What does your post-pandemic Day Zero look like?

Ifigenia Arampelou

Director of Digital Transformation

The world seemed to have stopped. In the last few weeks, the most common words I have seen on my screen is “CANCEL”, “POSTPONE”, “ON HOLD”.

The pandemic (a Greek word meaning “all the people”) has been travelling from country to country bringing fear, uncertainty and in some cases, unfortunately, the vast devastation of losing a loved one. You can simply not put a price on human life.

We have been bombarded with numbers and university-level maths. New cases, number of deaths, logarithmic equations, linear equations, percentage increase, probability, projections the list goes on and on. A lot of theories and questions, how come Germany's death rate is so low, how come China is back in business, what is happening in the US, did Greece take measures too early, is herd immunity a thing? So may questions and so few real answers. We are at the very familiar territory of  “we don’t know what we don’t know”.

Another interesting fact is that although we are technologically advanced like never before we are also at the same time working from home utilising cutting edge technology in quarantine (an Italian word meaning forty days) a methodology that has been applied as a first defence since the days of the Spanish flu. I find this combination of methods and processes fascinating.

I do know one thing though. This pandemic will end. The world will open again and although it’s quite tricky to predict the date its certain that we as a human race will come back, strong confident and ready to (re)-build.

It’s very easy to get lost into the news, the numbers, the equations, the projections and lose sight of the come-back. A question I ask myself every morning is “What does your post-pandemic Day Zero look like?”. What the pandemic has given us apart from the uncertainty, fear and devastation is more time the one thing we are all poor of. Time to think, time to sleep (think about these 4 hours commuting to London that we got back) time to Discover and Plan our next moves.

There are no conferences, no face to face meetings on opposite sides of the country no real reasons that the teams cannot be together anymore. Together via a zoom meeting in quarantine, you can go back to all of these projects that you have put on hold. Although I keep seeing that the world has been put on hold as all flights have been grounded I see a realistic and huge opportunity to put a lot of projects OFF HOLD.

If you have been planning to build a new website for your business but never have the time to Discover and plan now is the ideal and perfect time to do so. Your team is a click away and is available. Not only your team is available but at this period of quarantine, there is a desire to plan for the future, to connect with people to discover new things. Surely there is the uncertainty of how long this will last, what shape my business will be in but fear and insecurity can only lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy. We will win. You will win.

There is a (new) world launching in the near future. A world full of opportunity and we all need to be ready to make things happen. Stay safe.