When “it” happened, nobody really knew what to do. The playbook for doing business virtually during a global pandemic hadn’t been invented yet. As I think back to those early days of May, June, and July of 2020, it was surreal. Virtual meetings started to expand around the clock, the work accelerated as we all realized we had so much more time in a day thanks to no commutes and no travel. And the best part? People were so nice! There was an incredible sense of unity and purpose. The virus was after us all and we all came together to figure things out and keep the business world going. Some industries obviously had it a lot harder than others in terms of exposure and the closer you were to the actual supply chain of basics like food, water, and healthcare the more difficult it was. We at Advantexe had an interesting view working with clients across the global supply chain and despite the hardships, most people were still very nice.
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On the 2nd anniversary of “the great disruption”, I thought it would be interesting to take a moment to reflect on what we have learned and where we are going in year three of the shift to virtual learning.
It was two years ago this week that everything changed. I was in Arizona having just completed what was to be the last in-person business simulation-based training program for quite some time wondering if we would get home before they shut down all commercial flights. By the following week, all the in-person training sessions we had scheduled started to convert to virtual. For us, the conversion was flawless as we had started to build all of our assets for virtual delivery more than 2 years prior to the pandemic. Since those first few months, a lot has changed, and the industry has evolved tremendously. Here is one person’s perspective of the 5 things we have learned about virtual learning over the last 2 years:
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I recently delivered a virtual Business Acumen training program to a great group of mid-level leaders at a technology company who were focused on improving their understanding of how their company makes money. About half the group came from non-commercial roles and they were given the opportunity to learn about business by running a simulated business. In the simulation experience, small teams take over a digital case study that comes to life and makes decisions in all areas across the enterprise. When it came time to making the Marketing decisions, the group, especially the non-commercial folks, really struggled with our updated-for-2022-and beyond decision and output set. More specifically, the concept of Omnichannel Marketing was difficult to understand, so I developed some content to share insights and foundational knowledge about what is happening in Marketing and Omnichannel Marketing.
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As more and more people remove their masks and emerge from the past 2 years, it is becoming cliché to use words like, “disrupted”, “unprecedented”, and “unparalleled” when describing the next new normal. Yes, everything has changed, and we are now all settling into new patterns of living, working, exercising, and enjoying amazing entertainment at home through digital systems that provide superior enjoyment. The quality of shows and movies to watch at home is truly unprecedented and if you have a great work-life balance, you can carve out some solid downtime to relax and enjoy some of these amazing forms of entertainment with family and friends. There is truly nothing better than binge-watching the Mandalorian of a Friday night with your kids.
I had an interesting predicament today that raises the potential of “alternative” forms of content that potentially rivals enjoying these great shows. At 2 pm this afternoon, I was triple booked, and it was a real predicament. It happed because I gave that time slot out as part of a list of alternatives and before I knew it, I was triple booked. Lesson learned. Luckily, I was able to attend one of the meetings live and then requested my teammates running the other meetings to record them for viewing later.
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The participants going through a virtual workshop featuring our new Coaching business simulation were having a hearty debate about the results from one of the complex scenarios. “I don’t know if that is still the best practice anymore, so I am going to disagree. I have found out the hard way that you better be very careful these days about giving strong feedback to people because they might just quit on you.”
It was an interesting conversation among 26 participants and the conclusions were evenly split. Half the group felt that everything in the business world has changed and because of the great resignation, too many leaders are tolerating poor performance instead of providing coaching and feedback that could cause employees to quit. The other half of the group said if an employee wanted to quit, they are going to quit regardless of getting negative feedback for poor performance.
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