This debrief combines four poll questions with notes from the discussion that followed. The polls asked participants how far their company was shifting toward a Real Growth agenda, whether the pandemic had made their organization more human centric, whether their own influence had grown, and which learnings would matter most.
The answers were broadly positive but not uniform. Three quarters agreed their company was shifting toward long term value creation for all stakeholders, and a similar share agreed the crisis had made their organization more human centric.
Key findings
- Seventy-six percent agreed or strongly agreed that their company was shifting toward a Real Growth agenda, defined as long term value creation for colleagues, consumers, communities and shareholders. Nobody strongly disagreed.
- Seventy-six percent also agreed the crisis had made their organization more human centric, though this question drew the only strong disagreement in the set at four percent.
- Personal influence was the least certain of the three. Sixty-five percent agreed their influence over the company’s Real Growth agenda had increased, with eleven percent disagreeing.
- The four learnings selected most often were business resilience at eighty-two percent, the shift to e-commerce at seventy-nine, remote working at seventy-four, and increased empathy at sixty-one.
- The discussion identified human resilience as the missing piece, and treated getting it right as a source of competitive advantage.
Resilience, and what it cost to get it
The resilience discussion starts from a refusal to waste the moment and from a stated realization inside businesses that people come first. One participant noted that companies are becoming more resilient and that less efficiency is a price worth paying.
The framing offered is that the task is not simply to recover. It is to lean into the challenge with an entrepreneurial mindset, and that this depends on people: customers, colleagues, and community.
Practical notes ran alongside the optimism. Cash discipline was described as back, silos as newly removable, and upskilling employees on online tools as a requirement rather than a nice to have.
The hardest point in this section is about people rather than companies. Reactions to the crisis were observed to differ between paralysis and entrepreneurialism, and to vary by generation. A specific worry was raised about young people growing up in the crisis and what it would do to their mental health.
E-commerce and remote working
On e-commerce the observation was that the crisis accelerated an existing move. Scalability was described as essential, with hyper local emerging as a counter-trend, and the winning approach as holding both at once.
Remote working produced more surprise than complaint. Participants reported it working better than expected, and used the moment to question what meetings are for: their connection, their purpose, and whether they are efficient.
The practical advice was specific. Stagger the day and split hours with a partner. Reserve days free of video calls. Expect remote working to stay, and put a proper onboarding plan in place for new joiners. One reported benefit was a refocus on things that are important but not urgent, which produced more strategic growth ideas.
Empathy, inside and out
The empathy discussion split in two directions. Externally, the warning was that many companies had become too inwardly focused and were forgetting their customers. Internally, empathy was described as very important to teams, with a company in Turkey cited as standing by the people who carry its products.
A more uncomfortable observation followed. Companies were avoiding layoffs, and at the same time people were working harder out of fear of losing their jobs later.
The reframing offered was to reverse the usual question. Rather than asking what the pandemic is doing to the business, ask what the business is doing about the pandemic, on the argument that actions taken now could become a strategic differentiator.
What people wanted to know next
The forward looking section is mostly open questions. How people are prioritizing what they want from life, whether behavior is genuinely different, what will stick and what will stay, and what a marketer needs to know to keep up.
The request made of the session organizers was for a point of view on the future, framed around giving people hope and a sense of control, with hospitality and leisure named as the sectors most in need of it.
Scope and limitations
The polls report percentages without a stated sample size, and the discussion output is a set of unattributed notes from one session held in May 2020. The learnings question asked participants to pick five, and only four are listed here.
Source
This page summarises Human-Centricity Reset debrief, by Institute for Real Growth, 2020-05-18.