In times to come, we will reflect on the birth of a brave new world in which we collaborated and changed our ways of working to keep the wheels of the economy spinning through lockdown. Will history remember this period as the moment of unlocking of a new way of working, a release, even a celebration?
This is the Zoom time of low back pain and seated cramp. Of Microsoft Teams of pyjamas and dirty mugs. A time to turn over and turn up long-forgotten curiosities in cellars or box rooms: silly hats, judging books on colleagues’ shelves behind them, of Tai-chi and meditation apps. Downward dog? No problem – enjoy the moment and free your mind.
I have taken a grisly delight in my current bedtime read “An Epidemic Anthology”, a collection of works by Poe, Defoe and Shelly. I’m eagerly awaiting the arrival of The Plague by Camus. Perhaps I should get the French version and learn a foreign language?
Introspection
So many questions, so much curiosity, intensive scrutiny, obsessive analysis. The lockdown offers an introspective moment. A reflection on what it was like to start a business in the times when I had hair: the heady mix of creativity and excitement, fear and anxiety. My company, Dunstan Thomas, came to life in 1986, the year of recession. Silly time really to start a business. Still going strong though through countless recessions, market crashes, downturns, upturns, booms and busts.
In the days before, we were afraid of not having enough time. Now we have too much time. Use it generously. Give yourself time to breath: reflect, resolve, refine, clarity of mind.
When the lockdown is over, it will be a time of joy and exhilaration when ideas incubated, will be hatched, will grow and blossom. As the season turns and the days grow longer, nature draws us into the cycle of birth and re-birth.
Over the years, time has been my tool, to invent, to create, to prosper. Used with intent and resolve, time, like a potter’s wheel, will create things of beauty – innovations and new propositions.
Enemy engagement
A business model I have been an advocate for the past few years has been the OODA loop in driving innovation and helping shape new propositions. The OODA loop is developed around the experiences of a US Air Force pilot Colonel John Boyd, on the steps he repeatedly went through in the Korean War when engaging an enemy plane. It’s a four-stage model in preparation for activity or in the Colonel’s case, enemy engagement. It also applies really well to the cycle of creativity. The stages of the model are:
- Observation (get your data together – what is your market?)
- Orient (figure out what you want to say to your data?)
- Decide (how you’re going to get to market?)
- Act (execute and test)
The quicker you do the loop the more effective you engage with the enemy plane or find that new product or proposition. Give yourself time, run an OODA loop a month. Create, Trial, Test, Fail, Fail Quickly…. Then again.
Don’t try to get it right, first time – you won’t. Each time you fail, it’s a success, you are closer to winning. You sail close to the wind, fill your sails, flutter, adjust, tack and start again.
Chris Read is group chief executive at Dunstan Thomas
