2021: A Marathon Incomplete
The race toward a vaccine for COVID-19 appears to have been won. In fact, it seems we have three vaccines so far. With these vaccines, the new year ahead holds the promise of better days and a potential end to a pandemic that has touched all of us.
But the marathon we’ve been running together isn’t over yet. We’ve got miles to go still, and we need a plan if we want to avoid having to relearn the hard lessons of 2020.
I advise businesses and non-profits alike to take seriously the perspective of recognized, knowledgable health experts: 2021 is going to look a lot like 2020, at least through the summer. To manage this reality organizations will need to have a plan.
Battle-weary business, non-profit and charitable foundation leaders are only, maybe, at the half-way point of this marathon. They will have to dig deep to recommit their energy, their positivity and their determination to offer the resilience necessary to guide their organizations through continued uncertainty. It’s a tall order. We’re all tired. There is so much talk of COVID fatigue around the conference table, as much or more so than around the kitchen table. In fact, this next stage of the pandemic may be the harder part. The drama, fear and urgency of the early months have passed. Now what is required is simple, quiet resilience … and a plan. A methodical muddling through, if you will.
As a crisis communications planner, I encourage business owners and other organizational leaders to look at 2021 as an ongoing crisis to be managed.
The silver lining is that 2020 gives us a road map. COVID-19 related shutdowns, supply chain disruptions, staffing concerns, health scares among workers and volunteers, rumors, questions about viability and, potentially, even serious illnesses and death are all potential factors to be managed in 2021. The year we’ve just gone through can guide us through the year ahead if we plan accordingly.
In prior articles, I’ve written about crisis planning. Once you can assess the situation to be managed (using 2020 as the guide), the next step is to plan your short and long-term approach.
How will you manage business or operational continuity if your physical location is shutdown or staff are unable or unwilling to come to work? Can you call suppliers and secure guarantees or at least ask how they plan to manage disruptions to the supply chain? How can you better support workers and volunteers so that you have the staffing to fulfill your mission? Did you build out a communications plan to help you bat back rumors, misinformation or simply to be more responsive to evolving circumstances? Have you assigned responsibilities for your communications plan to a team? What is your plan to reassure customers, clients and even donors that you won’t miss a beat during this next stage of the pandemic and that they can depend on you for the long-term? What’s the plan if staff or senior leadership, or their families, become sick and have to quarantine, or worse?
Planning how you would respond to each of the above scenarios, gaming out the steps you would take in each situation and doing a tabletop exercise with your crisis response team will ensure COVID-19 doesn’t take you again by surprise and potentially threaten your organization.
What comes next doesn’t call for heroic acts on the part of business and organizational leaders. This next stage requires steady leadership and resilience; the kind of leadership and resilience that motivates employees and volunteers to keep going; that inspires clients and customers to remain confident they have put their trust in an organization committed to finishing this extraordinary, exhausting but manageable marathon.
To accomplish this, you'll need a plan. So get started. We have miles to go.