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Hey, happy Monday,
A few days ago I thought I had lost my wallet. Did it happen to you too?
It is one of those things that we stopped using, at least I did.
I didn’t drive, I didn’t buy anything in cash, I didn’t even have to pull out my Fidaty card, that was already in my phone….
I imagined that after all these days 4 million Italians returning to work today must be wondering in these minutes what pants (or what bag) they were wearing before the lockdown began.
What has really changed?
I have read ad nauseam such facilitation as: nothing will be the same…everything will be different…the new normal…yes, but in practice, what has changed?
I have identified these two areas, tell me if you agree.
Trust, risk and hygiene
Procter&Gamble in the U.S. has experienced its highest sales spike ever. Our shopping list has already been reprioritized to make room for hygiene products, disposable protective devices, and disinfectants with major sustainability concerns.
This is a shame because with this trend of reusable water bottles we were going in the right direction. Starbucks for example has temporarily banned them.
Among the most promising startups is Loop , which challenges the fact that recyclable packaging must necessarily be ugly and freaky. It is now in Uk, France and coming soon to Germany, and I’ll link you to the page How it works To understand how it works.
I point it out to you because packaging will be a one of the most important elements on quiali innovate to connect your brand with customers now that it is more difficult to invite them to a physical location.
Then, I also discovered this beautiful Korean brand, which looks like a mixture of COS, Muji and Xiaomi that is completely focused on personal hygiene and minimal design, it’s called WHIA.
Private property, sharing, architecture and design
Want the leisure time, want the economic condition, items for sale in second-hand marketplaces have increased and portals like Depop, Vestiaire Collective e The Real Real offer sanitation and contactless pick-up services (via Nylon).
It is also estimated that 26% will reduce the use of the sharing economy in the near future, and they have a point; I would have some trouble getting into an Enjoy in Milan now…
Like you I imagine, I have been wondering how offices will change…. In my research, the most interesting thing I found is this concept of Cushman & Wakefield who have called The 6 Feet Office, which collects design ideas and 6 standards to adopt to design a safer workplace. There are very interesting insights.
6 feet Will be the new golden measure of ergonomics…
Among all the videos I watched, I saw a big trend of design objects that we could call hand-free, that is, that are used without hands such as doors, faucets, dustbins… and voice based such as elevators and vending machines…
However, there are those who also do not return to the office and stay home with their children. It is necessary to buy at least a new desk for dad or mom and the children who will no longer return to school, in fact Zara has just put in the store this vintage model which looks precisely like a bench from another era.
And what has changed in the business?
I agree with those who say that this pandemic is an accelerator of innovation.
While time in isolation moves slowly and allows us to reconsider home and family as the only safe place, organizations have experienced a very strong acceleration.
Starting with IT departments that have enabled, overnight, entire teams to be able to work from home, to creative, strategy, and marketing departments that for the first time in their careers were unable to recycle templates, calendars, and editorial plans that ill fit the context.
Will that be why we worked three times as hard?
May I make a provocation? Saving companies (the ones that will be saved) will not be politics and governments but technologies like Zoom, Slack, Miro, Google… which immediately became offices, whiteboards, and workshop rooms that allowed no business to be disrupted, in some cases to increase it…
And when there is such a major technological change, two things can happen: that new technologies and processes can either destroy people’s skills and motivation or they can increase them. It will be the discriminator between failing and evolving.
The speed with which an organization must change is dictated not from within but by the speed of the external environment.
This is where strategy is needed, to find that speed of decision-making, not to navigate the market along with competitors by doing exactly the things everyone is doing, but by quickly reorganizing structure, services and assets to neutralize the competition.
The red team
I recommend this strategy exercise that leverages the two important characteristics that a winning strategy must always have (in my opinion): purpose e decentralized, autonomous and independent teams.
Did you know that the most innovative companies enable a group of people to behave outside the rules to create the competitor that will kill them? It is the so-called red team.
- Quickly put together people who might be part of it, invite them to a webconf, and share a whiteboard for note-taking.
- Start a 15-minute timer and ask you to describe in a few lines the behavior of a company, real or fictional, that could seriously threaten your business or that you think will come out on top at the end of this pandemic.
- Share post-its and vote for the most likely versions of company.
- Analyze it together
- What is your business model?
- What is its anatomy of products
- What is your marketing mix?
- What do we need to change to look like him?
- What has suddenly become real that makes this company strong? And what could weaken it?
- Prioritize these factors on an impact/effort scale
- Get to work
Just ask!
If you want to share with me the result of your Red Team’s work, or you feel the need to quickly implement a strategic workshop that will lead you to identify a sequence of integrated decisions to be made to evolve your business, don’t be afraid to write. I read and respond to everyone all the time. That’s what I’m here for.
In any case, good work!
Your feedback is important! Make yourself heard.
