March 2020. Since then the world has changed. Great Reset, New Normal, Next Normal are expressions that we often hear and give us an idea of the size and scope of this collective and transformative experience that the pandemic has subjected us to.

Dealing with the radical changes and the levels of uncertainty that the new virus imposes on us requires, on the part of those who lead an organization, three essential things:

REACT – enormous courage to make quick and effective decisions. Suddenly, there and everywhere, we saw entire organizations working in an unprecedented way. Doing so, without impacting the continuity of operations, requires this ability to react quickly and in time;

RESPOND – a brutally clear notion of priorities. Mobilize everything and everyone around what is truly important: Employees and Customers, always, and with a particular focus in these times of crisis, on the health of Everyone, the management of the Treasury and the transparency of Communication;

REINVENTING OURSELVES – an unwavering desire to come out of the crisis stronger. Look beyond the immediate, identify the extraordinary opportunities that any crisis always brings, imagine the future and accelerate.

Reacting and Responding are very demanding exercises, but at this point in the pandemic where it becomes more or less evident that recovery will not be quick or immediate and that we will live for some time in a global economic recession, the real challenge is to Reinvent and anticipate the necessary changes.

The climate emergency, the digital acceleration, the centrality of the sustainable business model are global and wide-ranging trends that the pandemic has accelerated and which require new responses and a new positioning from organizations. Unwavering focus on quality and service levels, efficiency and cost predictability, integrated solutions and genuine added value for its customers are requirements that any professional service provider will have to address in a new way. The new forms of work – remote, automated – and new models of interdisciplinary collaboration require innovative responses, capable of attracting and retaining the best talents. The environmental, societal and governance concerns that the pandemic has exacerbated require a new commitment with an impact on more traditional business models.

In this context of hyper uncertainty, Reinventing ourselves requires also great focus on the signs and there is a metric which stands out in the definition of practices to fight COVID19 and which may be a source of inspiration, e.g. the “Rt” index, that is, the average number of secondary cases resulting from an infected case and which must remain below 1, under the risk of contagion being no longer under control. Given that, between the increase in the “Rt” index and the increase in the number of patientes admitted in hospitals there is a time lapse monitoring of the “Rt” ends up working as a warning sign allowing the adoption of measures before it’s too late.

Now that we are called to reinvent ourselves, we should heed the warnings and identify those signs that, in each business or organization, must be carefully monitored in order to anticipate the necessary changes. Organizations that do so and act in time will come out stronger out of this crisis.

With eyes set on the future and with the absolute confidence that this crisis will also be over – Let us reinvent ourselves, then!