Time Dilation During Crisis

Here in Canada, we are in week one of official Gov't mandated Self Isolation. In my industry, our customers are starting to send us the emails asking us reps to stay away unless absolutely necessary (makes sense to me!!). We have felt a bit of a surge in sales over the last week which in my region is starting to slow as I expected. The lag because of the lockdown is starting to show. The good news is that when we get near the end of the pandemic, and we will, we will likely see another surge in sales as the market tries to catch up.

Now to the point of this article: I have been fielding a lot of calls from my team on how we should be conducting business. This is reasonable as there are more questions than answers at the moment especially with a little hysteria thrown into the mix. I am working hard to help my people understand that "time", in terms of new information and situation changes, is moving very fast right now. Yesterday may as well have been two weeks ago and as such, there can be very little "business planning" because we have no idea on timelines (will this last for one month or six months??). You could argue that this week is passing at 3x speed, next week may slow to 2x and so on until time has come back to its normal pace at which point, we can get back to "shorter term" planning. The system is just too unstable right now.

From a practical standpoint, I believe the best thing to do is to process every order that we can while shipping lanes etc remain open (hopefully they stay open). Once we have done so and the pipeline dries up (we know it will as more businesses are communicating closing or shortened hours), we can focus on reseting, doing some personal development, catching up on admin tasks that we may have let slide and/or doing some "long term" planning.

Taking the above approach will allow us to hit the ground running when the situation stabilizes. Given the approach we take, we may even be in an even more advantageous position in the long run!

Lastly, I am taking a page out of NASA's playbook for astronauts on long duration space missions: Create a routine(s) that stimulates both the body and mind. I have changed my workout routine by adding more stretching, I am determined to get through the 1000 page novel "Lonesome Dove", taking some Linkedin Learning Courses, practicing guitar and of course, doing some writing!!

If this is our generation's "London Blitz", I will take it!!