Today, I want to bring some thoughts about post pandemic changes. Yes, wishing or not, the world now is different.
We can’t say good things about the pandemic, because it is impossible to find something good among the deceased that thousands of people around the globe. This is the first thing I have to say. So don’t try to see good things in something so negative, right. Just to make it clear.
In fact, the pandemic changed the world we used to know, in every way possible. We started to be more careful than ever before, learned how to handle this new situation in the best way possible, where we do not have any control, created new habits… Probably this will remain with us for a long time, not the virus itself, but all the cares that we started to have.
And talking about business, the industries change. All of them. None passed by this pandemic undamaged, without making some moves. Some suffered more, others less, and with the uncertainty of what’s gonna be the “new normal”, some things came to leave some knowledge for us.
Everyone does not need to be together every time.
I love my team and love to be in the office. I like the environment, the conversations, and the afternoon break we always have. But if before we no longer felt the need to be at the office every day (since 2018 GamePlan works with three days in the office and two with remote work), after more than a year and a half in home made this necessity even less relevant.
Of course we are missing our social interactions, but this balance of 60% in office and 40% in home always was a good deal for the whole team. And we are talking about a company which resides in a less popular location among the companies, the East Side of São Paulo, Brazil, and people don’t have to face a long bus or subway trip before the work day starts.
Now, do you imagine those who work in areas with a large concentration of companies, in nobler regions of the city (in which people don’t live close because they are too expensive)? People who take more than a few hours to cross the city just gained an extra time to wake up a little later, or do some exercise. And that makes their productivity grow.
Before that, the companies were afraid to do this kind of thing, because they would not have control over their employees all the time, but the pandemic forced many of them to adopt the home office format against their will. And it is working. Of course online meetings have increased, but it is all part of this moment we are living.
When we go back to the office, we’ll keep the 3×2 format. It works really well!
It’s necessary to be flexible and have a B, C, D, E and even a Z plan.
A common behavior in my life is to always look for the worst case scenario. It is not to be pessimistic, but indeed be prepared for the worst things that could happen. Of course nobody wants these things to happen, but there are some things that we cannot control, and COVID19 came to show us just that. The secret is to always plan for everything to go well, but already know how to proceed if something goes wrong.
A pandemic was not in the foresight of the most pessimistic human being (really, not even Nostradamus made predictions about the pandemic), but it showed how much the company’s systems were “stuck”. And the ones that didn’t adapt, got lost.
Let’s use a big corporation as exemple, like the NBA. Past March, they held down their activities and delayed all the matches of the mid season, while two players of one of the teams tested positive for COVID-19. A few of them defended that the season should be ended, some others stand to keep going with it. The resolution was postponed to June 2020, where a decision about the 2019-2020 season would be taken, since not even the finalists were defined (and the death of Kobe Bryant in the beginning of 2020 make the necessity of honoring the sport even bigger).
The championship went on the video games, as I said here, but in May the NBA announced that the season would continue… at Disney. For those who don’t know, Disney World has a giant sports complex, and there was created the NBA Bubble, where all players, coaches, staff and whoever was necessary, would be “confined” there while the championship would continue with 22 teams and no crowd. The tests began for the athletes of the qualified teams in June, and they started to arrive in Orlando in the next month, to the season be resumed on July 30th.
All the people inside the bubble were tested every sunday. And after weeks of games and finals, not a single case among the more than 300 people inside the bubble. An impressive achievement.
The NBA and the teams are gaining the same amount of a “regular” season? Of course not. Just the fact of not having tickets to sell already represents a financial drop, and we’re not even taking in consideration all the selling points inside every arena, like food stalls, shops and bars. On the other hand, the selling of merchandising from the “bubble” times continued, besides all the people who signed the NBA League Pass app to watch all the games (not every game was broadcasted by the TV networks) which made the teams have a share of the transmissions as well.
Now let’s forget the monetary value, and let’s talk about a thing that cannot be expressed with figures: reference. The NBA was the first to be the pioneer of something that many people didn’t believe would work (myself included). But it did. It did so well that the Champions League copied the format and made a very similar format in Lisbon.
But I wasn’t ready. And now what?
Just a reminder for you: nobody was.
Not even the most pessimistic in the entire universe was ready for a pandemic in 2020. We are still privileged, since our area remains unaffected – on contrary, the gaming industry hasn’t stopped growing. This was enough to be cited by Le Monde and the New York Times.
But we did feel the impact, since we had to learn to face a new scenario without a previous warning. In GamePlan, for example, we have to deal with the cancelation of important events ten days before the embarking – and have to reorganize all the schedules of the clients who would be in these events with us.
What we learned with the COVID-19? First of all: it’s necessary to have flexibility. We work in a dynamic area, and this became even more important in 2020, the year where all our plans were cancelled or altered.
The second thing is: be ready for a major upset. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a world where everything is fine every time, so we have to manage how to survive in the hard times. If you never planned a monetary reserve for a rough time, now is the time, mostly if you are in a good financial condition.
