Everybody is talking about the new normal after Covid-19, but did we really change? And were the changes we took not rather "catching up" than "inventing"?
June 2020 and the headlines and consulting offers are full of "how to manage the new normal" or "what do we do differently during the new normal", however let us have a look at what really changed.
1. New Communication Forms:
If the most popular four letter word (ZOOM) in 2020 is completely new for you and your company than you are just catching up. Most companies have already been using zoom since 2-3 years for international communications with nice personalized account IDs. Further tools like Teams, Slack, Signal etc. have been pretty common among agile, diverse, modern and fast-moving companies throughout the entire 2010 decade.
2. New Working Environment:
Work from home should not be a new or modern trend as the technology to do that has already been available on the market since years, or almost since decades. A lot of companies have international teams or outsourced units in other locations around the globe and communicate and manage them completely virtually, but the paradox is that the headquarters and in-country units are mainly office-based. We understand that it is human nature to have control and face to face interactions as much as possible. However, at least part of the workforce working from home or part-time work from home opportunities should have been on option in your company over the last 5 years. That is of course, if you take the new trends on millennial needs and employee experience seriously.
3. New Managing Methods:
Motivating, managing and controlling teams remotely is challenging but pretty standard nowadays, given the vast amount of international projects and cross-border operational processes. Therefore, video tools and posting tools as mentioned in No. 1 combined with action and project management tools like MsProject, Trello, Wrike, GtmHub etc. are great methods to engage and collaborate with your teams in any location. These tools not only support you to structure and control the work assigned, but it also provides fun engagement and rewarding functions to keep everybody aligned and happy.
See our blog post on project management tools: https://www.asiapmo.com/post/top-project-management-tools
A crisis forces us to be more adaptive and Covid-19 truly accelerated digitalization and modern management methods and forced us to reconsider the modern office and face to face environments. However in 2020 your company management and culture should have already adapted a new and modern team and employee experienced based form of working.
In case you need to catch-up on communications, project and OKR (Objectives & Key Result) management methods & tools, please comment below or contact us and we can support you. We can further help you with the right change management to transform your leaders and teams into an agile and adaptive work force and environment.