“We are always one decision away from a totally different life.”
– Unattributed
No one decided to contract the COVID19 virus.
That ain’t the kind of decision to which we’re referring.
For Difference Makers, it’s about the decision we make next.
These are transformative times.
Editor’s Note: Today’s post has nothing to do with irresponsible media, panic-prone wannabees with social media accounts and not enough to do with their lives or how these times compare to the 1918 flu, the H1N1 coronavirus or the bubonic plague. Today’s post is about what’s coming. Next.
Before about a month ago, very few of the people we know bought the majority of their groceries online. On the other side of this, that number will be higher. Much higher. These times will transform the grocery business. Before about a month ago, carry-out or delivery dinner was gonna be pizza or Chinese food, unless we lived in a huge city, in which case it was probably going to be pizza or Chinese food, with maybe a few other options. On the other side of this, that trend will have changed, a lot. Think of what those changes mean for the construction / design of grocery stores. Restaurants. (Bigger kitchens, smaller dining spaces? Hmmmm…)
I have a good friend who’s in the online marketing business. Visionaries like him have helped companies prepare for digital progression — and now, most companies — yours, mine, the ones we serve, the ones that serve us — will face a materially different template for business, a result of a forced digital transformation.
Imagine the impact on commercial real estate when giant companies realizethey really can have productive people working from wherever they happen to be. Imagine the downward pressure on rents, business services (janitorial, business supplies) and the demand for specialized business services (microbial cleaning of commons spaces, business continuity and disaster recovery services). Another friend is a senior executive with an automotive sales group — one that used steering wheel covers as a courtesy in their service department who now realizes they were sitting on a difference-making approach that might even become law if the big-government folks get their way.
It might be April 30. It might be later than that. I guess it’s possible that it could be sooner than that. Someday soon, however, many of us are going to wake up and our cheese will have been moved — maybe to a different maze.
We are here, now. In a transformational time, where do we want to go, next?
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