2020 has been a terrible year for most organisations. Small agencies and freelancers have been struggling financially, while more well-established companies are losing staff, pausing investment and stopping spending. And that is not even mentioning the enormous human cost in lives and livelihood.
It is perfectly understandable to wish the whole year had never happened. Unfortunately, no amount of wishing will make the whole nasty business go away. But what we can do is look for the good in a terrible situation.
It may feel like nothing positive could come out of such a mess. However, I have seen things happen that have given me hope.
We have all seen the stories of people’s incredible community spirit and selfless actions. However, I also see positive things happen in the business world too. Little glimmers of light that give me hope that we may be able to learn something from this sorry situation.
Let’s explore a few of the things that have excited me.
Faster Adoption of Remote Working
Nearly seven years ago, I lamented the fact that so many companies were resisting remote working, and although things have improved, it has continued to be a problem ever since.
Yes, home working has its challenges. Trust me, I know. I’ve worked from home for 18 years. Thirteen of those years were spent running an agency with many employees spread all over the UK.
However, I have always believed that the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. Probably the biggest of which is the fact that you get to recruit the best person for the job, not just one who lives nearby.
I could always understand an organisation’s hesitancy when it came to remote working. What I did not comprehend is their reluctance even to try to make it work. Fortunately, COVID-19 has forced the hands of many organisations, and sure enough, it has been shown to work.
If you have been struggling to get your organisation to adopt remote working, I want to encourage you not to allow things to slide back as the pandemic eases. Now is the time to push for long term change.
The problem with remote working is that it is something new, and we always favour the familiar and comfortable. Another example of that is training workshops.
The Decline of the Training Workshop
A big part of my work pre-pandemic was running training workshops. Organisations would gather employees from all over the country (and occasionally all over the world) to hear me teaching them about user experience design, conversion optimisation or digital transformation.
Don’t get me wrong. It was a sweet gig, as I got to visit places all over the world from Thailand and Hong Kong to San Francisco or Geneva. However, I confess it always struck me as a poor business decision.
The travel and accommodation expenses were enormous, not to mention everybody’s time away from the office. However, often they would have to run the same workshop multiple times as new staff came on board or others missed an earlier workshop.
Then there was the fact that too often people would forget what they had learned if they weren’t implementing those skills regularly.
Today things are better. Suddenly organisations are more open to me creating self-learning video courses or running virtual coaching. They emphasise digital playbooks and webinars, rather than all sitting in the same room.
This new attitude doesn’t just apply to training either. Design thinking has long relied heavily on workshop exercises. Still, now people are increasingly becoming open to approaching some of these design challenges in different ways that are not so people-intensive.
Take this opportunity to experiment with how you involve stakeholders and educate your organisation about digital best practice. Because you will be surprised just how open people are to doing things differently.
A Greater Willingness to Change
I tend to work with well-established organisations that are often the market leader in their fields. They always used to have the attitude of “don’t rock the boat,” making it impossible to introduce any change.
Unfortunately, the majority of what we do involves change. You cannot improve the user experience or fully embrace digital without fundamentally changing how you work.
The pandemic has swept aside all of that. Suddenly people are willing to break with convention and work in an agile and iterative way, adapting to the fast-changing environment. Best of all, they are discovering that the world does not implode when you rock the boat just a little bit!
If ever there was a time to suggest new ways of working, now is that moment. Embrace it! Nowhere is this more pronounced than in the sudden adoption of digital.
A Greater Role for Digital
Of course, most organisations have accepted the importance of digital for some time. But, for many, this has been limited to a role as a marketing tool. They haven’t seen its potential to more fundamentally redefine how they do business.
Today that is changing. During this pandemic, organisations have seen digitals broader role as a communication tool, customer support tool and more. Back in 2014, I wrote a post that outlined ten roles the web could fulfil beyond marketing. Today that message seems to be finally sinking in.
This fact provides you with an opportunity to demonstrate the value of what you do beyond creating a pretty online brochure. It is an opportunity we should grasp with both hands.
That is the message I want to leave you with as digital professionals. This pandemic has offered you an opportunity to redefine how your organisation operates and to expand your perceived value. However, that will only happen if we push to keep the momentum going.
If we do not, then old habits will establish themselves once more, and everybody will fall back into their old ways of working.
So now is your chance! Please don’t waste it.
