The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed how we connect. Before, many of us believed the conventional wisdom that face-to-face experiences are “better” than online connection. Not only is this misleading, but right now, connecting online is urgent and imperative.

The good news? Creating a brand community during a pandemic is possible and transformative—both for community members and the brand. When an organization can successfully bring people together, generosity, sharing, and support take place. Real relationships form, ones that sustain and nourish community members and markedly enrich and improve brands.

Here’s how brands can create community now:

Step 1: Recognize this is the time for community.

There’s no doubt organizations are strained from the pandemic and economic fluctuations. Plenty are thinking, “I don’t have time to focus on my community right now—I’m just trying to stay afloat!”

But relationship-building and being profitable are not at odds. They go hand in hand. Think about it: Your brand can’t exist without people. It’s your customers, users, staff, partners, and volunteers that make your organization what it is. Relationships based purely on transactions are much less sustainable than those cultivated with creativity, trust, and loyalty.

Step 2: Identify your organizational goals.

What do you hope your brand community will do for your organization? These are seven common ways community can benefit an organization:

1. Innovation: creating new value for stakeholders
2. Talent recruitment and retention: attracting and retaining people
3. Customer retention: keeping customers involved
4. Marketing: informing the market of offered value
5. Customer service: helping customers and users with the brand service or products
6. Advancing movements: creating a fundamental shift in a culture or business
7. Community forum: making the brand a destination for a specific community

Start by identifying one goal, without focusing on how much you expect the community to deliver. During the pandemic, it might be especially valuable to consider how your community can help you innovate amid crisis. For instance, a retail brand might find ways to stay nimble by inviting its top ambassadors to discuss new partnerships and give back to their local communities.

Step 3: Understand prospective member needs.

This is an important one. Even organizations with well-established communities must check in with members’ wants and needs right now because so much is in flux.

Depending on your organization, your prospective community members might be your staff, volunteers, or customers and users who actively engage on social media, reach out by email, or proactively interact with your brand. Whomever they may be, a great way to learn more about them is with online surveys. Then, you can invite select respondents to speak further in a phone or video interview.

Understanding who your prospective members are as full human beings (beyond their connection to your organization) is critical. So, asking about demographics (age, location, etc.), career, political priorities, cultural preferences, challenges, and aspirations are excellent places to start. Given the pandemic, consider questions like these:

– What has changed in your life in the last few months? 
– Which activities can you no longer do?
– What new opportunities have emerged? 
– What challenges are you facing right now? What’s keeping you up at night?

Brand communities are only successful when they support their members’ goals. Listen to what your prospective members need right now, and identify where their goals overlap with your organization’s.

Step 4: Create your first community experience.

After talking with people, use your insights to reflect on the question: What’s one specific experience I can create for prospective members to help support them in a meaningful way? It might be an interactive webinar, a community forum, a user-generated resource site, or a virtual event series. You can’t solve all of your prospective members’ problems, of course, but you can pick one to start.

For example, XY Planning Network, an organization of fee-based financial advisors, knew its members were overwhelmed with constant economic shifts during the pandemic, resulting in long hours and a high-stress environment. So, the organization began offering free weekly Zoom meditation sessions to its members for support. Another company, Buffer, a social media software app, knew many of its users were struggling to navigate to the new digital environment brought on by the pandemic, so it began offering a series of educational webinars and free training.

Whatever the experience, it should align with members’ values and those of your organization. The more specific you can be in addressing members’ needs and values, the better. People are being inundated with cookie-cutter invitations to generic-sounding online events. Brands that take the time to send custom, personal invitations to thoughtfully-designed gatherings will stand out from the rest.

Step 5: Plan for the long run.

Brand communities don’t magically establish themselves after a single experience or event—especially online. It takes time for relationships to form. Don’t beat yourself up if your first experience is not a smash hit. Dust yourself off, write down what you learned, and try again. Consistency and patience are needed to get through times of crisis.

In the beginning, bringing people together requires extra patience and stamina, and a willingness to fail. Don’t expect perfection. You’ll make progress by listening to your community’s needs and planning the next step. Then repeat. Most importantly, remember to have fun in the process. Building brand communities should be fun for your members and you.

As he watched the devastating fires in Australia destroy nearly 7,000 square miles of countryside and 3,000 homes last year, Terry Tamminen (above, right) thought of canaries that miners carried into coal mines to determine if carbon monoxide had collected in mine shafts.

“Australia was a microcosm, and these fires are a warning that we should pay attention to,” says Tamminen. “Here’s a developed nation with lots of resources, and the whole country is literally on fire. The climate science tells us that this will be our future if we don’t change quickly.”

Tamminen has spent a career making change happen quickly and for the better — whether as secretary of the California EPA under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, CEO of the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, or co-founder of leading environmental NGO Seventh Generation Advisors. Here are five lessons learned from three decades of making a positive impact on the planet.

01 Learn And Adapt

Australia’s infernos give business and government leaders in other countries an opportunity to anticipate how climate change will impact their communities. “Businesses need to be thinking both about mitigation and adaptation, and policymakers need to be thinking about how to be a part of the solution of the climate emergency instead of standing in the way of progress,” he says.

02 Stay Positive

Tamminen recalled working with Leonardo DiCaprio on a formal address to the U.N. Climate Summit. They wanted to write a speech that described problems and solutions to the climate crisis, “but we kept listing the problems and looking at the science, and we found ourselves almost in tears trying to write the speech,” he says. “It’s hard to stay positive, but in the end, we wrote a persuasive speech that called for bold, unprecedented action.”

03 Share Best Practices

As head of the California EPA, Tamminen ushered in impactful policies, including the Million Solar Roofs initiative and California’s landmark Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, which emphasized economic development opportunities around clean/efficient energy and waste reduction. “We proved that a strong environment and a strong economy are two sides of the same coin,” he says. 

04 Amplify Change

Through his work with global celebrities, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Jane Goodall, and Barak Obama, Tamminen has helped amplify issues and success stories to inspire change. With climate change, “We need clear voices and people we can trust, and we tend to trust celebrities,” he says. “It’s important to harness celebrity to get the message out, to normalize it, and make people realize that their actions matter and that they can be part of the solution.”

05 Think Generations Ahead

Tamminen founded 7th Generations Advisors based on the ancient First Nations philosophy that decisions we make today should result in a sustainable world for future generations. That same philosophy needs to guide actions as society confronts climate change. As individuals and as a society, “We need to be thinking generations ahead and act with urgency,” he says. 

As coronavirus reignites in states across the country, a volunteer business organization is quietly helping companies take bold action to bring the spread of coronavirus under control — marshaling private and public sector resources to solve the immediate and evolving needs of this urgent public health crisis.

Stop the Spread was started by Kenneth Chenault, the former chief executive of American Express, and Rachel Romer Carlson, the CEO of Guild Education, in early March. The organization now includes more than 1,300 volunteer CEOs and business executives in its ranks.

Through unique partnerships with member companies, Stop the Spread has facilitated the production of more than 40,000 ventilators and manufacture more than 20 million units of personal protective equipment, including N95 face masks, face shields, and more.

“Our goal is to connect businesses and organizations that are best-positioned to address critical needs during this public health crisis, often in innovative or unexpected ways,” says Christian Peele, director of Stop the Spread operations. “Some of the most creative and effective responses to COVID are coming from business leaders across the country who have ideas and assets they can deploy to the fight.”

So how does an organization leverage the collective resources of some of America’s leading companies and executives? Peele and her “amazing team” of experts, analysts, students, and volunteers say these three leadership principles have helped guide their unique and powerful response to the pandemic:

Create a Call to Action

The Stop the Spread movement began with a call for change in a New York Times op-ed, written by Chenault and Carlson. It closed with this entreaty: “Wherever we can, however we can, we must meet this unprecedented challenge… What is called for is nothing less than the full strength of our capital, our ideas, and our leadership.”

The response from business leaders was immediate and galvanizing: Within days more than 400 executives and leaders — from Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry to CEOs of Zoom and PagerDuty — had signed on, with a thousand more joining the movement within weeks. “It was so inspiring to see these leaders step up in this moment and have the courage to think creatively about the problem and solutions,” said Peele. As the country experiences the summer spike in COVID cases, “the current moment requires that same kind of bold
imagination.”

Build Partnerships

Stop the Spread’s core work brings companies together to address critical resource needs. Early on, Stop the Spread linked ventilator maker Ventec Life Systems with General Motors — a partnership that produced 10,000 units a month when ventilators were in critical demand. Today, the organization is collaborating with firms and research institutions to scale production of coronavirus testing, treatment and tracing efforts. And Stop the Spread is pivoting to focus on racial and economic disparities exacerbated by the pandemic, through areas such as food security and the equitable distribution of testing and Personal Protective Equipment.

One of Stop the Spread’s latest partnerships occurred in June when it joined forces with ImpactAssets to find, foster and fund the most innovative and impactful ideas that were surfacing in response to the pandemic. ImpactAssets investors have already put more than $170 million into COVID-related investments. Now a rich pipeline of 400 Stop the Spread investment opportunities holds promise not only as impact investments but also as funding for supporting and championing critical response efforts around the U.S.

Never Underestimate Your Resources

From the beginning, Stop the Spread has embraced a principle that says, “we have more available to us than we think and if we just take a second and survey what we have we can change the world with it.” Peele says, “Our combined capital, our combined network, our combined brainpower, it is enough to do this work.”

That ethos has been expressed countless times by Stop the Spread’s volunteer executives. One example: Rick Schostek, Executive Vice President at Honda North America, Inc., surveyed the idle resources his firm had due to the pandemic and forged a partnership with Dynaflo, Reading, Pa. to manufacture at scale a sophisticated compressor that is an essential component in critical care medical ventilators. That partnership ensured that ventilators got off the assembly line and into hospitals on time. Said Schostek: “I’m humbled to be part of a manufacturing enterprise that is working to find ways to join this fight, with each of our business lines —automobiles, power equipment, power sports and aircraft — offering unique solutions and support.”

As the pandemic evolves, Stop the Spread and ImpactAssets will leverage these principles to address significant gaps in the COVID response — with a focus on communities of color that have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. Says Peele: “We are committed to helping catalyze private sector response and building innovative solutions that go beyond the immediate crisis to address issues of social equity and support the communities and individuals hit hardest by the crisis at hand.”

Please join Stop the Spread. This fight is far from over, and private sector leadership is essential to solving this crisis. Please ask leaders in your organization to complete this form to let us know how you’ll support this urgent and unprecedented moment in American history.

As the vast majority of companies rush to reopen, they’re falling into the trap of “getting back to normal.” They’re not realizing we’re heading into a period of restriction once again, due to many states reopening too soon. To survive and thrive in this new abnormal, and avoid the trap of normalcy, leaders need to understand the parallels between what’s going on now, and what happened at the start of the pandemic.

Reality Check in a Tech Company

Consider Tim, the CFO of a 90-person tech start-up based in Texas that provides HR and Payroll software and other business back-end software. Unfortunately, the company’s leadership team, including Tim, believed Elon Musk’s statements when he downplayed the coronavirus in March. 

Since the C-suite thought the pandemic wasn’t a big deal and would blow over soon, they didn’t take the necessary precautions and preparations and ended up in a bad place when the shutdowns occurred. They had to turn to a very basic business continuity plan that did not factor in something as significant as a pandemic. Thinking that things would “normalize” soon, they held off making major decisions, such as moving their operations to a virtual setup.

Tim decided to contact me for a consultation after learning about my work through a recent webinar I conducted for CEOs about how companies can adapt to the changes brought about by the pandemic. When he called me, his company was already embroiled in internal team conflicts and service interruptions, which resulted in several clients having problems with the software and a couple of major clients threatening to cancel. It was evident that the company needed help getting out of the murky waters — and soon. 

Facing This New Abnormal

When I met with Tim as well as the company’s CEO and COO over Zoom (by this time I had already moved my previously hybrid in-person and virtual consultations to all virtual) I told them that there were some essential points they needed to understand for their company to survive in the new COVID-19 reality. 

First and foremost, we won’t get anywhere if we don’t face the facts. We need to acknowledge that COVID-19 has fundamentally disrupted our world, and turned it upside down. Regrettably, it will not disappear soon.

However, you might be wondering why Elon Musk – and even some political leaders – downplayed the COVID-19 pandemic? It’s not like doing so had personal benefits for these leaders. They wound up humiliated when proven wrong, hurting their credibility. 

Like Tim and the other leaders of these companies, these globally-renowned leaders fell into what cognitive neuroscientists call, the normalcy bias. This dangerous error of judgment refers to the fact that our gut reactions drive us to feel that the future, at least in the short and medium-term, will function in roughly the same way as in the past. As a result, we tend to vastly underestimate both the possibility and impact of a disaster striking us. 

Normalcy bias is one of more than 100 mental blindspots that cognitive neuroscientists and behavioral economists like myself call cognitive biases. Fortunately, recent research has shown us how we can effectively deal with such dangerous judgment errors.

For normalcy bias, it’s critical to understand the dangers of falling into it and acknowledge the pain you may cause yourself and the company by doing so. Then, you need to consider the long-term outcomes realistically and plan for a realistic scenario that addresses the likelihood of significant disruption.

It was pretty clear from my first Zoom call with Tim, the CEO and COO of the company, that their leadership team had suffered from normalcy bias. However, it took until the second consultation for them to admit (more than a bit grudgingly) that they had succumbed to this mental blind spot. This refusal to admit to reality had less to do with the veracity of the facts I presented, but rather with their initial unwillingness to let go of their “gut feel.” 

After discussing the above points with them, they admitted that it was time to face what lies ahead. It was time to prepare their company for a much more significant disruption than they had anticipated. We used the “Defend Your Future” technique to help them plan for a variety of potential futures. We decided that while they would hope for the best, they would plan for the worst, a wise strategy for addressing normalcy bias.

No Longer Struggling, But Thriving

When I last spoke with Tim at the end of June 2020, he told me that he had decided to share their findings and the points we discussed during the coaching sessions with the rest of the leadership team. It was an awkward conversation, due to the growing conflicts in the company and mutual recriminations. 

However, after realizing that there wasn’t much sense playing the blame game given the urgency of the situation, the C-suite decided to buckle down and address the problems head-on. After outlining the problems and potential solutions, they eventually got widespread buy-in to do what needed to be done to propel their company to recovery. 

The leadership team swiftly addressed internal conflict — a necessary first step to addressing all the other issues. 

They focused more effort on a long-term transition to virtual. The COO led the effort to minimize their physical footprint, having only a couple of people in the office to take care of necessary paperwork. Tim, the CEO, and the VP of IT made quick, practical changes to the company’s policies and processes so that operations would be in line with their virtual transition. 

After the internal conflicts and systems had been addressed, the leadership team focused on reaching out to clients who were threatening to cancel due to the service interruptions. From these efforts, most of the cancellations were avoided, although two smaller clients did cancel.

Tim told me that he and the leadership team were pleased with the results of the changes. They were especially pleased when they realized how prepared they were when COVID-19 cases began rising again, prompting a pause of the reopening process, that led to shutdowns again.

Conclusion

During these disruptive times, it’s essential to be agile and resilient. Keep in mind that even if your company was not able to make the best decisions at the onset of the pandemic, you can still steer it back to the right path by fighting and protecting against the trap of normalcy bias.  

If you’re still able to work in this COVID world, you may be doing a lot of video calls. When meetings don’t feel as warm or connected as they used to — when they feel flat, dull, and relentless — it’s easy to blame the medium. But even in the digital age, the old rule still applies: Don’t be the bad employee who blames the tool. Master the tool instead. 

Of course, video calls aren’t going to be the same as meeting real human beings in the room. But in a time where virtual meetings are all we have, we need to make them work. No excuses. It doesn’t help to slump in front of your laptop or surreptitiously check your phone messages while others are talking.

If you want to make your calls sing, think about imitating broadcasters, who know how to project energy through the lens and into the very pixels. Channeling the presence and focus of a great broadcaster will help you to get better results. 

Here are the three techniques to keep in mind for better video calls: 

1. Listening Feeds Speaking

What makes for a great video call? Simply stated, listening. When someone listens to you and responds in the moment, you hear it in their tone of voice. You see it in their facial expression. You can feel that they are with you, even if it’s on a screen. It feels good because it’s rare. 

Most people on video calls are only half-listening. They think others can’t tell, so they engage in multitasking. But it’s apparent when they’re faking listening. They have a slight delay in their response or have a slightly flat intonation that says they aren’t entirely there. Trust vanishes, and participation starts to ebb.

Make your calls work by fully focusing. If you want to up the ante for participation and innovation in your virtual meetings, you have to make sure that your listening is as focused as if you were in the room together. Show up to your call fully present and engaged. 

This may mean having to ration your calls — don’t run them back to back. Go for quality over quantity. Listen with full focus. Hear all voices, giving every participant your full attention. Be fascinated. 

2. Keep it Short and Sweet 

Keep the video calls short and on point so that everyone can fully engage. Follow an agenda, segmenting the content. Ask participants to keep their contributions concise and not let people run on for too long with their comments. Just as a great broadcaster does in a panel discussion, sum up and move on.  

3. Speak through the Camera, not at it 

When you’re connecting through the lens, you need to up your energy. You want to get the feeling of sending your energy through the screen and beyond.  To up your energy before a call, play some upbeat music and sing along to it. It will boost your energy and your voice. 

When you speak on the call, sit tall and think of sending your voice to the back of the room you’re in, even as you look at the camera. It gives you power vocally and will energize others. A broadcasting secret is to smile so that it shows in your eyes and your voice (as long as the message suits a show of lightness).

You’ll notice that when you commit energy to your video calls, it will come back to you. Energy is infectious. Send it out and watch it bounce back. 

Purchasing travel insurance, once a painfully slow, paper- and fax-based process, is now a seamless online purchase. But it wasn’t always so simple, that is, until a determined Silicon Valley engineer, in the U.S. on an H-1B visa, decided it was time to revolutionize the market.  

On June 22nd, President Trump issued a proclamation barring many categories of foreign workers and curbing immigration visas through the end of the year. The temporary ban included the H-1B type of visa for high-skilled workers that many U.S. tech companies employ. Not surprisingly, Silicon Valley shuddered. Leaders like Apple Inc. Chief Executive Tim Cook, Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk and Sundar Pichai, boss of Google-parent Alphabet Inc., all roundly condemned the move. After all, attracting skills from abroad has been the primary force that has propelled America into a global technology leader, creating plenty of opportunities abroad and hundreds of thousands of jobs, and massive amounts of wealth, here at home.   

One of those skilled foreign workers, who personifies the American dream is Rajeev Shrivastava, who came to the U.S. from India in the late 1990s. After earning a master’s degree in computers from the National Institute of Technology Raipur. After working as an engineer at Cisco Systems Inc. for several years, Shrivastava decided to spread his wings and become an entrepreneur.

In the early 2000s, the popularity of travel insurance increased vastly as global travel grew, and growing numbers of visitors to the U.S. became aware of costly medical expenses in a country without universal healthcare coverage. This was most acute among the well-paid foreign workers in Silicon Valley, who often had their families and parents visit — with an increased need for medical coverage. Here, Shrivastava saw a great opportunity.

“Because the importance of travel insurance was never conveyed to travelers, they were unaware of the risks,” explains Shrivastava. “Hard lessons were learned after many suffered a serious injury or illness and got hit with a five-figure medical bill.” Rajeev knew that if people were aware of the risks in traveling to the U.S. without coverage, they would purchase travel insurance. It led him to start his own company, VisitorsCoverage.

In creating a platform for travel insurance, Shrivastava knew that the entire process had to be simplified and that educating customers was vital. He wanted the policy document to be three pages instead of 30 and wanted customers to choose between customized travel insurance products.

Leveraging his computer and technology background, Rajeev developed patents for the online search, comparison, and purchase of travel insurance — long before the term ‘insurtech’ was even part of the corporate world’s lexicon. To date, Shrivastava’s company is the only travel insurance reseller to hold registered patents for the online purchase process.

He also took advantage of video and animation to create a knowledge center that explained travel insurance through voice and visuals that were cross-cultural and entertaining. In addition, they built a vendor-neutral travel insurance review website, VisitorsInsuranceReviews.com, which gained widespread popularity among foreign workers.

Thanks to Shrivastava’s patented technologies, he found a niche with the Asian markets and quickly became the largest seller of visitors’ insurance for travelers coming to America. But he still wasn’t satisfied. The travel medical plans he sold had been designed years prior and offered the same benefits, regardless of the traveler’s varied needs.

More customization was necessary in 2017 when changes to U.S. immigration policy created more headaches for travelers visiting the U.S. Shrivastava was the first to introduce border entry protection, that covered the expense of returning home should entry be denied.

Sometimes, Shrivastava has even innovated ahead of trends. An example was his creation of SafeCruise in early 2019, a customized travel insurance policy that addressed the unique needs of cruise travelers, including missed port departures, hurricane coverage, and emergency evacuation for virus outbreaks (now a prescient coverage clause) along with other medical emergencies.

Like other industries, the travel insurance industry has been hard-hit by a wave of travel cancellations from the coronavirus pandemic. It might take one, maybe two, years for global travel to return to the levels it saw before the pandemic shook the world. But even here, Shrivastava sees opportunity.

“The pandemic crisis is an incredible moment for the travel insurance industry to rethink the legacy models and burdensome regulation that the industry is indebted to. This is our chance to elevate travel insurance and create flexibility in underwriting that will be critical to ensuring travelers are safe in a post-COVID world.”

As exhaustingly ever-present as it might seem now, COVID-19 will eventually fade. Doors will open, streets will refill, and our paused lives will finally, at long last, resume. But for businesses, resuming operations won’t be as simple as flipping on the lights and leaving an “open” sign in the window.

Since the start of COVID-19, consumer mindsets and preferences have shifted dramatically, imposing new challenges and expectations on businesses that will likely persist even after the panic passes. 

“Covid-19 has created a somatic marker in our lives, an emotional bookmark that will forever link us to 2020,” SalesForce CIO Brian Solis wrote in an article for CIO. “Shelter-in-place is changing mindsets, values, beliefs, norms, and behaviors. It’s forging new routines. There’s a permanence to all of this. These human changes set the foundation for the new normal.”

What, then, will characterize our new normal? Early consumer trends indicate three D’s: distance, digital, and delivery. According to Salesforce’s new Global Shopping Index, online consumers drove 20 percent revenue growth in Q1 2020, a metric well-above the 12 percent reported in Q1 2019. This fast-paced expansion outstripped even the 2019 holiday shopping season, which had been viewed as very strong at the time. 

True, we could chalk these numbers up as temporary or falsely-representative — the one-time result of panic-buying in the early days of a pandemic. We might even be right to do so. But it would be a mistake to assume that shopping preferences will return to pre-pandemic standards after social distancing regulations relax. 

We’re Living in a Quarantine State of Mind

A recent report from the Capgemini Research Institute indicates that the percentage of people who see themselves as having high levels of interaction with online channels has risen significantly since the onset of COVID-19 — and Institute researchers believe that online preferences will only increase with time. But what drives this shift to digital? Are consumers turning to online channels because they have no other option during a pandemic, then staying for the convenience? While that’s undoubtedly one reason, the primary factor is more psychological. 

“We’re going to have to work through this quarantine state of mind even when the physical quarantine has lifted,” Sheva Rajaee, founder of the Center for Anxiety and OCD in Irvine, California, told reporters for Vox. 

Rajaee makes a case that the coronavirus threat has undermined our confidence and feeling of safety. This psychological impact will leave consumers feeling uncertain and needing extra reassurance and different forms of outreach. Businesses will need to alter their strategies to compensate for these insecurities and build rapport with customers by providing real support, care, and encouragement. 

Researchers for McKinsey concur on this viewpoint, writing that: “Particularly in times of crisis, a customer’s interaction with a company can trigger an immediate and lingering effect on his or her sense of trust and loyalty. As millions are furloughed and retreat into isolation, a primary barometer of their customer experience will be how the businesses they frequent and depend upon deliver experiences and service that meets their new needs with empathy, care, and concern.”

McKinsey suggests that businesses that weather this change will be those who can adapt to COVID-caused shifts in consumer behavior. Customer experiences and journeys will need to change — and those changes need to start now. 

Fostering Confidence and Trust Must Be a Priority

Emails came in a deluge during the early weeks of a pandemic. Desperate to reassure their customers, countless companies mass-sent messages detailing their COVID-19 response plans to their consumers. These efforts were well-intentioned but often frustrating. While most customers would want to receive updates from their bank or gym, getting an email (or six) from a mini-golf course they visited once, five years ago, probably wouldn’t be appreciated. 

Rather than spam potential or current customers with unsolicited information, companies need to strategize their communications. What do consumers want right now? What would be helpful and what would feel reassuring during these trying times? 

“Now more than ever, people need extra information, guidance, and support to navigate a novel set of challenges, from keeping their families safe to helping their kids learn when schools are shut down,” writers for the above McKinsey report explain. “They want a resource they can trust, that can make them feel safe when everything seems uncertain, and that offers support when so much seems to be overwhelming.”

How should a company accomplish this? McKinsey recommends paring back the email campaign. “The first step in caring is to reach out—not in marketing or overt attempts to gain a competitive edge, but to offer genuine support.”

This is a time to reinforce company values and show — through actions, not trite emailed words — that a business has its customers’ and employees’ backs. 

Take Google as an example. In mid-March, the technology giant announced that it would offer free access to paid Hangouts features to all G Suite and G Suite for Education customers until July 1st. Microsoft is similarly providing a six-month free trial for its premium Teams tool. Both of these gestures demonstrate an understanding of what consumers need right now — easy access to digital communications tools — and a willingness to be generous. Consumers will appreciate and remember these gestures; for some, the thoughtfulness may even spark long-term loyalty. 

Consumer Mindsets Have Changed: Prepare for the Shift

Customers are overwhelmingly concerned with health; they need products and services that protect and support wellness goals. This shift isn’t confined to the fitness or wellness sectors, either. In March, the global market research firm Ipsos found that “a healthy configuration” is the top consideration for Chinese car-buyers. Sixty-nine percent of those surveyed believe that this is more important than factors such as vehicle safety, comfort, and price. Consumers want features they may never have even known about before the pandemic, such as AC germ filters and antibacterial interior materials. 

The focus on health won’t be a flash in the metaphorical pan, either. 

“The concerns about health amplified during the crisis will not ebb after it is over,” a researcher for Accenture wrote in a recent report. “Rather, health will dominate. A health economy will emerge with opportunities for all to plug into. Every business will need to understand how it can be part of a new health ecosystem that will dominate citizen thinking.”

Consumer preferences have shifted because of COVID-19, and they are unlikely to revert when the pandemic ends. Businesses will need to figure out how they can better relate to consumers, pivot their products or service offerings, and provide empathetic customer service. Even when the need for social distancing disappears, and we return to ordinary life, the coronavirus’s psychological impact will continue to shape consumer behavior. As company leaders, we need to understand how we can support customers through their quarantine state of mind — now, and in the future. 

Organizations are now operating in a state of chaos and uncertainty, thanks to COVID-19. Planning for the threats and opportunities ahead is an unprecedented leadership challenge—and relying on trusted categories will be futile. Leaders will need to develop the ability to seek clarity across gradients of possibility—that is, the skill of full-spectrum thinking. 

Life during a pandemic is a scramble: an asymmetrical patchwork of urgency, panic, imbalance, and hope.

The future will be a global scramble that will be very difficult to categorize. A full-spectrum mindset will be necessary to have any hint of what is going on. There is a way to see beyond the scramble by looking future-back, rather than present forward. The present is just too noisy to get a clear view.

Full-spectrum thinking is the ability to seek clarity across gradients of possibility—while resisting the temptations of certainty. Full-spectrum thinking will be required for us to make sense out of new opportunities and threats amid the scramble. The future will punish categorical thinking but reward full-spectrum thinking.

The scramble will be fraught with toxic misinformation, disinformation, and distrust. In this future, it will be dangerous to force-fit new threats or new opportunities into our old categories of thought. During the scramble, many things that have been stuck will become unstuck. Some things will unravel. The scramblers of the present pandemic world—we see them all around us today—won’t be very good at putting things back together again.

In the scrambled future, you can expect an unusual number of unexpected consequences from the scrambling. You will have a range of creative new options that weren’t on the menu in the past. The future will get even more perplexing over the next decade, and most people—including most leaders—are not ready.

Our old categories will work adequately when new opportunities or threats match prior understanding. Simplistic categorization, however, will be dangerous if people stereotype others superficially or boil new experiences down too far or too fast. People categorize to try and understand, but categorization often yields a superficial or false understanding. Sometimes categorizing demeans or devalues others. Fortunately, new spectrums of thought will become possible in new ways over the next decade.

Neuroscience teaches us that our brains are very good at putting new experiences in old categories. Our brains have evolved to continually categorize and predict what’s next—to try and keep us safe and out of trouble. Even though predicting the future is impossible, our brains do it anyway. When faced with a confusing situation, our brain’s default reaction is fear and dread, fight, or flight. Our minds were programmed in the past to make a continuous prediction of what’s coming next. The brain practices of the past, however, will get us into a lot of trouble in the future.

The emerging future will require us to teach our brains new tricks, to move from unexamined categorical thinking to mindful full-spectrum thinking. Sometimes categories are weaponized to inflict violence. Sometimes people categorize to pretend they understand. Sometimes people categorize to demean or devalue others.

Full-spectrum thinking will help people think future-back (I call it Now, FUTURE, Next), which we urgently need to thrive in the scramble.

I’m often asked how I can do ten-year forecasting so accurately since most people get stuck at one or two years ahead. The answer is because ten-year forecasting is usually easier than one- or two-year prediction. The future-back view is just more clear than present forward. Since future-back thinking is easier and more precise, why not do it?

Here’s what you can do to thrive in the scramble:

Identify signals of full-spectrum thinking and full-spectrum thinkers in your life today. Reward and elevate these in any way that you can. Look for the unevenly distributed futures that are already here in your world. Indeed, there are at least a few full-spectrum thinkers around you already. Certainly, some tools are already there to help people see beyond narrow categories of thought. Find these early expressions, reward them, and build on them.

Look for examples in your world of narrow categorical thinking or labeling that limits opportunity. Certainly, there are also cases where your organization and your fellow workers are judging too soon or labeling too narrowly. Expose the limits of categorical thinking in your organization, in your industry. Seek out categorical thinking and correct it wherever you can—or at least point out the limitations.

Encourage and reward full-spectrum thinking for all levels of learning. Full-spectrum thinking will allow more people to be future-ready, more able to make sense out of new opportunities and threats. Full-spectrum thinking will allow us to make a better future through efforts like training and executive development programs for corporations, nonprofits, government agencies, and the military.

Imbed NOW, FUTURE, NEXT, into your strategy and innovation processes. Looking future-back makes it much easier to see the full spectrum. The present is just too noisy, and the lure of the past too strong. Most organizations and most leaders think NOW, NEXT, Future—and they don’t spend much time at all in the future. Full-spectrum thinkers should think Now, FUTURE, Next. Many organizations with which I work use something like now, next, future as a strategic framework. Others use similar models like Horizon 1, Horizon 2, Horizon 3. This is a simple but profound re-ordering.

You should still spend most of your time on the business of now, what many companies call Horizon 1 since that’s where you run your business, make money, and pursue your mission. Since it is easier to see where things are going, if you think ten or more years ahead, it is much better to take this approach than to inch your way out from the present.

Categories won’t go away, and simple categories will work fine when they accurately match a new situation to an old one. But simplistic categories, labels, generalizations, and stereotypes will be exposed for what they are: sloppy and dangerous. Racism, sexism, and other prejudices will be much harder to justify in a world of ordinary full-spectrum thinking skills and capabilities. Future-back thinking will help us all be better prepared for the next pandemic, the next future shock.

Thinking about putting your philanthropy on hold till the summer or fall while you and your team regroup? The global COVID-19 pandemic is confusing. You might suddenly find yourself on lockdown, and working remotely for the first time, and figuring out how to homeschool your kids.

You may be reeling from the negative financial impact on your philanthropy or your family. Not to mention, being concerned about the growing health threat that puts you and the people you love in jeopardy. Given all these factors, it can be tempting to decide to scale back. After all, in philanthropy, there is little external accountability that requires funders to stay the course. It may even feel like you’re doing your team a favor.

But while it’s essential to continually check in and care for yourself and your team, there isn’t an equally compelling argument for postponing the critical work you do in the world. The opposite is true. In times of crisis, we need strong philanthropic leadership. Not only that, but the disruption happening now promises an evolving set of new normals over an extended period. 

So, before you succumb to being a full-on hermit and doing non-strategic tasks like organizing your home office or achieving a zero inbox, consider the alternatives. Now is an excellent time to be one of the many philanthropic beacons your community needs. Here are five steps to getting started:

1. Identify your top priorities.

While it might feel like your priorities should change, given all that has already changed in the world, you might be surprised to realize that they haven’t. If your strategy was to advance immigrant rights, that need still exists. Can you identify ways the virus is impacting that population and incorporate that into your work? Absolutely. While a virus doesn’t discriminate, the recovery process will. Those who were most vulnerable before this crisis will also have the most significant challenges recovering. You have an opportunity to do something about it, likely within the framework of your existing strategy and social justice work. 

2. Hold your team accountable.

Make sure your top priorities are implemented by designating “priority champions.” Priority champions are responsible for achieving each priority. Ask them to identify the top five or ten things they must do next to accomplish their priority task. They don’t need to do everything, and they can delegate tasks to others. Agree on realistic deadlines. Have them report back progress to you or your entire organization — regularly, during remote video conference calls. This holds them accountable and lets your wider team provide support and troubleshoot any problems that may arise. As top priorities and tasks are accomplished, add new ones to the list.

3. Allocate time to implement your top priorities.

Ever notice how putting something on your calendar makes it happen? So, make sure you and your team put a laser focus on your available time. Blocking out time to make headway on significant priorities is just as important as eliminating or delegating other items that don’t rise to the top. This may be the one thing made easier right now by the many canceled events and meetings wiped off our schedules. 

4. Focus on results.

If your strategy is clear and your priorities are in alignment, you won’t have to worry about confusing busyness with results. You’ll be making progress toward a clear goal. Don’t worry if people keep odd hours while navigating pressures at home. Offer flexibility, recognize their need to take care of themselves and their families, and trust that they will make the right decisions. It doesn’t matter if work gets done at 4:00 am or 4:00 pm, as long as results are achieved.

5. Maintain momentum.

Once you’re moving, it’s easy to pick up speed. At the same time, if you stop, it’s much harder to get started again. Remember that your top priorities warrant urgency even while there are many other concerns to contend with related to the pandemic. More likely than not, your team, like you, is over-the-top passionate about achieving these top priorities in service to a broader vision and mission. Boost morale by charting progress and celebrating successes. This is especially important if everyone is working remotely. 

For most, finding purpose and being useful — especially during times of uncertainty — offers solace and hope. Also, making headway on your priorities now will mean that you can do even more once the immediate crisis evolves, and new issues emerge. You’ll be in good company with other philanthropic leaders doing what it takes sooner rather than later, with strength, focus, and determination.