Executives who take note of the new emerging trends will be able to reset their companies and take them to the next level far more seamlessly.
In a December survey of global executives focused on the here and now, research at the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) found that even in the short-term optimism is growing with the highest levels of optimism now being detected since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Although there are still many concerns, especially about unemployment, the respondents are now looking ahead and their expectations for their home economies are increasingly positive with 61% believing global economic conditions will be better by mid-2021, which is up from 51% in mid-October.
This is clearly evidenced by the key emerging trends which were recently analysed by authors Kevin Sneader and Shubham Singhal who found that the most notable of these are not trends that are traditionally associated with recessions. These include:
According to McKinsey, the volume of ‘high-propensity-business applications’ - those that are likeliest to turn into businesses with payrolls - has also risen strongly to more than 50% compared with 2019.
In fact, many of McKinsey’s respondents reported that they moved 20 to 25 times faster than they thought possible on things like building supply-chain redundancies, improving data security, and increasing the use of advanced technologies in operations.
Although this is common in the retail sector after a downturn, the difference this time is that services have been particularly hard hit and the bounce back will therefore likely emphasise those businesses.
In other words, brands that haven’t yet worked out how to reach consumers in new ways risk being left behind.
Literally overnight, tens of millions of people in a wide range of industries transitioned to working from home, and the McKinsey Institute estimates that more than 20% of the global workforce, most of them in high-skilled jobs in sectors, could continue to work the majority of its time away from the office.
However, there are two significant challenges related to the transition of office to home working: One is to decide the role of the office itself, which is the traditional centre for creating culture and a sense of belonging. The other has to do with adapting the workforce to the requirements of automation, digitisation, and other technologies.
What is very clear is that the imminent reset will not mean going back to the conditions that prevailed in 2019 and the post-2021 world will be considerably different than it was before the pandemic.
In the same way as the terms “pre-war” and “post-war” are commonly used to describe the 20th century, generations to come will talk about the pre-Covid-19 and post-Covid-19 eras of the 21st century and those who do not make the transition will most certainly be left behind.