The Not-So-New Normal
In the late 1990s, I was a hiring manager. The third interview in my process was to ask the candidate why they wanted to work for our company. Then I shared with them why they may not want to work for our company. I revealed many things about our company and its culture that you would only learn once you started working there. One of the things I said is, ”The only constant here is change, and if you aren’t comfortable with change, you shouldn’t come to work here.”
In the fall of 1997, I hired a new person for my team. Shortly after he started, we sent him to our corporate office for training for a few weeks. During that time, I decided to resign. Out of respect for my new hire, I called him to let him know I would be leaving. He was shocked. I reminded him of our third interview where I shared the one constant is change. Well, this is change. To which he responded, “I didn’t expect it this quickly.”
I was working for a software company and our founder believed that in order to stay competitive, we had to be willing to change and do so easily.
I believe that the new normal is not new at all. The new normal is change, uncertainty, and disruption. It likely started in the early 1990s with the commercial utilization of the world wide web and has only accelerated since. Technology has both brought it on and accelerated it.
For some reason, many of us are attached to what we already know and understand, and as a result, we latch onto what we are comfortable with and ignore things changing or shifting around us. Our current reality is that we are living through a pandemic that very few people even thought would be a reality in the United States just six months ago. Our behavior and inability to see and accept new possibilities for a current reality apply to business leaders as well. Here are a few examples.
The first digital camera was invented by Kodak. Someone or someones at Kodak decided not to pursue the digital camera as they viewed themselves as a film company. This resulted in Kodak missing the transformation the digital camera created, which ultimately led to Kodak filing for chapter 11. Now the company is a shell of its former self.
In 1985 Blockbuster was founded, in less than 30 years, they were out of business. Netflix was founded in 1997 and started by mailing movies to customers on a monthly subscription model. You could say that at the time Netflix started, both companies were in the same business, delivering movies. Yet one died and the other thrived. Blockbuster saw themselves as a retailer with brick and mortar and misread the future which allowed for the digitization of movies and the electronic delivery of movies into our homes.
Today, Netflix is a FAANG stock. FAANG is an acronym referring to the stocks of the five most popular and best performing American technology companies. Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Alphabet (formerly known as Google).
Sony had owned the portable music business, dating back to 1979 when they introduced the Sony Walkman, enabling us to play cassette tapes on a portable device that had small light headphones. This evolved into a CD version. But Sony missed the conversion to digital music and got crushed by another FAANG company, Apple, who in 2001 introduced the first iPod. We all know what happened to Apple after that occurred.
The new normal is change, uncertainty, and disruption, and it’s affecting every industry. The way to thrive in an uncertain world is to embrace it. The more we are attached to what we already know, the more vulnerable we become to the change, uncertainty, and disruption occurring around us.
In 1896, economist Vilfredo Pareto noted that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. This later became known as the Pareto Principle and then coined into the 80/20 rule. It is a law of unequals, meaning, a small percentage of one thing generates a larger percentage of something else. Some believe, as I do, that it can be applied to anything and everything. Do you want to be happier? Identify the few things that make you happy and do them more often and you will be happier.
The healthcare industry will be disrupted by the use of big data and the 80/20 principle. The theory is that big data will inform physicians when treating certain conditions and that for 80% of the cases there are likely only a few courses of treatment that should be utilized. Some believe, by following the insight gleaned from what big data suggests for treating patients, we will create more consistent healthcare with better outcomes at lower costs. Doing so will free up physicians to invest more time to treat the more complex 20% of conditions that likely have a whole host of treatment options and will require more time, testing, analysis, and the expertise and experience of the physician.
This disruption is coming, and I believe doctors will not like it. Well, there are two ways to respond to any disruption. One could resist or one could get on the front end of it and be a vanguard for how to ensure, in this case, how higher quality healthcare is delivered in this new model.
The not-so-new normal: change, uncertainty, and disruption. The pandemic has accelerated an uncertain future, which will be very different from the past, not just at work, but in life as a whole. This uncertainty is an opportunity to craft new ways of working, operating, and serving customers and clients.
As the saying goes: Lead, follow, or get run over.
It is your choice.