Six months ago, I read an article about two Sikh doctors who had to make a difficult decision — changing something that is very much a pillar of their identity, i.e. having to shave their beards — to continue treating Covid-19 patients. To honor the oath as physicians or their religions? It came down to an existential question, and they chose the former.
The benevolent act of the two Sikh doctors flashed me back to my childhood – to one of my favorite books from 10th grade, Lord of the Flies, by the brilliant writer, William Golding. It is a story about a group of boys who get stranded on an island. Detached from the stability and the order of a society and culture, they revert to a state of savagery.
It is said that Golding wrote the story partly as a reaction to the brutality he saw during his service in WWII. It was his attempt to trace the defects of society back to the defects of human nature at its core.
The current pandemic is not much different I thought, at the time– Mankind was being tested at its core, of its values, of its humanity. I wonder where we will head. Would we have learned from our past mistakes? Fast forward to Jan 2021, and the arrival of the vaccine came in record time, giving us hazy, small rays of light – of settling into a new normal. It was truly “innovation at its finest”.
Despite the pain, the suffering, and the relentless levels of being put to the test, the world for the large part had stayed positive, resilient, connected and above all “human-centric”.
There has not been a finer moment for those who want to serve and want to “take action”, be it a corporate entity, a healthcare worker, an engineer, a teacher or your next-door neighbor. Thanks to companies like Amazon, Fedex and UPS, the continued flow of goods during the depths of the health crisis were ensured.
Every single one of us has had a shot at contributing to this war against the virus and will continue to do so, in the coming months and possibly years.
The pandemic has propelled the shift of marketplaces from product-centric to customer-centric business models and the associated value. The time, whether you are a believer or not, has arrived – the time for “human-centric” products and services.
“Designing” Business Strategy
The finest moment in decades for “human-centered” innovation is happening NOW, a force propelled by the pandemic! Ground-breaking products and services have emerged over the past several months, a revolution that will only pick up momentum.
As they continue whiteboarding in their “virtual war-rooms” to figure how to pivot and transform in the post-COVID era, businesses have a huge responsibility towards society to keep the customer at the center of their strategy.
Taking a customer-centric design thinking approach to business strategy is key here. In the absence of that, we will be building new yet indistinguishable products and services that will not carry sustainable gains with competitive advantage in the post-COVID19 ecosystem.
As my team and I were helping a private high-end healthcare provider to build a turnaround strategy amidst the pandemic, using a design thinking approach to strategy became essential.
By applying the rigor and creativity of design thinking, we were able to frame a clear business strategy that the entire team stood behind. As a result, we (a) Identified pathways to new customer segments (b) Found new B2B channels for customer acquisition and (c) Built new “low contact” and “no contact” solutions that solved for their customer pain-points.
The value of designing strategy is multi-fold: It allows to (1) encompass complexity early on, (2) fail early to succeed soon, (3) create a “One” vision and alignment on business strategy across the company and (4) maintain an “agile” approach to strategy.
Business strategy powered by design thinking will transform organizations to deliver durable solutions to compete tomorrow.
Happy new year. May 2021 be a successful vaccine endgame.