The Breakfast Club
How 1 small group helped save the Fall Semester.
Over the last several months I have worked with my colleagues and a number of clients on plans to safely re-open businesses and school. Along the way, we have gathered some insights that are worth sharing with others. Do you want to exit the Matrix and take the Red Pill?
Here are the Top 10 insights on the path to a safe and successful Re-Opening
Take a moment, perhaps on a daily basis to assess where you are, celebrate the successes, however small, understand the failures and their cause and what can be done to prevent or mitigate in the future.
Stop, Pause, Breathe
Mindfulness and Meditation
Channeling your inner meditation skills, it is easy to get overwhelmed by the enormity of the challenge, the shifting landscape, continuously changing data and guidance, all complicated by many instances of mis and disinformation. The nature of the world we live in, even without the overlay of a Pandemic is based on uncertainty which demands we adapt and continue to update our thinking based on the latest information and data. There are very few if any certainties in our world and each and every decision should be based on the best information available at the time of the decision and designed to reduce risk as much as possible while understanding the risk profile that remains.
In our new Pandemic world, the importance of this is even greater as we have watched this acceleration of data and science focused on a single topic, SARS-CoV-2, and the disease COVID19, which is impacting our world immeasurably.
Life is short
Nature is Brutal
Epidemics and Pandemics are Unsparing
Being Flexible
It matters little how well prepared you to think you are – something, somewhere will affect your plan. It might be an internal factor with power failure locally or unanticipated behaviors. Or an external factor, such as the failure of the testing platform you selected for your students and employees, leaving you with no data for your decision making.
We have found tabletop reviews with broad and varied participation to be helpful in identifying some of these external and internal factors and even if they were unknowable before, having a group of people already thinking through scenarios prepares everyone for rapid and flexible response for “new” problems when they occur
Prepare, plan, pivot and prepare again
Use tools for flexible brainstorming, thinking, and planning but these documents need to be converted into solid plans before they can be used
The best available option is always available
Perfect almost never is
Tap into Your Local Resources
Many organizations are rich in skills and resources that can be co-opted into your response. We have found a veritable gold mine of skilled, knowledgeable, and highly resourceful team members who bring relevant experiences to bear. In some cases, you may be lucky to find individuals who have had previous Pandemic experience or relevant training. Open the call to action to the widest possible community and find those resources that can bring specialist expertise to different aspects of your response.
Failure to include risks alienating a group that is both knowledgeable and can feel disenfranchised and becomes a vocal opponent to plans. Consider having an external resource to review to make sure you don’t miss things. We are constantly reminded of the potential to miss things especially as we traverse different environments and teams.
Include All the Parties
It is essential to include all the stakeholders since any solution will require everyone’s cooperation and participation. As an example, failing to include students in the planning process for return to school limits the potential solutions and risks developing solutions that ultimately fail in implementation.
Even when you feel confident in solutions local factors can inhibit success and on the ground insights from employees and students can be invaluable in finding a successful path
Communications, communications, communications
Accurate, frequent, and honest communication. Over-communicate – there is no faster way for mis and dis-information to thrive than in a vacuum of silence. Even if the message is “there is no update“, provide that with an explanation of why, what is in process, and when you next expect to communicate.
As Simon and Garfunkel said: Silence like a cancer grows!
Pound the messaging – Focus on one message and then keep building and layering additional details. For example – start with face covering and continue to promote and explain why its important but build on this with additional elements of physical distance requirements, hand hygiene, and the importance of screening on a daily basis for symptoms with a symptom checker
As part of your communications – try to include as wide a body of views to check your communications for errors, mistakes, and unintended consequences.
Get your Messaging right, pause, review and re-read before releasing
DEVELOPING STORY: Students who die while attending Boston University will have the chance to obtain a posthumous degree, starting this Fall. The University released the policy June 12, but did not make an announcement or notify the BU community otherwise.
— The Daily Free Press (@dailyfreepress) August 12, 2020
And if you release information that later proves to be incorrect, false, tone-deaf, or changes – move quickly to update everyone, taking ownership
of the mistake, explaining the background and sharing any relevant steps that will be taken in the future to prevent similar mistakes in the future
Don’t Let Perfection Stand in the Way of Progress
The constantly moving nature of the data, science, and understanding means that there is no perfect answer, even if you think there is. The nature of uncertainty requires we make decisions that in hindsight may appear half baked. The decision on when to move forward will be difficult and vary depending on local circumstances. Acceptance that you won’t always get this right and some decisions to launch early may cause subsequent challenges is inevitable but will be part of the ongoing feedback into the learning experience and improvement. External resources with a broader experience that can be included in the decision making can be especially helpful in mitigating the risks here.
Alongside the notion of progress even with incomplete solutions and imperfection is closely linked to the need to re-assess and re-think everything you do on an ongoing basis. One of the main aspects of incremental approaches is the willingness to throw out solutions and choices quickly in the light of new evidence. In many cases, the first choice made is incorrect and serves as a sacrificial lamb to future better solutions. But without exploring and actioning these early ideas we end up with analysis paralysis. In the current pandemic, world progress is based on testing and quick adaptation to mutual learning insights.
I have no love for a fixed position in most things
I am always eager to learn something
In a Crisis, the Cream Rises to the Top
Quite honestly this is true most times but in a crisis, these individuals shine and stand out faster. Allow them to rise and lead. They will naturally take on leadership and coordination roles but need the executive and senior leadership support, especially in the face of opposition from established or traditional hierarchies. You can accelerate the process by seeking out these individuals and where necessary mentoring their methods and skills to navigate a complex and sometimes politically charged landscape.
Experience has shown that these individuals come from a wide range of backgrounds and experience, can be new or recent hires, long-standing and senior employees, and anywhere between. In some cases, identifying specific leadership or coordination roles can be helpful in maximizing their contribution and helping quash opposition. In some cases, they may be a good candidate for the COVID-Coordinator that is an essential role both immediately and also going forward.
Appoint a COVID Coordinator
This is a new role and new activity and needs to be staffed appropriately. In some cases, you may be able to tap into existing expertise such as a Safety Coordinator but don’t be misled into thinking you can just add this as a supplemental task to an existing individual responsible for general safety. Much will depend on existing individuals’ experience and even workload. For some, this may be a natural extension that makes sense and is an easy addition. But in many cases the tasks, necessary focus, and understanding are sufficiently different as well as the significant workload to be an overwhelming ‘add-on’ task.
Assess carefully as this individual will need to be fully engaged quickly and for some considerable time to come. Do not expect this activity to subside in the near future. It is more likely to become a permanent fixture for many if not all organizations. Even if we manage to cure COVID19 the long-term impact of this pandemic will be felt for generations to come and will be reflected in the need to think differently about preparedness and potential safety threats in the future.
In larger organizations, a project manager skill set is likely to be advantageous or at a minimum required in supporting this individual and role to be successful
Consider having a ‘Data Guy’ as your COVID19 coordinator – they will be able to access and guide the essential aspects of data acquisition and since decision making has to be made based on data, they will be central to informed decision making
Your legal staff is typically not good candidates for this role since their thinking is naturally conservative of risk and would potentially limit and shut down ideas and concepts too early in the process. That does not mean exclude legal but rather include this at the right stage in the development of plans.
Obliterate Siloed Thinking
Another truism in general but especially important in agile response during a time of crisis. Your COVID19 coordinator will need wide and open access to every aspect of the organization. They can help identify the silos and break down the walls between groups that may be duplicating activity and data or worse working at odds.
In many cases, we have found distributed parts of organizations working on solutions that benefit the larger organization. Capitalizing on the efforts has proven to be valuable to everyone seeking to solve problems, but in some cases, these efforts or projects have proven to be counter-productive and required adjustment or even cancellation. Failure to break down barriers to sharing of information risks wasted resource and time and even counterproductive efforts that bring significant negative impact to the organization as a whole
Pride of Ownership can Precede Failure
Find Your Weakest Link (Channel your inner Anne Robinson). Failure of some form or variations is inevitable. Mitigating this demands constant re-questioning and assessment of decisions and data. You must keep asking yourself
- “What have I/We Missed”
- “What Else”
- “What Could go Wrong”
- “What If…”
For example, in the case of testing at home, the points of failure most often considered include the actual testing vendor and their capacity to cope with the volume and still maintain turnaround times. But what happens when the distribution system, such as the US postal service, suffers problems, sometimes localized and fails to send out tests. Part of the tabletop exercise should be to identify these possible scenarios and identify possible mitigation options. Some elements may be out of your control but that does not mean mitigation is as well.
Sometimes mitigation can require lateral thinking. In the case of shipping using existing providers that failure mitigation is made a lot easier when packages can be easily identified. A standard size white package can be hard to identify whereas a unique stand out color makes for easier identification, follow up and a potential shift to the alternative carrier when disaster strikes
Pick a Horse – but have a Back-Up. Play the spread.
While data informs decision it is the human interpretation and synthesizing of information that informs the best progress so:
Try everything, create a combination of approaches, and value human data above all else
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