The Long Pandemic (Or War #22))
As we celebrated Memorial Day in the United States this weekend to remember those who fought and died in previous wars, I was reminded that conflicts and wars always seem to last longer than expected. I saw this firsthand during my career in the Army. I spent a year in Korea from 1998-1999, 45 years (now 67 years) after the Korean War ended. I did six months in Bosnia from 2001-2002, six years after the Implementation Force crossed the Sava River and helped secure the agreement reached in the Dayton Peace Accords. When I participated in the invasion of Iraq in 2003 (that’s me on the left in the picture on the road to Baghdad) with the 101st Airborne Division, I certainly didn’t expect to return to Iraq in 2005, and then again in 2007-2008. And never did I imagine that I’d be planning ongoing operations in Iraq from the Pentagon in 2012-2014, or that the nation would still have soldiers there in 2020.
Much like these military conflicts, we might find that ‘victory’ over the coronavirus takes much longer than we’d expect, or like. States and cities have already begun to relax social distancing restrictions. However, that doesn’t mean that the pandemic is over. As I discussed in an earlier blog post (Post #3 — Planning Horizons — https://www.thefivecoatconsultinggroup.com/the-coronavirus-crisis/planning), the challenge of producing a vaccine and inoculating 70 percent of the population (the amount required to establish herd immunity) will take a significant amount of time and effort. Early estimates were that it would take until September 2021 to vaccinate the population; one promising, more recent study, indicates it could happen as soon as May 2021. For businesses, this means that consumer confidence and buying patterns may not return to pre-virus levels until 2021 either.
In light of all this it is worth re-examining your plans for the next 12 to 18 months.
Can you afford to not plan for the worst case scenario?
Is your restaurant ready to serve 25 percent of its capacity for a year?
Are you and your team ready to work remotely for a year?
Is your factory able to run shifts around the clock to keep your assembly line producing as much as it did in February 2020?
Are you looking for opportunities in this crisis to do business differently?
The Long Pandemic is here. Make sure your business is ready to go the distance. And make sure you are mentally preparing for facing uncertainty for a very long time. Me? I adopted a 2-year old rescue dog last week. Meet Samantha, my new companion during the Long Pandemic and new co-worker at TFCG. She’s ready to go the distance. As long as the distance involves lots of walks, naps, and treats. Lots of treats.