179: Generation P and Antifragile Business with Dr. MJC

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What's next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot podcast and author of Pivot. The only move that matters is your next one.

For show notes from this episode, visit pivotmethod.com podcast. If change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

Hello everybody. I'm back with Dr. Michael J. Consuelos for part two of this week's coronavirus conversation. If you missed it, catch yesterday's episode. We recorded both of these on Wednesday, April 1st. And in the first half, I always like to get Michael's take from the medical frontlines, what he's seeing, selfishly ask a few of my own questions about self made masks should you wash and reuse gloves. So make sure to listen to that one. And today we're going to shift into business continuity. Pick up that thread of conversation again because April 1st marked closing the books on an insane Q1.

And also the data that by now everyone has talked about. But there's that iconic New York Times front page showing 3.3 million people filing for unemployment the first week. And that was just really shocking to see. And I, I think that's only the beginning. So Michael, welcome back to the show.

Thanks Jenny.

What's your take? I mean, you're not only on the medical, tapped into the medical community, but what are you seeing from businesses? I mean there have been so many layoffs now, layoffs, furloughs, frozen industries and massive unemployment. Tell me what you're seeing out there this week.

Yeah, so from, and I'll speak from the medical community, but I think this is true for most healthcare sectors is that we're seeing with the social isolation, lockdowns, whatever description you want to have.

A decrease in spending, a decrease in activity. So in the medical community, because we're readying ourselves for the big wave of COVID patients, elective surgeries, just routine visits are all being pushed out and basically postponed. We see that obviously with conferences, restaurants are doing takeout only so you're doing a self imposed economic shutdown or slowdown and you're starting to see layoffs, furloughs. You see organizations actually taking different tactics, which is interesting to me. And how they're communicating those tactics is also interesting to me. And we've seen public announcements. Macy's just recently was 130,000 people are going to get furloughed from Macy's. That's huge, huge organization. A staple of a lot of Main street sort of malls out across the country. It's, you know, obviously people aren't going into stores and it's hard to do take out, you know, clothing. So it is a huge, there's sort of the fear factor of not just COVID 19 of what's the safety of your own health and those of your loved ones. But now there's this financial fear stacked on top of that. And unfortunately we're going to have to live in this current environment for a period of time. From the medical community side, we're also transitioning our businesses and we are now moving into an area where we're doing virtual care. We have to. People are still sick, right? So there are certain things we can take care of in a physical space. So if someone has a baby, they're still going to have a baby either at home using a midwife or they're going to be in the hospital. That's still going to happen. So that service is going to get delivered. But there's other services that we can do virtually. So you see this huge increase in adoption of telehealth, telemedicine, remote patient monitoring. And what's interesting to me is because I've been on the policy side of this, Jenny, is it has been a slog to get regulatory relief, payment parity, meaning getting paid at a reasonable level or at the same level as physical in person health for decades, decades. And at least since the early 2000s, mid-2010s, we started moving more and more telehealth. That technology was getting bigger, we had better broadband in communities and still has been huge pushback from different special interest groups. And now those walls are coming down. So I'm also wondering the same thing for businesses where you've had maybe a virtual storefront and sort of been, you know, it's been there, but now you're relying on that virtual storefront and obviously you need less people, but you need to have different skills to do that. You need to have different messaging. Restaurants are doing the same sort of thing, right? So our local restaurants are updating their websites daily or posting on Facebook what their specials are on that day. That used to happen in real time, in real place. Now it's all happening virtually, so come all over the map there. But it's not just a fear of health, fear of financial stability, but also it's a huge shift into this virtual marketplace and your audience. And what I do in our consulting, advisory work, we've been living in that space for a long time. There's still a lot of pressure there. But I think people who are more comfortable in that are going to be valuable to this potentially new economy. Because I think thinking that some of this won't go back, some of this will just stay virtual. What are your thoughts on the virtual shift?

Yeah, I mean, Definitely I'm noticing three major things. One, we said this right in episode 159, that this is accelerating a lot of trends that were already happening. The shift to virtual, remote, distributed, global, even tightening the belt on systems and software and automation. These are trends that we've been seeing. The second thing is, as you put it so well, the skill set required. So now, you know, I do a lot of work with Google. They have a hundred thousand employees. Imagine trying to go all virtual. It's one thing when you're a team of my size four people, but it's quite another when it's 100,000. So and even if it's a tech company, I would still imagine that that presents a huge pivot for even the most tech savvy and tech equipped companies. You also mentioned Macy's. So it's just crazy to think, you know. Yeah. With everybody furloughed, there's a big pause that's happening for a lot of people within companies. And then for the rest, let's say corporate. How do you navigate that? And now you have a lot of retail organizations have corporate kind of headquarters or people on the corporate side and then those on the retail side. So just navigating the two different experiences employees might be having. And then the third thing that's affecting everybody is the cash freeze. So with so much uncertainty and with so many organizations doing layoffs, businesses that I've encountered large and small don't want to invest right now. I mean, we can go back to the business hierarchy of needs. Cash is king. And I'll give an overview in a moment of Mike Michalowicz's business hierarchy of needs. It's actually kind of drawn like a pyramid. But what I'm finding is right now people are cutting every expense. That isn't mission Critical, essential. And there it's not the time. We're still in a collective corporate or business goo state. Penny and I talk about in our episode on Liminal Space, we talk about what it's like to be in the goo state as an individual. When you're in a liminal state, you're neither here nor there. You're in the in between. And so I was just talking to somebody yesterday who is supposed to get married this year. She was walking her dog and we were talking about, what is your wedding photographer going to do? What are all the vendors? I'm seeing flower companies go out of business.

They're getting hammered.

Yeah, no one's going to order. That's an extraneous expense right now. No one's going to order flowers. The network effects of the cash freeze are unprecedented and there's so much uncertainty and we don't know when that will shift. And I think companies are going to need to find their footing and get grounded before they do start to add back in anything at all. And the same goes for individuals. The last thing I'll say, you mentioned restaurants. There was a great webinar by Donald Miller of Storybrand, and he said that businesses can take a page out of what restaurants are doing by doing three things. Batch cooking, simplifying our menu, and giving bonus drinks. So I'll explain. He said batch cooking.

I like the bonus. I like the bonus drinks part.

Right. So, yeah, well, bonus drinks is don't slash your prices for the same thing. Like, but okay, now you can't sit in the restaurant. We're still going to charge the same price of a taco, but we'll throw in a margarita, you know, so bonuses that don't undercut your pricing during normal times, but that still give people sort of the extra boost or incentive simplifying the menu. He's really saying right now businesses need to focus on two things. Navigating the coronavirus crisis. And then the longer term is going to be coming back out of a recession. And even the change management of how orgs have shifted, layoffs, acquisitions. There's going to be a lot of acquisitions that come a couple months from now where healthy companies are going to get a lot of the smaller ones, gobble them up at a discount. So how do we help all those people?

People, I'm sorry. And the talent. And the talent. I'm sorry, the talent. I mean, just imagine the talent. So I'm sorry I jumped in there. I just made me think of like, no, no. Yeah. So just not the gobbling up of these smaller companies. But imagine the talent acquisition opportunity out there as smaller companies don't make it. So I'm sorry, go ahead.

There's a big shuffle. And speaking. I hear a lot of businesses saying, keep your top talent. There are a lot of layoffs of people who aren't critical to the business. And then there's this effort right now. Keep. Hang on, do whatever you can to keep your top talent. And then. But there's going to be a big shuffle. I mean, again, because even if a company thinks they're going to try to keep their top talent, with so many people working from home and experiencing a different way of life, I do think we're going to see a chunk of people who have their own aha. Moments of coming through this crisis. And the last thing, just to go back to Donald Miller batch cooking. So simplifying the menu means if you used to offer five products in your business, 10, 10 different services right now, pick two, pick two. Pivot your marketing messaging, Put up a new or different sales page. Everything needs to shift right now in order to address what's actually happening.

Yeah, the batch cooking part. So there's a farm to table restaurant that we eat at on a regular basis. And they've moved, they're doing exactly what you're describing. So they have, they've limited their menu. They actually have take home sort of reheat. So if you, for whatever reason don't want to order the few individual entrees that they usually offer on this limited menu, but they're doing trays of.

Mac and cheese. Like they have four or five different types of gourmet Mac and cheese. So that while you're going to be out anyway, which I think is genius, you're going to pick up tonight's meal and then maybe a meal for the next couple days. And that way they're batching. They can do that at scale, protect you from having to go home. I'm sorry, going out and traveling from your home on a regular basis. And so we've made a promise to that business once. In fact, tonight's gonna be the night. Once a week we're gonna order dinner and then another dinner for a couple days later or lunch or something. Right. So two meals. And so I encourage everybody to do that. And for the floral shops, I think we should have like floral shop day. People should still order flowers. If you can't be outside, bring the outside in.

That's true, but. But no one's gonna order flowers if they don't know how long their cash Runway is gonna last.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's the thing. Even if I love a flower company, there's no way I'm ordering flowers right now. As much as I love them and hope they stay afloat, it's just not going to happen. And I think that's, that's the case across so many businesses, large and small. But I love what you said about batch ordering because one of the trends that's accelerating and I've been thinking about this for a few years now. With Pivot programs, the keywords are really global, scalable and virtual. So what of your offerings are you and self. You said it like food that you can heat up later. Like you can store it and then serve it later. So even in a programmatic sense, I like to think about how can I empower people in organizations to do things on their own. So even this is a free resource. But the Pivot Mastermind kit, anybody can set up a Pivot Mastermind and it's guided. How can you create tools for other people that they can quote, cook on their own without you having to be present to do that? And that circles back to the big shift that a lot of business owners make from just delivering services and always having to be present, AKA being a bottleneck for income coming in versus creating things that live beyond you. And that actually other people picking up that content bring a new perspective anyway. So you have to let go of control a little bit. But there are some very interesting opportunities. I think the question is, for myself included, we don't really know when, when and who's going to be first in line to restart the buying process a little bit. And it, in a way, it is kind of a lattice or matrix because we're going to need some people to go first. So that I hate to mention trickle down economics. I don't even see it as trickling down. It's almost like rhizomic, like going out and up and non linear. But it's gonna have to love that.

That's a great. That's a great visual work.

Thank you. I just wrote an essay on rhizomic leadership, so maybe I'll record that for the podcast.

That's great.

That had to happen.

Yeah, that sort of spreads kind of very slowly underground, pops up where it gets opportunity. Right.

I mean, and then my dad helped clarify what rhizome and rhizome means, but it's. Think about the airline map. This again, full credit to my dad for explaining this to me so well. That think about the airline map at the back of an airline flight magazine and you see all those nodes of intersection of the flight routes. So rhizomic expansion. It's like there's energy at each of those nodal intersection points. Even you and I, Michael, it's like we're on different paths and we do different things. But I do enjoy these podcasts as a intersection across whatever it is that we're doing and seeing what energy gets sparked. And I know you and I always leave. We arrive at the calls excited and we leave excited.

Yeah, we should do is we should monetize the pre post call club because there is some good stuff there. But I don't know, that's probably about cash. Yeah. No. So back to your point about the so who's going to be there first? I think we did talk about that with our. Maybe one of our podcasts is the organizations who can change in through this survive. So some sort of Darwinian process that's going to occur, but also evolve. Kind of reflecting back to the Darwinian sort of method sort of theory. Right?

Is that you have to evolve. You can't just survive the current stress and disaster. You have to evolve because the next one's going to come. If this one doesn't take you out, the next one will take you out. Business leaders, entrepreneurs, let's put everybody in the same bucket. The ones who are surviving now and working through this, but also pop up their head and look at the needs of their consumers, their partners, finding new partnerships. Whatever you're doing, there has to be time and space to do that because you will be first to market with whatever the new thing is that just survived and you've evolved your business. We started off the conversation in an early part of this podcast, this part of the podcast about virtual health. It is my theory that the organizations who do the virtual healthcare telehealth, they figure that out and encourage their patients to engage at that level, are going to continue to be successful after this is all said and done. So whatever you're doing in this new COVID 19 pressure testing pot that we're all in this pressure cooker, something, whatever spices you're putting in there, whatever you're cooking, it's got to come out to be something new. Because if you do survive, but don't move to the next iteration of what the new economy is going to be out, if this doesn't shut down your business, the competition will because they're going to be better, faster, cheaper, whatever it is. That's just my theory that's how I've been consulting with folks in the healthcare field is there's and again, kind of you brought up the business hierarchy of needs. You're dealing with the creation of cash and stability and those kind of the profit first stuff that needs to happen now. Yes. And there's an and proposition here. And you have to plan for the new economy and you have to figure out who your new partners are and your new clients. It's not a do this only and hope at the end of the day everything's going to be okay.

Right.

Reasonable thinking.

Just hold onto the cash that you have, wait for the government to send what they can, and then hope for the best on the other side. It does activate a skill. It is a skill to tune in, listen deeply and try to assess trends. I actually did an episode with Mike McCallow. It's I'll put these all in the show notes on Surge. His book Surge how to Spot and Ride Trend Waves. And I also did one with Rohit Bagara that I'll put in the show notes on trendspotting because I've always been interested. It reminds me. And one more I'll put in the notes with Tom, professor of Robo Psych. And yeah, okay, I'm going to put all these in the show notes because I'm very fascinated by trendspotting and it's people sort of criticize anyone trying to be a futurist because no one can really predict the future. At the same time, what Dr. Guardiello taught me is you can see it if you look at what's happening right now and you just tune in, you can actually see. And when you were talking, Michael, it reminded me of the blockbuster Netflix analogy where blockbusters saw mail order DVDs. They saw Netflix come up with that. They saw Netflix going digital and they did not adapt. And I completely agree with what we're going to see on the medical side because it's already such a pain and so bureaucratic to go to the doctor for certain things that don't require it. But because it's the way things were always done, that's what they're doing. And then there are more innovative practices like Oscar. Some doctors are available, hallelujah, by phone for peons like me that don't have my own private doctor on hire or they're available by text.

And I want to make sure. So I've been hinting at teasing you too, Michael, of the business hierarchy of needs for From Mike Michalwitz new book, Fix this Next. And you can also Go listen to it is episode 167 I believe. Oh, 164. So pivotmethod.com 164 but the business hierarchy of needs on the most fundamental first stop is sales, the creation of cash. The next layer up is profit, the creation of stability. Then we have order, the creation of efficiency.

Impact, the creation of transformation and finally legacy, the creation of permanence. It's likely that all businesses are cycling through different layers and doing certain things well right now. I'm curious to get your take Michael. Right now it seems everybody zoomed their focus way back down in on that base of the business hierarchy of needs, of cash, the creation of cash and even profit of just stability, stabilizing the ships. With so much money, energy and business being taken out of the economy right now, what are you seeing in terms of this hierarchy of needs? Well, of course at the same time there is an opportunity for impact and legacy if it's done in the right way and not in an opportunistic way.

So the reason I want to make sure we talk about this because I'm not sure everyone is in Mike's I'll call him Mike because I'm a mic. So we're old pals now. So I'm not sure everyone is completely set on focusing on the bottom. That's one of my concerns. So let me explain that a little bit. Because of the other factors in the economy, because of moving to virtual workforce, because of the own personal whatever, all the different stress tests they're having, I'm not 100% sure that they're having a clear, focused, clear minded figuring out exactly how they're creating cash and profit for their organization. So when I say that I'm just guessing a couple of things because of the activities they're still seeing in the commercial space, in the healthcare space, is that they're still hanging on to bits and parts of the older economy. You mentioned trends and kind of like the blockbuster. I still see hints of blockbusters trying to hang on to their current business. And I think if they were to have a more clear eyed focus on exactly how they're creating cash, how they're in this new space and forgetting about the old, just they got to leave those anchors behind them and look forward. I think that that's, I think I would encourage people to do that and I'm having those conversations with healthcare organizations because they're concerned about a million different things, but not necessarily and tuned in to the processes that would ensure the creation of cash. And profit and stability. And I'll give an example to that. And actually, I'll give you a couple different examples. I have personal interactions with, obviously people in healthcare and people in other industries. And when I ask them how they're doing and what kind of support they have for their work at home, virtually, I have stories of people going, well, I had to go to Walmart, I had to go wherever else to find my laptop. I'm having problems hooking up my monitors and all those kinds of things, right? And these are large companies, these are large organizations, and I'm including healthcare, including everybody. I've had people from different parts of the economy say the same thing.

I would say, I would say to those leaders going, if those people working from home are the ways you create cash, right? They have to do their work, whether it be in sales, in financial.

Companies, in healthcare, whatever it is that worker that you now have moved out of your office, the old way of working and move them into their home. Why are they going online and trying to figure out what kind of laptop, monitor, you know, basic infrastructure, IT infrastructure? Why are, why are they spending, why are you paying them to spend their time and resources to get that fixed? Why? Right, Because I think they're not thinking, they're just saying, well, they'll figure it out. But if they say those people create the cash, they create the profit for this company, my number one priority is I move those folks to the outside and is I have to make sure they are efficient in their work. Would we put people in office buildings where they're, you know, completely disarrayed and file folders? We wouldn't. We would somehow figure that out, right? Because they can't do their work. But I'm seeing that. So that's just one example. I'm also seeing communications, that people are sort of stuck in the old business model going, wait a second, aren't you following the trend, to use their words, that you need to now shift the way you're doing business? Because if you're inefficient at any level, if you're creating any stickiness, gooeyness that you mentioned in that sales process, you're not getting the cash because they'll just go ahead.

Well, schools are also confronting this because a lot of schools, not all their students are even equipped with WI fi or the basic hardware software that they need. So it is an interesting conundrum and I love what you're saying about this needs to be solved at some point scale and it shouldn't be left to the individuals to flounder and try to figure it all out from scratch. It's so inefficient and ineffective. And then in terms of communication and trendspotting, I will also say, as someone who I am right in the thick of it with everyone else, I'm, I haven't been laid off because I'm self employed and I haven't fired myself, but the majority of my income is wiped out and on hold and that those dominoes continue to, I won't even say fall, let's just say like lay sideways, chillax on the beach until this is over. So I will also say the same way we've been saying not to panic on the personal front in terms of personal safety. And just like, you know, it's not going to help anybody to read the news 247 and worry if you're going to die or someone you love is going to die all day. Same thing. On the business front, yes, it is a time to spot trends, but you also can't rush it. And so I find that a lot of my skills around surrender, patience, listening, waiting, like waiting a little bit, like seeing what starts to coalesce, feeling intuitively into what are the needs. And part of the way we do that as business owners and creatives is to say, what do I need? What would I want during this time? Or ask your friends, what do you need? Or ask your communities, what do you need? How can I serve? How can I be most helpful? The reason I feel so strongly about the episodes that I did with Penny Pierce, and I'm so grateful many people have sent nice notes about those too, is that Penny brings a whole different perspective on the whole situation.

I've listened to them and you're absolutely correct. It's like a totally different lens. Like, wow, she's got to have a totally different beautiful brain.

Yes, absolutely. So on the business front, we need to blend the practical cash flow with the patience of letting things simmer and try not to panic. And so I was joking with someone because the other day my grandma called and I love her so much. She's always been an angel on my shoulder. Grandma's like, how are you doing business wise? Are you going to be okay? I'm like, well, Grandma, I don't know. Today I really can't tell you one way or the other if I'm going to be able to pay the bills next month. And she's like, well, how are you feeling? I'm like, you know, it's okay. I actually don't even know If I could tell you a week from now, I'm going to give it a month before I really freak out. And so I think for her it's just, you know, she's a child of the Great Depression and she and my grandpa were always so good about with their money and very frugal and intentional. And I think it's just she's more worried about me than the other way around, even. And yet there's no benefit to the business of panicking and trying to rush the creation of cash flow during a moment where it's not prudent. So I try to remember that I'm trying to stay relaxed even though I'm in a similar boat to many of you in that like I. I had great plans for my six months of pivot Runway business reserves. I was right there. I was just on the cusp of being able to fund that account and I didn't get there fast enough. I just didn't get to it. It was on my radar. I wanted to do it. I just didn't get there yet. So I'm in that same boat, I guess. And that was. There's my rambling thought of the day. No, no, I'm just being patient to see what to be moved to act.

No, I think that's important because I think, you know, I have to talk about sort of the, the reptile brain kicking in the flight or flight, I think in one of our podcasts around the stressful time. But you can't have clear thinking if your reptile brain is in that flight or fright fight or flight perspective because you're either going to be fighting hard to keep your business open or you could be running away from good ideas. And that patience that you're describing to me makes me think that you're allowing the higher order parts of your brain to kick in and be more creative and problem solve out of the situation as opposed to being reflexive.

Yeah, higher order. I love how you said higher order parts of my brain and, and the universe. Like I'm a small little dot on a dot in the universe and you know, spinning dot. And so I also, my, my prayer is often make me a messenger. Just I surrender because I think this time requires a lot of faith. And I know that's weird. Well, maybe it's not, but to. In fact, no, not. I got to stop apologizing for that. Although we are talking about business and business continuity.

I can't imagine what area of our lives is going to need more faith now than ever not to be not to cast aside the very practical steps, but also faith that it's going to be okay. We're going to figure it out. Every day is a new day. Every day we'll get new information that we can synthesize and figure out how to act on. And as you said, Michael, I love how you put it, if we can use our mindfulness practices, stay as calm as possible, our brain can continue to be in that creative processing mode, not the unproductive tunnel vision of panic mode.

Right? And treat your, if you're, if you're a leader of a company, treat your employees, your staff, your coworkers in the same way. And what I mean by that is if you're communicating stress, if your actions, if you're modeling a fight or flight Persona as a leader, they're gonna respond in the same way. Because we are, we're beings that reflect each other's emotions, right? We're sort of mirrors onto each other. And so I wanna encourage the leaders, it's not just the entrepreneurs who are maybe working for themselves by themselves, but also leaders who listen to this. Is that what Jenny just said is important for leaders to model. If there is a high order thinking, if there is a calmness and mindfulness and communication in that fashion and responding to others in the same way, that could be immensely helpful to calm the fears about health, the fears about the finances, and allow them to also be. To not move into that fight or flight. Because if you're pushing on those buttons on people and you're acting that way, they're going to respond to you the same way and your family too, right? So if you're stressed, it's just the whole family is going to get stressed. So that faith piece is 100%. So have faith in yourself and have faith in others that we're going to get through this. We have to have faith. We have to release control and we have to release that sense that we can fix everything and allow ourselves, our community, our families to come together and figure this out. Because we will. At the end of the day, we'll figure it out.

That is so beautifully said, Michael. Love the way you just put that. And I will say one more thing too. On the employee front. One thing I'm seeing is people are really stressed. And I'm going to link to one of my longest mentors friend tours, Dr. Susan Bialy. She wrote a post for Psychology Today that an article that it's okay to feel unproductive and anxious during this time. And immediately she got called to do new Interviews with news media, because even the people who feel so fortunate to still have a job, there are so many who I've spoken to, where their kids are at home, they might even have elderly family at home. They simply cannot get the same amount of work done that they would have before. It might be 20%. And although managers may be understanding, I think there's also a certain faith that whatever work gets done during this time is. Is okay, is enough. That if we layer onto all of this the pressure to be, quote, as productive as you were before this whole thing started, that's going to be. It's going to create tremendous stress, especially, and will really punish the parents and especially the parents with young children. So that's. That needs to be part of the new normal. And you know what? I am all for relaxing that productivity panic as well, because I think companies, so many of them, even the tech companies, really overwork people. I think people are highly overworked, burnt out and sick. And the pandemic is not helping. People are still getting sick and they're still going to get burnt out. But at least we can relax our expectations around. Around treating people like machines, like, expecting them to be so productive, always on meeting all these goals and okrs. And, you know, it's like to just give everybody some practice. And letting go of lowering the bar a little bit, I actually think is a really good thing.

Yeah. Back to Lindsay's podcast that we was at 160 or whatever. Right.

Thank you. I don't have that list in front of me. But, you know, lowering the bar at home, she mentioned that that was really helpful to reframe, and I think you're absolutely correct. And she's correct. It's lowering the bar but being okay that we're lowering the bar. Not in a way that says mediocrity is okay. No, it's that right now we're allowing people the space to move differently at a different pace, because we have to. And if we don't, we're just gonna burn people out. They're not gonna be able to meet the requirements that we have before. And by lowering the bar, giving everybody permission to say, okay, this is how it's going to get done, and if we get there, that's great.

How do you think this is going to affect us going to the future? You and I sort of threw out an idea about the generational change.

Going forward. In the few minutes we have left here, I'm thinking that we're going to have a movement from the current millennials, gen Zs, whatever we are at right now, to a totally different generational change potentially, because everything's going to change so differently. And I'm going to, I'm going to be out there saying, this is Generation P for pandemic, if you've got a different, a better place to put it. But I think it's going to, we're going to change. We're going to. This is going to be a lasting change.

Absolutely. I love your moniker for it, Generation P. And I don't see it limited to millennials or Gen Z. I think we're all going to be changed by this. For the first time this week, I started to do some reflection and I would love to do this on a future episode with you. I was reflecting for myself how was I well prepared for this personally? And what did I miss personally, like even stocking the pantry or, you know, I don't, I don't, I still to this day do not have Santa hand sanitizer. And then I also did the reflection business wise. In what ways was I very well prepared and set up for this? And what am I proud of? And then what did I miss? Because I'm already finding it so interesting to try to mine that learning. There's no question how we all, so many people still reference 2008 and remember that recession and how it impacted us. And I think this is on such a broader scale. We've never seen the entire globe pause and shelter at home like it is wild. We've never seen such economic shutdown as this. And so, yeah, I'm with you, Michael. I think Generation P speaks to all of us who are living through this time. And I don't know what the Genp babies are going to be like, the ones that are born as a result of this whatever baby boom occurs. But I think they're going to have.

A world, they're going to wake up in a different world where there's a lot of things that we've talked about in the past couple podcasts where the virtual workplace, there's gonna be companies that used to exist, just like you mentioned 2008. Lehman Brothers is still, there's still of us who remember that name. But in a generation or two.

They'Re not gonna know Lehman Brothers is gonna be like, yeah, Bear Stearns, right? There could be like these names like, oh yeah, I read it in the history books. Just like when we're growing it, right? We read about certain things in history books, the different railroad companies and those kind of things. Right. So writing railroad things that are on the monopoly board. They go, why the heck is that name on there? But they used to be real live huge, huge companies no longer exist. They only exist on the Monopoly board. So what is going to be Generation P's monopoly board? What companies aren't going to survive? I think that's part of it. I think the virtual piece is be part of it and the lasting effects of one of the things. I mean the piece should be something else, public health. And this is something we should talk about at some other point. The reason we're in this mess is we have not invested in public health.

And government in general.

Yeah, no we haven't. So we are in this huge mess because of that. I mean, I'm sorry to get off topic, but I'm hoping that they wake up in a world where we have a more organized public health infrastructure and response. The way we travel will be different. There's things that happened after 911 that changed our world. There's things that after 2009 the Great Recession have changed our world. I think that this will be a change the world.

I think hopefully it'll be to the better. We don't know that yet. But I like your discussion about maybe taking the time at some future point for us to sit down and talk about our learnings because if we don't chart those somehow we're going to forget them. And we. So we've been talking about this as a. Is a audio journal of our lives currently. And that's why I'm so attracted to sort of mentally, intellectually to talk about this stuff because. Because it's. It's forcing me to put my thoughts in some sort of medium that I just don't have time or don't have the flow state to just start writing this all up. But that's just, that's all on me.

But so many, so many good things in there going back to Generation P. I mean, think about what happened after 9 11. If we told a traveler from the 1950s or 60s one day you're going to take your shoes off every time you go fly somewhere. They'd look at us like you're crazy. What do you mean? I'm going to have my shoes off and my socks are out for everyone.

To see with knives and forks.

And so we might have, you know, Whole Foods already had hand sanitizer always available at the front of every store. We might have things like that where businesses and restaurants stock hand sanitizer and it's ubiquitous. Even moving forward, I think on the Business continuity front. It's going to be fascinating to see because businesses, in a way, I can't say scarred. I mean some are going to be scarred by this. I think some are going to be like wounded healers. Like we were wounded and then we heal and then we know better for even the next time. Because something that's on my mind is even you said it, coronavirus can mutate. There is no guarantee that this thing isn't going to mutate and that people you think, oh, if you get it, oh, it's no big deal. If I get it, I'll be immune. Maybe, maybe not. There could be future pandemics. I don't see any reason if you look at with global warming and the acceleration of natural disasters, fires, hurricanes, floods, etc. And I'm not the expert here, but I'm just saying there is no guarantee we get another hundred years until the next pandemic. So what are businesses going to do? Is everyone going to legitimately try to stock up a six month fund? Are they going to keep their virtual streams of income? How are businesses going to diversify their portfolio, their employee work from home setups? Like so much will change by people who do not want to go through this again in the way that is happening currently or will avoid it as much as they can?

No, absolutely. You're 100% sure. And these are the conversations that need to happen. Are we going to continue to offshore our medications and our PPE supplies to other countries? I'm not being a nationalist by, believe me, I'm definitely not a nationalist. I'm a inter, I'm a global thinker. But in this scenario.

It wasn't smart to put 100% of our supply chain for economic reasons in the risk mitigation. Sort of. If you were to chart this out, only the economic values played out and we offshore these important elements of our disaster plan for a pandemic going forward, then we need to onshore some of these for this exact reason that is going to change that business model and vice versa. Other countries are going to do other things and other companies are going to be doing other things that are going to prepare themselves for business continuity. So we start talking about the virtual movement of a workforce. Please. At the end of this, all large companies, all big companies, large and small, who can move their workforce should have a plan that allows their workers to move virtually in a seamless, efficient way.

Someone's like a fire drill. Yeah. It's almost like know where your exits are. Like know exactly how the entire Org would go digital, virtual, distributed in a.

Second and, and Right. And I can't remember all the conversations I'm having now because it's, you know, COVID 19 brain, that's my new. I think you mentioned that before. It's, there's, there are firms who've have done this well and have had the, the value of exercising those muscles and having outside eyes to pressure test them to say what is your digital plan? Whatever it is. No, no. What is your digital plan? Okay, is that going to work? Okay, go test it. Actually have your workforce do 50, 50 split for work from home. Those organizations who did that are doing better now. And please folks who are listening to this, if you're leading a company when it's all said and done, write this stuff down and say, okay, if we were to do this over again, what do we learn? As Jenny mentioned, the learnings, the observations, how you processed the virtualization home bound workforce probably wasn't the smoothest, smoothest thing in the world. Learn from it, change it, try it out again and see how it works in your new system that supports you.

Yeah. And there's a fascinating article on Instacart, how the CEO saw what was happening in China and how he actually did prepare in advance. And I know they're facing some protests from employees which is so understandable. But I'm going to share the article in the show notes. It's from the information he saw it coming. Like he actually started ramping up his systems in advance. He knew there was going to be a surge of delivery orders. And so I can't wait to see what shakes out in terms of the learning here. Really. And I think too.

What was it? There it is. Covid brain. Oh my goodness, it is real. Oh my kind of inquiry is who is going to want to go back to the businesses they had like restaurants, flower shops and who isn't? Who is going to decide this is not recession proof. There's no countercyclical benefits to this kind of business where it's too fragile as a brick and mortar. And I do wonder how many people are going to have their own reckoning of. It's like people living in a flood zone or hurricane zone. Like do you want to live there? Some people do. Some people actually don't care if the hurricane hits their house every year and they have to fix a few things or many things. They don't care. They love the view of the ocean. And I wonder who's going to choose to stay with the ocean view in a hurricane Zone. And who isn't?

Yeah, And I'll build on that analogy. But those people, hopefully when they rebuild, they rebuild it so that their home and valuables can withstand the flood in a better way. So those organizations, companies who may be looking to shutter, and they don't end up shuttering, hopefully when they rebuild, they're building it so they can be more proof. Pandemic proof or recession proofed, you know, so I think there's. So if you're. Gonna, if you're gonna continue doing that business, I think that analogy is great. If you're gonna live by the seaside, you know, you're gonna hit by a hurricane. But when you rebuild, Rebuild to withstand the hurricane.

Yeah. And what's. So what's gonna be interesting too, is that the very nature of a Black Swan event is that it's unpredictable and you cannot see it coming. So it's also going to be interesting how many of us are like, oh, my God, okay, I remember the pandemic of 2020, and I'm never going to let this happen again. And we prepare so hard for the pandemic that just occurred that we may miss the next Black Swan event. So I guess that's the game and the joy of being human. Right. It's like we can't predict that's what it is to live on this planet, to be a soul embodied.

Yeah, but that's a learning. I like what you're saying there. That's a learning event. Right. Some of us saw what happened in 2008, 2009. Some people could have predicted that. And they Black Swan event. Here's another one. I think clearly there's some people who in the early times saw this or at least were more prepared.

But I think that to build on that is that knowing that this can happen to continuously have. We call in emergency preparedness, situational awareness. So how does a company, how does an entrepreneur ramp up their situational awareness so that they're constantly curious about what could go sideways, what could go wrong, as opposed to being comfortable all the time, but not in a way that you're fearful or you are.

I don't know, anxious, but rather curious? Are you curious enough about the risks in your company, the moves you're making?

I love it. So good. Building the skill of situational awareness. Are you constantly curious about what could go sideways? I'll also play back those questions that I asked myself because I want to hear from you listeners, and I know Michael does, too. We've been getting a few voice notes@pivotmethod.com ask, but not many. So if you're listening, I would love to know and I'm going to speak for you too, Michael. We would love to know, how did you prepare? Well, personally, what did you miss? And then business or career wise, how were you well prepared? What are you proud of and what did you miss? Or what would you do differently next time? Reflect for yourself. If you want to leave us a voice note, it doesn't have to be covering all four of those questions, but give us one nugget like something you did well or something you've learned already from this situation. Even if you're stateside about one month in a couple weeks for some of you and if you're international, maybe you've been already processing some of the lessons of the moment. With that, that is our time for today. Thank you so much for listening, everybody. And Dr. Michael J. Consuelos, thank you so much for being here.

Oh, thank you always. Always. I don't know what we're going to talk about half the time, but it's always I learn a lot. I was always saying I'm always learning a lot from you. So thank you. Thank you so much for your time.

You too, Michael. And everybody, please feel free to keep the questions coming because we want this to be helpful for you too. Thank you. MJC YTV Bye bye bye everyone.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot Podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for Pivot List, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter JennyBlake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.