Do you believe in a passing storm, lone wolves or something in between?

Will COVID-19 change your behavior in the future? For my part, the answer is yes! The last five weeks feel like five working years, but my family believe they have seen more of me than ever before. New ways of working will lead to more flexibility and less travel. Focus on outcome, not input. As a family, we will think twice on our mass consumption. I have no doubt that we will be more sustainable in our mindset and focus more on quality. New ways of consuming will lead to significant changes to hospitality, travel, retail and many other sectors. In some sectors, it will feel like we skipped one S-curve. What normally takes a generation to change happened in a few weeks or months. No doubt, the change will be significant, and “the new normal” is very different. How different?  That depends on, which of the scenarios will play out. I will get back to that in a minute.

COVID19 is the black swan event of a generation. Moreover, right now we still have hundreds of questions we don’t have the answers to yet. How many have had the virus? When do we have treatments? When will a vaccine will be available? How many waves of the virus can we expect? Will we be divided into two classes: those with immunity and the rest? Which level of data privacy are we willing to sacrifice? When can we go back to normal? The list of unanswered questions is long, and many answers are not yet available.

Exactly how the pandemic will end has a lot to do with medical advances. It also depends on how we as individuals behave in the meantime. If we protect ourselves and our loved ones, more of us will live. If we underestimate the virus, it will find us.

The gains to date in fighting the virus is the result of shutting down countries, a situation that is not sustainable in the end. The discussion on the price for a life versus economic meltdown has started. How will all this affect our average life expectancy? Not only due to the virus but all the direct and indirect costs on humans and society.

My purpose here is not to try to answer all the questions but to paint a picture of why it is super important for governments, corporations and any institutions or individuals to play the scenarios. Again. And again. Shape your ideas and points of view on what the new normal might look like. At Deloitte, we have started to paint that picture together with Salesforce.

What are the scenarios and how can they help shape your response?

“The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence itself, but to act with yesterday’s logic”, said the strategist Peter Drucker. That is why we need to build scenarios. Scenario thinking can help us prepare for a future no one can predict and help clarify the potential implications of our choices.

In our resilient leadership framework, we distinguish between Respond, Recover and Thrive. The latter will prepare us for the next normal in the coming years. We explored five fundamental uncertainties. Severity of the pandemic, level of collaboration within in and between countries, healthcare system response, economic consequences and level of social cohesion in response to the crisis.

Two important uncertainties will define the overall impact of COVID-19. Firstly, the severity of the pandemic. Will it be a rapid peak and will there be a second act or somewhere in between? Secondly, what is the level of collaboration within and between countries? Are we divided or is it a coordinated response?

Depending on the answers, this will guide you to four distinct scenarios; the passing storm, good company, sunrise in the east and lone wolves. No matter which scenario you explore there will be a significant impact.

Even the passing storm scenario will have a long-lasting impact. This is the scenario where COVID-19 is met with an increasingly effective healthcare system and political response. We will have renewed trust in public institutions and fiscal stimulus to help mitigate the crisis, but we cannot reverse the losses that businesses and individuals have already experienced. Tension will sharpen between socioeconomic classes. This is the mild scenario. There will be plenty of opportunities and they will all be harvested by survival of the fittest across sectors. Is that you? This scenario will change society, technology, economy, environment and politics. Actually, all scenarios will significantly change the new normal.

The lone wolves is the darkest of the scenarios. This will shake up the globe for longer than anyone ever prepared for. Nations put strict controls on foreigners and force supply chains home to protect local businesses. Countries will become isolated and government surveillance becomes commonplace.

In between these two scenarios, you will find the good company, where companies shift more towards stakeholder capitalism and take much more responsibility to help governments through the crisis. The last scenario is sunrise in the east, where the tilt to East Asian nations accelerates, and they take on the world stage.

The importance is not which scenario wins. We all hope for a passing storm but that is not the point. It is to reflect on possible events and how the scenarios will impact the demand and supply side of your country, business, institution. It is to define the new business models, how consumer behaviors and ecosystems change and which capabilities, relationships and assets will be important in the new world.

Scenarios can help you act in a more agile way. And I believe agility will be the most required capability in the coming months and years. That is essentially, what will distinguish the companies that surface stronger after this crisis. That is resilient leadership.

Which scenario do you believe in?