can share experiences and opinions, we can debate. That’s what this series will attempt to do over the next few weeks.
– Mohan G Joshi