How The Coronavirus Will Change The World

We all know that crises come to our life. I was afraid of that. I knew that it would change everything. The black swan was coronavirus. What do I feel now? I am scared and it is cool. 

I’m sure that our main fears give us the ability to change the world and improve our businesses. We all need energy to change the world. It’s high time to take new opportunities.

Do you feel scared in the empty office? I do. Even though I’ve been working in outsourcing for more than 15 years I’m used to being with my team in the office. It is psychologically hard to imagine that all the people who you see 5 times a week work remotely.

One of the most popular reasons why people do not work with outsourcing was that they want to have a person in their office. It is easy psychologically to control a person. 

You can see the reactions of your employee, talk directly to him. In this way, you get 70% of not verbal information. In remote work, you can’t do it. Video calls are better but it is not enough. 

What Should You Do To Keep The Business Going On

  1. The first thing is to trust your team. If you trust a person it is harder for him to work not 100%. 
  2. Set common goals. All my developers know that the result of the task can lead not only to our success but also to the success of the client. And this is exactly what we always strive for. 
  3. Remove micromanagement. The army can provide good soldiers. But they will always have borders in their mind. We need people who will create great solutions, not the typical ones. 
  4. Use Agile for the global picture. In this case, you always see the snapshot of progress on the board. You can see who is working on the task and at the end of the iteration, you can see the final result. After some time you can see the performance and you can play with velocity. 

Let’s look at the challenges that we have in this crisis: 

  • Remote work is a reality
  • More likely that it won’t finish soon if you check official German (Angela Merkel) or British officials
  • Price matters
  • Some employees will be let go
  • Many businesses will now have to deal with the loss of customers, searches and hiring employees so as not to lose everything.

What can be changed:

  • Find the best guys who can work remotely 
  • Be more flexible. You don’t have time to hire a person in 3 months
  • The less you spend the less risk you have
  • It is a good time to replace the guys who do not fit perfectly
  • Find new customers. Now we can not afford to spend a lot of time on staff recruitment.

What is good in any crisis? Possibilities. At this time you need to be able to change everything. Be more flexible. Find the ability to change in order to survive.

The first thing that I started to do when I saw the crisis was to cut spending. Now I hope that our client won’t cut spending on us or our services. Will it work if everybody does it? 

Challenges give us a choice accept them, change or die. It’s very difficult to fire those with whom you have been working for a long time because many of them are good people.

But nowadays it is time to replace guys who are overpriced. Some of them get their salary not because they are the best. Just because we had a lack of developers.  

In time of crisis, they can be replaced by more professional guys. They all work remotely.  We can’t pay for not the best services. If everyone works remotely why should we pay more? 

Remote work gives us the ability to save money and makes us more flexible when facing challenges. And this is the only way you can get out of this crisis. 

Adapt or Die.