Lessons from the School of Hard Knocks 2020

# Lesson 1) Crisis Fast Tracks Change

Phew, 2020 will go down as the year that changed everything and it has not even ended yet.

When the School of Hard Knocks is the tutor we learn things through practical trial and error and difficult experiences, lessons we cannot learn any other way.

While no one could have predicted the COVID- 19 epidemic, it has certainly changed things big time.

From how we carry out normal everyday tasks to socializing, but most of all how we work, literally overnight many jobs went remote at least temporarily, now full time remote jobs are well on the way to becoming a new trend as more are created.

The pandemic forced businesses in the service sector to abandon office towers and send employees home to work remotely through fast internet or phone connections.

What is interesting is many pundits believe the changeover to remote-jobs was already in the pipeline pre-pandemic, but were stuck in the inertia created by long-term leases and the fact organizations have worked this way for decades.

These habits are hard to break like the daily commute and having employees clocking in and working in close proximity to each other.

Technology changes much quicker than organizations do with one expert noting digital transformation is more of a leadership challenge than a technical one.

Large organizations are far more complex to manage and change than technologies. They have more moving parts, and those parts, being human, are much harder to control. “While it’s relatively straightforward to edit a software component or replace one element with another, it’s nowhere near as easy to change an organization.”

However, this large-scale shift in living and working patterns will change the face of the modern city in the short term, not forgetting induce environmental changes with fewer vehicles on the road than ever before, and rewire it for a more resilient future, one less dependent on commuter-based office work vulnerable to pandemics.

All this proves crisis not only accelerates change; it serves as the catalyst, COVID 19 has caused businesses to initiate change that might otherwise have taken a generation.

Some of the changes are temporary others here to stay reminding us life and circumstances do not follow along a straight path and this is true both on a personal and at a cosmic level.

We can say the same for the big tech revolution projected ‘to come of age’ from 2030 on wards, a decade from now, yet we hear of major new developments almost daily.

We are in uncharted territory now, so one-step at a time as we navigate the course.

#Lesson 2 The Real Globalization is……..

Maybe we have globalization wrong, either that or the pandemic slash technology combo has changed the meaning.

It is not about porous borders and travel with the ability to zoom in and out of countries at will, or even the elimination of trade barriers, but digital interconnectedness blurring national boundaries as more companies move their entire operations online and more people become inter-connected via the internet than ever before.

Since the nineties globalization has been an incremental process now it has come full circle as everything goes digital with last piece of the puzzle completing the picture.

When the pandemic hit some thought it was time to hit the pause button on globalization yet, as one analyst says: Globalization is here to stay; it started thirty years ago when the Soviet Union fell, when free markets for labor and capital became the norm, and when financial markets became more important than the trade in goods and services. These trends are irreversible just like the industrial revolution and the emergence of computers.

What the pandemic has proved is that neither science nor technology can succeed without globalization; it is also something of a public utility with the U.N. calling internet access a human right.

What the pandemic has done is illuminate the interconnectedness of everyone and everything.

Labor economist Julia Pollak notes; internet access is critical to young people for education and employment, up until the pandemic they relied on hot spots in cafes, libraries or schools for connection now they have to have their own.

Remote learning will no doubt also take off over time as the costs of tuition rise exponentially as lock downs curtail free movement.

# Lesson 3 You’re on The Grid Now

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is here and a major economic change is the digitization of manufacturing that is set to overhaul the production of goods and services as well as the politics of jobs as we know it.

In a move where big tech meet manufacturing, 3D printing of vehicle parts will become the norm, the role of the intermediary is no more as manufacturing disrupts the traditional supply chain by going online and reducing the costs of goods and services to consumers.

Nevertheless, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is much more than we even realize: it is an economic model that encompasses seismic shifts, transforming business models, national infrastructure planning, and employment, in fact the whole of society.

With sensors attached to every device, application, and machine feeding back data to the internet, we are part of a real time, digital neural network, aka artificial brain, spanning the entire economy, the sciences, academia and social media, with this development really affecting all things.