It is my eight week of quarantine, sitting in my apartment close to Milan, one of the most affected areas of Covid19; I am working the whole day to push further the narrative of the company in this very strange time.
Ethic and Empathy are part of our daily life now as never before. Staying close to employees and managers to support them and to keep the common direction towards the next normal is now the key driver of our daily job, not as communicators but as leaders.
The internal world of the company is closely connected to the outside customers and consumers. We cannot split these two worlds anymore. Everyone of us is working from home mixing private with professional, the human side of our life is overcoming the image we want to sell of ourselves and kids are running behind the camera and dogs are barking in the background.
This makes us all more humble, scared about the future and, I like to think, more open mind to the new. Many persons are using new tools, are getting used to work in remote, learning how to stay in touch with the team, or to organise a virtual house party.
In this particular moment we are all facing the fear and the solitude but the big challenges are in front of us. When we will have to face what someone likes to call “Next Normal” or “New Normal”.
Actually, nobody knows what does it means. I have studied different positions and opinions but I think that everyone of us is trying to envision a future that is now just unclear.
However, some facts are there and I’m not talking about the economic recession, this is part of the game we know, but about our behaviours and our understanding of the world.
We like to say that the world will change; someone is even talking about the end of the industrial time, as we know it.
What I know is that humans tends to come back to their comfort zone. So for sure this situation will change our habits and our behaviours for a while but we will go back to hug each other and to our old habits. Because we are social animals and we need relationship to be able to survive.
But what if this crisis would drive us to a better world? If it learns the society to live in a more Ethical and sustainable way?
What if, observing the animals regaining their space or the air finally getting clean and the sky getting blue, we become all sensitive to the nature and the planet and we work together to develop more intensively the existing solutions planet friendly. What about learning the respect of the whole species and the respect for life in general? If instead in pushing wars, we will invest money in health system to take care more of our people. What if, when we are voting, we are all choosing and pretending ethics, fairness and future thinking from our representatives.
This is the “Next Normal” I like to imagine. This is what I want to envision and what I want to push every day. In pushing the leadership to move forward to a modern way to manage, to promote creativity and dialogue. To drive results via empowerment and not governance. This is the marketing I want to push further, based on values and well-being for everyone.
I know maybe is a dream … but dreams can change the world!