It is always interesting to see the ceremonial activity around the various groundhogs predicting the late winter weather patterns. The day however also reminds me of the epic movie with the same name where the unfortunate Phil Connors, a TV weatherman gets sent to Punxsutawney to cover the Groundhog Day event. He gets stuck repeating the same day over and over again until he finds a way to make it work to his advantage.
That of course shines a light on life and business with Covid, and the mindset change required to get out of Groundhog Day. Marcus Hirsch from Wicked Company explains the journey quite eloquently:
Phase 1 – self obsession
Phil wakes up and doesn’t notice things have changed. Not understanding his new context, he writes it off to deja-vu.
In our context – not having understood the context of the pandemic, or related complications, no valuable action can be taken. Suddenly everyone is working from home, and you think you should maybe emulate Amazon, Wayfair or Skip the Dishes, without understanding why. With the change, we are still measuring the same stuff.
The recommendation in a confused state is to:
- Forget about the value you thought you had.
- Reassess who you are in this new world.
- Understand which problem you are solving, and then become experts in your problem space.
Phase 2: Despair
Phil is still stuck and believing it is all about him. He cottons on to the loop and starts using it to chase old goals, blind to the fact that he is using new tools to polish old values. It’s not working and he tries to put an end to it all, but ends up back in the loop.
Towards the middle to end of 2020, companies were frantically training themselves in agile, design thinking, customer centricity, and forging distributed workforces on old premises. Efficiency is the focus rather than effectiveness, is all this working?
Recommended for the desperate stage are the following:
- Just looking modern is spending money without return – stop.
- If you know your problem space, you will know what need exists, and the ideas for solutions will inform the technology rather than the other way around.
- Ask questions around your problem space – do you have enough researchers? Do you need to research more and generate more ideas?
Phase 3: Acceptance
Eventually Phil is shifting his mindset away from himself and toward what others need. He stops being cynical and starts listening. He learns new skills and structures his life towards helping others, he even saved a life.
Authenticity and commitment are important. Experimenting every day to step closer to the goals is crucial for success.
Recommendations for this phase:
- Baby steps everyday
- Problems keep evolving and popping up. There is plenty of opportunity to determine where in the problem space you want to stand.
“The new mindset has three characteristics:
- Being open to re-understanding and constant learning of the problem the organization is trying to solve
- Knowing that effectiveness is a better investment than efficiency
- Enabling the new evolving problem space to be explored adequately through a shift in governance, away from leadership and to outcome-based teams”
Source: https://medium.com/the-wicked-company/businesses-need-a-groundhog-day-9dabcee0b733
