In times of crisis, there are two paths to take: Reactive or Proactive. It is entirely understandable (and much more common) for businesses and individuals to take the reactive path.
Reactive business responses to the COVID-19 crisis involve everything from protecting employees’ safety, creating temporary company protocols and ways of remote working, and finding short-term solutions to continue operations during the lockdown. These are necessary and warranted for the short term, during the period of intense crisis. But, unprecedented as the current crisis may be, history tells us that no crisis remains a crisis forever. The world finds new ways of moving forward, and the companies that thrive after upheaval are those that respond proactively to crises.
So, what is a proactive response to the COVID-19 situation?
Due to the timing of the pandemic’s arrival in South Africa, we are able to look at other countries who are further ahead of us on this path. China is busy establishing its new normal, as people return to their old routines with new learnings. Chinese businesses that are already showing signs of leadership are those that have taken a longer-term view of this black swan event by implementing change processes based on the post-crisis future, rather than only the in-crisis reality. India too, although fairly early in its stage of the pandemic, is demonstrating agility in proactively transitioning business in many sectors to digital operations.
These businesses are learning from the disruption, embracing necessary change and creatively innovating new ways of being in a post-COVID-19 world.
Of course, the post-crisis future is uncertain, but certain elements thereof hold a high likelihood:
- Embracing ‘digital’ will revolutionise businesses and life even faster than it did before
- The ability to track, analyse and disseminate information will remain paramount
- Information-sharing will become more important than ever as people learn to navigate a new way of existing and working
This all speaks to the fact the market research as an industry remains critical to business growth – even more so than before, as the pandemic continues to shift the global landscape of consumer behaviour at an extraordinary pace.
Here we need to again consider reactive versus proactive behaviour: It has become clear in the past decade that digital online research is the industry’s future. It offers the potential to go deeper, provide richer insights and enable data continuity without the constraint of external or logistical limitations.
