The pandemic has decisively put organizational leadership to the test. Managers have had to multiply their dedication and skills to manage uncertainties, while at the same time maintaining the cohesion of their teams and relations with their communities. The work has been intense, and the lack of human contact has made it more difficult and unrewarding. Not surprisingly, managers are feeling increasingly fatigued and experiencing symptoms of burnout. We all long to return to a sense of normalcy, but at the same time, we wonder: What is changed forever? What will remain? How will it affect our company? No matter how well we handled the first part of the challenge posed by the pandemic, the phase that is now beginning will require yet another change in our approach to leadership.

During the pandemic, the leadership model has been typical of crisis management. We have focused on the issues critical to the organization’s survival. From managing the pandemic’s direct impact on the health of the people who make up our community to key business variables in a context of a simultaneous crisis of supply and demand: cash flow, cost containment and investments, supply chain adjustments, staff reorganization, sales performance, etc. The short term has pushed everything else aside, and we have had to adapt information and control flows to expedite decision-making. To prepare for the medium term, we have used scenarios to reduce uncertainties; the key has been not to miss any hypothesis that could critically affect the bottom line. Communication has become more immediate and transparent; with the aim of assuring people of our ability to control the organizational impact of events and provide perspective on the organization’s future viability. Despite the difficulty and the personal toll, leadership in these circumstances follows a relatively familiar and well-worn script: on the one hand, one must decide and act; on the other, motivate and inspire. 

However, addressing the new normal poses other challenges. They may not be as demanding in terms of time and the associated personal costs, but they can be harder to accommodate in the logic of managerial work and, especially, of the work done in the context of the crisis. Post-crisis leadership requires tuning in to other frequencies and applying behaviors that are not as narrowly focused and have less immediate goals, that call for a different blend of reflection and action. We have to switch our high beams back on and leave the low beams for the organizational levels where they are most needed. Rather than mitigating uncertainty and containing anxiety about survival, it is time to raise questions about the future and encourage logics involving the adaptation of interests and identities. This is a type of leadership for which there is no manual from which to draw clear guidelines, and for which the inertia of the previous type can prove fatal, for a number of reasons:

First, good crisis management is no guarantee of a smooth adaptation to the new normal. On the contrary, it can lull us into thinking that the hard work is behind us and there is nothing left to do but continue on the same course. It can even strengthen the typical aversion to change that follows the saying ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ We have to ask ourselves how much of our crisis management has been the product of cutting costs and maximizing the performance of existing products, and how much of promoting innovation in processes and products that have allowed us to take advantage of opportunities previously beyond our reach. If all we have done is push the possibilities of our business model to the limit and exhaust the accumulated margins of our working capital, we should be cautious. Only if we have leveraged the shifting circumstances to evolve our business model and launch transitions to other horizons will we be in sync with what is now expected of us.

Second, the kind of uncertainty that should concern us in the wake of the pandemic is very different. Covid-19 has directly confronted us with things that we know we do not know, that is, with known uncertainties such as the health situation variables or the evolution of factors that directly affect our bottom line. The correct approach is risk management, working with hypotheses and probabilities and adapting our decisions to that logic. The challenge from there has more to do with a second-order uncertainty, one that might be described as that which we do not yet know that we do not know. It may be a threat constituting a risk or an opportunity arising from the technological and social changes accelerated by the pandemic. To address these uncertainties, we have to broaden our gaze, examine things we are not inclined to question, speak to people with whom we do not usually interact, and, above all, instill in our partners an attitude open to discovery and experimentation.

Third, our repertoire of behaviors needs to evolve accordingly. Processes focused on deciding and acting need to be complemented with new attitudes, such as asking, doubting, and testing, while behaviors aimed at motivating and inspiring should be expanded to include new dimensions, such as correcting and learning. It is always tricky for a manager to move from a role of containing uncertainty to one of encouraging it, but to a tolerable degree and with the support of third parties, it is the way to discover what the future holds. Where we once had to reduce anxiety about survival, we now need to reduce anxiety about learning.

In short, crisis management tends to blur the ethical dilemmas we face in organizations. We apply battlefield medicine to survive and, in so doing, lose much of the nuance in our decision-making processes. In crises, fear does the work of reason, but the ethical impact is not neutral. We must take stock of this experience, reflect on it, and draw conclusions for the future. Life is full of uncertainties, and many can be managed as risks, but others must be seen as opportunities.