Stepping Across the River (Twice)

When Heraclitus wrote his famous aphorism, “You cannot step in the same river twice,” I am certain he did not envision how powerful it would remain more than 2000 years later. There is a solid truth in these words: whether it is in business or in life, the river you traversed to stand on new ground will never be the one you walk back across to leave.

There have been many articles written about the ramifications of COVID-19. What I have yet to see is a consideration of what I call The River Concept—this idea that the changes of the world mirror our changes in business. We have already seen some of the ways in which the new normal has shifted away from pre-pandemic times. However, it is also true that we are still a decade or so away from being able to look back and know for certain how things have altered. And yet, right now many businesses have closed or are severely weakened. While on the other hand, new opportunities have arisen that are changing the centralization of capital.

We have also learned societal lessons that we can apply to the company level. For example, in the case of the pandemic, we know that government policy is important, but it is not as important as the individual actions of citizens. This is also true in organizations where policy means well but requires the buy-in of employees to really lead to transformational change.

Another lesson is that agility and adaptability is often the difference between success and failure. The virus mutated faster than we could counter; subsequently, our vaccines and governmental responses have been constantly playing catch up. The same is true in business: when we receive new evidence, we must be able to balance this information against our knowledge that frequent change causes frustration. Recent McKinsey research, for example, has shown that agility and strong communications have allowed some companies to respond more effectively to the pandemic than others.

These lessons are valuable to put into practice as we step across the river. But what about the river itself? How have our circumstances altered? One huge change has come in the area of work-life balance. Though an important pre-pandemic topic, more and more we are seeing work models that prioritize employee wellbeing, including work from home and hybrid offices. Recently, we have also seen efficacy trials to test whether a four-day work week is possible. What researchers are finding is that, perhaps, working hard is not working smarter—especially in the case of workers who are still suffering burnout and fatigue.

Additionally, we have seen a huge shift in the way organizations prepare for the future. It is impossible to say whether we will face another global health crisis at this level; what is knowable is that the investments and strategies we establish now might be the turning point. This includes our ability to forecast for important organizational components, such as inventory. Because what we do know for certain is that geopolitical disruptions like the war in Ukraine will continue to lead to supply constraint issues. We have already seen what happens when demand rises higher than supply (e.g., when automakers were short on semiconductor chips), and now companies are sitting on safety stock that is difficult to unload. All of this is to say that our ability to thrive will come from not looking back but instead looking forward. After all, The Rivers Concept shows us that things will never be the same again.