Managing Your Team Between Pandemic Disruptions

Like employers in the property/casualty insurance industry, the leader of an augmented reality company expressed fears that his business will be “living between pandemics” for a prolonged period in a Korn Ferry article published recently.

The article, “COVID, The Long Goodbye,” published in the June/July edition of the organizational consulting firm’s magazine, also offers some tips for the CEO of ePlay Digital, Trevor Doerksen, and other executives and professional managers whose visions of a hoped-for return to normal were dashed by COVID’s Omicron variants.

Among them:

• Wake up to the idea that “perfecting a hybrid office/remote system is going to take time,” and that there are intricate adjustments involved with any workplace setup that lies in between full onsite or full remote.
• Give employees “a sense of transparency amid flux by presenting a plan that outlines responses to multiple potential outcomes.”

Says the article, “That’s better than feigning total assurance or staying silent.”

Another suggestion offered by Janet Feldman, a senior client partner in Korn Ferry’s CEO Succession practice, is for managers to lean into the tech startup concept of the minimum viable product in devising their plans for where and how employees work. The MVP concept involves launching the leanest, simplest version of a product to see how users respond. “If it doesn’t show promise, kill it right away and move on,” said Feldman, suggesting that the idea of a “beta version” for workplace management can be applied during a period of disruption.

Source: COVID, The Long Goodbye by Tim Murphy, Korn Ferry Briefings Issue 54, Jun/July 2022.

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