We are living in a time of exigent circumstances. What do I mean by exigent circumstances? I mean a do-or-die challenge that raises the stakes for survival.
Exigent circumstances ignite the structural change necessary to collaborate for governments, companies, non-profits, universities and just about every organization. This is The Bounty Effect which I describe in my book The Bounty Effect: 7 Steps to The Culture of Collaboration®. I call this The Bounty Effect using the metaphor of the mutiny that occurred on the H.M.S. Bounty more than two centuries ago. For Captain Bligh and his loyalists who were cast adrift on a small boat in stormy seas, surviving meant changing the structure and culture from command-and-control to collaborative.
COVID-19 is an exigent circumstance. COVID-19 is The Bounty Effect.
The pandemic is kick starting collaboration in myriad ways as command-and-control practices recede. Companies that weeks ago shunned telecommuting now embrace working from home. Organizations that paid a few people to think and paid everybody else to carry out orders want everybody thinking and contributing. It’s all hands on deck!
Deficit hawks have voted for the largest stimulus in history as legislators of both parties collaborate in ways not seen for at least a decade. Companies are mobilizing and retooling to manufacture medical supplies. Toyota says it’s ready to produce face shields, face masks and respirators.
Companies that preferred email and messaging are integrating rich, real-time collaboration tools such as videoconferencing into work processes and they’re rediscovering an age-old synchronous tool called the telephone. Companies with centralized decision making at “headquarters” are spreading decision making around the organization.
Is this actually lasting structural change or just a temporary reaction to an imminent threat? COVID-19 is a watershed event in the modern history of the world, and many shifts in practices and processes will become permanent.
We’ve seen The Bounty Effect before with pandemics. AIDS changed the structure of vaccine development from competing isolated labs to collaborating across organizational boundaries. Likewise, we will experience not only lasting structural change in organizations of all kinds but also more institutionalized cross-organizational and cross-sector collaboration.
