As vaccines are being shipped and administered, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on people’s lives and the business environment will gradually lessen over time. This will be a welcome change, but organizations must resist a complete reversion to their pre-pandemic practices.
While the crisis imposed severe restrictions, it also provided a unique opportunity to conduct thousands of experiments and innovate with new practices, some of which are beneficial in any period — pandemic or no pandemic. In addition, the crisis lowered the resistance to change and thus helped organizations get rid of deeply entrenched, dysfunctional practices that would be difficult to shed in normal times.
Many organizations were forced to do things that would have been considered inconceivable not so long ago. In addition to many companies’ successful digital transformations and widespread remote work, courts started delivering justice online, healthcare providers shifted to telemedicine for many minor illnesses, banks disbursed loans without meeting clients in person, and auditors conducted virtual company audits without visiting company premises.
But what will happen to these practices once the pandemic is over? Our research on the Three-Box Solution shows that sustained organizational changes depend not only on the discovery of new practices and their initial adoption, but also on ensuring that managers and employees don’t fall back into old routines when the impetus for change is gone. The following four-step framework will help leaders identify, retain, and sustain the beneficial changes that were introduced over the past year.
Source: HBR
