leadership in new normal essay

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New Normal: Emergence of Situational Leadership During COVID-19 and Its Impact on Work Motivation and Job Satisfaction

Sarfraz aslam.

1 School of Foreign Languages, Yulin University, Yulin, China

Atif Saleem

2 College of Teacher Education, College of Education and Human Development, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, China

Tribhuwan Kumar

3 Department of English Language and Literature, College of Science and Humanities at Sulail, Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University, Al Kharj, Saudi Arabia

Khalida Parveen

4 Faculty of Education, Southwest University, Chongqing, China

Introduction

Globally, COVID-19 has caused rapid changes in the workplace (Kirby, 2020 ). COVID-19 has disrupted the standard working order of all organizations, including educational, health, business, etc. This has affected workers' motivation and job satisfaction. Suffering and challenges reduce workers' happiness and productivity (Singh and Mishra, 2020 ). Motivation at work is an essential criterion for a healthy organization, particularly in an epidemic context (Wang et al., 2021 ). We need to employ new leadership behaviors that harness uncertainty to improve employee motivation and job satisfaction. This article provides theoretical support and practical reference for organizations to cultivate situational leadership and eliminate employees' exhaustion to improve work motivation and job satisfaction.

COVID-19 and Leadership

COVID-19 has affected governments globally, and societies are experiencing an odd situation; after the global pandemic, this situation led to a global crisis that touched the aspect of our lives, including family, education, health, work, and the relationship between leaders and followers in our society (Hinojosa et al., 2020 ; Aslam et al., 2021 ; Parveen et al., 2022a ). Organization leaders play a critical role in framing employee experiences at the workplace during and after the pandemic as they adapt to work on new realities (Ngoma et al., 2021 ). The managerial level of communication of those who lead still has a substantial impact on their followers' performance, behavior, and mental health (Wu and Parker, 2017 ; Saleem et al., 2020 ; Parveen et al., 2022b ).

“New Normal” has been used since the end of World War II (Francisco and Nuqui, 2020 ). An indispensable leader knows how to do ordinary things well; an unafraid leader acts regardless of criticism and never backs down (Honore and Robinson, 2012 ). Nevertheless, the new normal in 2020 is different since the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the world's economy and education. This is an uphill battle in which education and money are at stake in a situation where people find it challenging to adjust. This shift in working and learning space is defined as the New Normal in working organizations (Mollenkopf et al., 2020 ). It is moving from a public to a private space, shifting from one-size-fits-all methods to individualized and differentiated learning, shifting responsibility. Active participation of household members is required for this learning process and for evaluating learning shifts (Francisco and Nuqui, 2020 ).

Herein, in this study, we examine: how organizations attain excellent performance in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic through a situational leadership approach?

The human resource department is one of the most important aspects of any organization. Organizations, irrespective of their form and goals, are based on various visions for the benefit of humans. Additionally, the process is by implementing its mission and is handled by humans. To achieve performance superiority, any organization should concentrate on brilliant employees. The impact of globalization on knowledge and technology progress in many different areas is incomprehensible. It is indispensable for the management of human resources to be among the most critical organizational assets since it plays a significant role in developing and achieving organization objectives (Syaifuddin and Sidu, 2019 ).

Social Exchange Theory (SET)

Organizational behavior theories such as SET (Blau, 1964 ) are the most influential approach (Cropanzano and Mitchell, 2005 ). According to SET (Gouldner, 1960 ), a good deed performed by a leader engenders positive behaviors by the opposite party (a subordinate). Leaders who serve as role models are likely to feel obligated to their duties and show greater interest in their assigned tasks (Liborius, 2014 ). Using the social exchange perspective, employees whose leaders encourage them through participative leadership behaviors, such as participation in decision-making and increased responsibility, may thrive more and offer helpful behavior toward coworkers due to this increased autonomy (Usman et al., 2021 ).

Nature of Situational Leadership

Leadership style is a person's approach to influencing others through their behavior pattern. The directive, as well as supportive behavior, compose this leadership style. A directive behavior encourages group members to achieve goals by providing direction, setting goals and providing evaluation methods, defining roles, assigning deadlines, showing how they will accomplish the objectives, and establishing timelines, which are spelled out, often through one-way communication. Group members who exhibit supportive behaviors are more likely to feel comfortable in their group, coworkers, and situation. Social and emotional support is demonstrated through supportive behaviors; supportive behaviors demand two-way communication (Northouse, 2021 ). Providing direction, implementing and monitoring plans, and motivating team members are aspects of a leadership style (Hourston, 2013 ). An organization administrator capable of adapting to the current circumstances is situational leadership.

Through a situational approach, followers advance and regress in a developmental continuum that measures the relative competence and commitment of the followers. Leaders must determine where followers are on the developmental continuum to adapt their leadership style accordingly (Northouse, 2021 ). Situational leadership is characterized by the relation between the task behavior (giving instructions, directing, guiding, and valuing) and the listening, supporting, and valuing aspects of the engagement. Combined strategies that consider individuals and the environment are advantageous for this style. Consequently, workers can maximize their learning experiences and satisfaction (Walls, 2019 ). In following a situational leader, it is not as necessary to have a charismatic leader with large numbers of followers as it is to have rational comprehension of the situation and appropriate response (Grint, 2011 ). Situational leadership requires individuals to be flexible and use their behavior according to their situation without following a set formula (Walls, 2019 ).

Work Motivation

Motivation determines what individuals do and how they do it based on what they are motivated to do (Meyer et al., 2004 ). Motivating someone to act to achieve his or her goals is a condition or circumstance that encourages and stimulates a person. As a result of solid motivation, an individual may possess energy, power, or a complex condition and the ability to move toward a particular goal, whether or not it is achieved. The motivation will be driven by both the individual (intrinsic) and his surroundings (extrinsic). According to Herzberg's theory, a motivational factor would be achievement, recognition, responsibility, progress, the work itself, and the opportunity to develop. Work motivation factors include achievement, recognition, and advancement (Syaifuddin and Sidu, 2019 ).

Job Satisfaction

The sense of comfort and pride employees experience in doing their jobs is called job satisfaction; job satisfaction is achieved by employees who feel their job is valuable and essential (Mustofa and Muafi, 2021 ). The belief in the amount of pay employees must get for the differences in rewards becomes a general attitude toward their work assessment (Castle et al., 2007 ). Besides, job satisfaction is related to what they get and expect (Dartey-Baah and Ampofo, 2016 ). Then, it will be represented by positive or negative behavior that employees showed in the workplace (Adiguzel et al., 2020 ). Several factors have influenced job satisfaction, including working hours, working conditions, payment, work design, promotions, demographic features, human resource development, leadership style, and stress level (Bhardwaj et al., 2021 ). There is a direct correlation between job satisfaction and an organization's leadership style that provides advice, praise, and assistance to employees when they face problems at work (Sapada et al., 2017 ; Phuc et al., 2021 ). Employees who are highly satisfied with their job can contribute to the organization's performance (Takdir et al., 2020 ). Employees often focus less on the duties and responsibilities of an employee than on perceived job satisfaction that encourages them to perform at their best (Aprilda et al., 2019 ).

Relationship of Situational Leadership With Work Motivation and Job Satisfaction

There is a positive correlation between work motivation and job satisfaction, and intrinsic motivation is positively correlated with job satisfaction (Alnlaclk and Alnlaclk, 2012 ). In research, it was discovered that intrinsic motivation was positively related to job satisfaction (Arasli et al., 2014 ).

Leadership and work motivation provide a positive and significant effect on job satisfaction (Pancasila et al., 2020 ). Leadership motivates and satisfies followers by helping them in a friendly way (Haq et al., 2022 ). According to several studies, situational leadership leads to increased motivation (Fikri et al., 2021 ). Situational leadership can positively and significantly affect job satisfaction and trust, respect, and pride among subordinates. Incorporating these characteristics can assist leaders in building employee commitment, raising risk awareness, articulating a shared vision, and reinforcing the importance of the vision (Al-edenat, 2018 ). The result is also in line with that of Li and Yuan ( 2017 ), who demonstrated that a leader's impact on job satisfaction is both positive and significant. According to Saleem ( 2015 ), leadership creates a significant positive impact on job satisfaction. Situational leadership is positively associated with job satisfaction (Fonda, 2015 ). In conclusion, leadership is crucial in determining work motivation and job satisfaction (Mustofa and Muafi, 2021 ).

Summary and Conclusions

Situational leadership has a positive influence on work motivation and job satisfaction ( Figure 1 ). It encourages employees to finish their jobs enthusiastically and spurs their devotion to their roles for successful job completion. This leadership style is easy to comprehend, intuitively sensible, and adaptable to various situations (Northouse, 2021 ).

Conceptual model.

Situational leadership significantly impacts job satisfaction (Shyji and Santhiyavalli, 2014 ). Assuring employee job satisfaction is a vital role of a leader in achieving organizational goals. Job satisfaction levels may vary between employees, places, jobs, and organizations (Ridlwan et al., 2021 ; Saleem et al., 2021 ). In addition to promoting exemplary employees, effective leadership promotes job satisfaction (Setyorini et al., 2018 ). Employee job satisfaction directly impacts job performance in an organization (Hutabarat, 2015 ). Employee performance is positively correlated with job satisfaction (Sidabutar et al., 2020 ). This situational approach has a prescriptive component, whereas many leadership theories are descriptive. Situational leadership, for instance, prescribes a directing style for you, the leader, if your followers are of very low competence. The situational approach suggests that you follow a supportive leadership style if your followers appear competent but lack confidence. These prescriptions, in general, provide all leaders with a set of guidelines that are extremely helpful for aiding and enhancing effective and efficient leadership (Northouse, 2021 ).

Leaders should be aware of how they lead and use appropriate styles to develop the skills of their staff while promoting satisfaction with their jobs (Carlos do Rego Furtado et al., 2011 ).

In sum, situational leadership motivates employees and improves employee satisfaction at work (Schweikle, 2014 ). The situational approach applies to virtually any organization and at nearly any level for almost any goal. There are many possible applications for it (Northouse, 2021 ). Higher productivity resulted from better leadership. In this way, job satisfaction contributes to employee performance ultimately. That means the higher job satisfaction leads to the better the employee performance (Jalagat, 2016 ). Effective leadership can result in more satisfied employees, more motivation at work, and more satisfaction with the workplace. It is worth mentioning that the theoretical understandings gained through this research will encourage future scholars to investigate how situational leaders can improve the performance of employees. An extensive empirical study is needed to understand the role of the situational leadership approach in the current pandemic circumstances. Moreover, the biggest challenge facing leadership studies right now is the lack of knowledge about the topic.

Author Contributions

SA presented the main idea and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. AS contributed to revising and proofreading the manuscript. After review, TK and KP helped us finalize the revisions and proofreading. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher's Note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Leadership lessons from 2020: Navigating the new normal

Nearly a year ago, the pandemic ushered in dramatic and unprecedented changes to our lives, including working from home, which became ubiquitous in many industries overnight. As of December 2020, 41.8 percent of the American workforce remained fully remote, according to an  Upwork study , which also predicts that 26.7 percent of the workforce will be fully remote throughout 2021. This “new normal,” in turn, created new challenges for business leaders and managers.

We asked several faculty members in the  Cornell SC Johnson College of Business  about what key lessons leaders and managers can gain from the experiences of 2020 and apply to 2021 and beyond. Read about their insights, below.

Focus on enabling vs. controlling to ignite human potential and organizational impact.

Weekly progress update meetings, time tracking, checking people’s work, multi-step decision approval processes . . .  many of these habits can make us feel like we have things “under control.” Yet, in reality, a focus on control, as tempting as it may be—especially in a time of high uncertainty—doesn’t usually add value and is not the essential work of leaders.

Organizations are a collection of human beings coming together to create value that they could not create alone and this human/organizational connection has never been clearer than over the last ten months. A leader’s core task is to get people to collaborate to accomplish this goal: to focus on igniting the collective human power of our organizations. Igniting that human power could seem overwhelming for many leaders in this moment when employees are worried about the security of their jobs, financial stability, societal tensions, their own health, and the health of their loved ones. But the strongest leaders quickly surmised that engaging the complexity of what people have been facing was an essential part of mobilizing them in meaningful ways.

To ignite this collective response, various leaders across an array of organizations decided to focus on compassion and empowerment instead of control. By focusing on connecting with their people, they became better able to understand their perspectives, support them in the challenges they faced, and aid them in finding focus in the midst of chaos. These leaders iteratively stripped away activities of lesser value and increased trust in their people to do what is best for the organization. That did not mean leaving everyone to his or her own devices; it did mean a shift from controlling to enabling. Leaders who understood this became sounding boards as their employees solved problems, coaches for stretch assignments, and advocates for their team’s ideas—and in doing so, created a more powerful potential for results in the midst of a highly challenging year.

Our hope is that the leaders who made this switch continue down this path as we move to a new “normal” and that others observe these results and follow suit, allowing the learnings from a tough year to heighten employee engagement and organizational results in 2021 and beyond.

Laura Georgianna , senior lecturer of management and organizations, executive director of  Leadership Programs , and Donald F. Douglas director of the  Roy H. Park Leadership Fellows program ; and  Glen Dowell , professor of management and organizations, at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management.

Recognize the value of people who are conscientious and who connect across silos as well as those who are resilient and adaptable.

Personality traits like resilience and adaptability have been obvious key resources for navigating 2020. Less obviously, research shows that conscientiousness maps closely to those traits. This is helpful because some people might not perceive themselves to be high in resilience, but do perceive themselves as high in conscientiousness. And attending to details, persevering towards goals, and getting things done have proven their value in recent times.

The abrupt and seismic changes encountered in 2020 also showcased the importance of recognizing and valuing our interconnectedness. While leaders of organizations often express praise for people who integrate across silos, labor markets have tended to penalize the individuals who take on such boundary-spanning work. Organizations that walk the talk of support for these boundary-spanners—the very people who augment and strengthen an organization’s interconnectedness—are poised to do well.

Kevin Kniffin , assistant professor,   Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management . Read more about Kniffin’s research along these lines in this paper,   COVID-19 and the Workplace: Implications, issues, and insights for future research and action , and   in this story about it .

Develop clear policies to help employees transition to a post-pandemic world, including guidelines about working remotely and on-site.

As 2021 rolls on and the pandemic begins to fade from view, managers must focus on the transition to a post-pandemic world. This focus will of course include interaction with stakeholders, especially customers; but it must center on a firm’s employees. Managers have an opportunity to reshape work, making remote work for some jobs and employees an option or maybe even a requirement. At the same time, managers should give employees as much autonomy as possible in deciding whether to work remotely, and when; and whether to work on site, and when. Designing schedules that judiciously allow as many members of an organization to rub shoulders with each other as possible, while retaining the motivational value and productivity of remote work, will be essential. In addition, it will be most important to squelch any perceptions (or, even worse, actual biases) that those who spend all their time on site, whether they need to or not, will be the only ones who progress in the organization.

Reenacting a strong and cohesive organizational culture and promoting the redeployment and growth of social capital inside and beyond the organization must be a foremost concern for managers in 2021 and the post-pandemic period.

Pedro David Pérez , senior lecturer of applied economics and management in the   Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management . Beginning spring 2021, he is teaching a new course:   Leadership and Management in Global Environments and Organizations .

Communicate clearly, constantly, and concisely with geographically dispersed teams—the new normal.

The events of 2020 sparked a fast-forward in the use of technology at and for work. Leaders who already placed an emphasis on technology have led the way:  Leaders in industries like IT, for example, experienced a milder learning curve. In other industries, while the movement and reliance on technology was prevalent, the pandemic forced the issue on a much greater scale. Leaders had to learn to trust employees to get work done in the absence of a physical and co-located workplace.

The 2020 pandemic caused a rise in communication and remote connectivity platforms. Successful leaders were vigilant in their adaptation. Clear, constant, and concise communication is of paramount importance for leaders and managers when teams are geographically dispersed, as they are now. A hybrid work environment has been born; it is the new normal and it will remain so in many fields of work. This means managers must shift from employee attendance to looking at results to measure productivity.

Donna L. Haeger   is a professor of practice at the   Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management   and faculty director of the   Dyson Leadership Development   program. In her research, she explores technology in the workplace, leadership, teams, and management.

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A Leadership Development Strategy for the New Normal

The forces that shape corporate strategies—technology, the competitive landscape, geopolitics, demographic shifts—are continuously changing, and today they’re more volatile and disruptive than ever, with a new force to reckon with: the coronavirus pandemic. Where businesses choose to play, and how they choose to win, will look different during a pandemic and in a post-pandemic world. As organizational priorities shift to create the next new normal, the leadership capabilities required to accommodate those shifts and execute new strategies will also change. This means that L&D will need to make sure that their leadership development strategy is geared toward the new normal, pivoting to align to the shifting corporate strategy.

The fundamentals still apply As our colleague Larry Clark wrote in his 2018 post “ Is Your ‘Vision 2020’ Leadership Development Strategy On The Path To Success? ” , a strategy is “a purposeful path to accomplishing a goal.” For L&D, that “purposeful path” must align with two prime (and evergreen) leadership imperatives: driving performance and preparing for the future. Those imperatives aren’t going to change any time soon. L&D’s job has always been to build leadership capabilities that support business strategies and goals.

But we also know that, in real life, L&D is often in reactive mode. You’re responding to new organizational goals, specific initiatives, or changes in budget and staffing to carry out your well-intentioned long-term plans.   As your organization transforms, so must learning and development, particularly leadership development.  Our portfolio of leadership capabilities – and approaches to learning and measurement – must adapt and change as we tightly link our efforts to both the organization’s priorities and learner needs.

L&D will always be charged with shoring up current gaps, while also developing the skills needed for the longer-term health of your business. Meeting the challenge of the new normal means focusing on leadership capabilities that enable your leaders to be agile, resilient, and adaptive. Because if there’s one thing certain about the new normal, it’s that it will be more new than normal.

Preparing your leaders for the new normal Agility. Resilience. Adaptivity. These aren’t new. VUCA? That’s not new, either. What the coronavirus pandemic has taught us is that the need for agility, the need to respond to volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, can happen even faster than we’d imagined. And require responses in real time.

Who knew in early January that within a couple of months, many countries would have their entire populations on lockdown, their supply chains interrupted, and millions of employees working from home. Some industries – travel, entertainment, sports, hospitality–have been largely shutdown. Others – think work-from-home technology and services – are thriving.

Now more than ever, L&D must focus on developing core capabilities that help their leaders pivot as needed, and pivot again as new information comes in, as they identify what’s working and what’s not working. New paradigms are emerging. Leaders who are finding a new voice as empathetic communicators. Surprising collaborations across internal silos and external ecosystems to get the job done. New opportunities to take advantage of – like the clothing companies that switched gears to begin manufacturing personal protective equipment.

We may be working through the new normal of the pandemic challenge for several years, and over those years, the new normal will morph in ways we can’t yet foresee. One of the most fulfilling and challenging aspects of working in the space of developing leaders is being brought into these business changes early and often.  We in L&D have a significant role in preparing leaders with the capabilities that will enable them to drive performance and prepare for a future that will be perpetually undergoing change.

How is your L&D organization preparing your leaders for the new normal?

Laura Chapin is senior learning solutions manager at Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning . Email her at [email protected] .

Maria Plowman is senior learning solutions manager at Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning . Email her at [email protected] .

One of the most important aspects of leadership development is making sure that learning is relevant – to the business, and to leaders themselves.  For those who’ll be attending this year’s Partner’s Meeting, Marisa and I will be hosting a breakout session, “Aligning Priorities: How Does Leadership Learning Stay Relevant” on June 11.

Let’s talk

Change isn’t easy, but we can help. Together we’ll create informed and inspired leaders ready to shape the future of your business.

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Book review: leadership in the new normal.

By Gerald L. Mitchell Joint Force Quarterly 74

By Russel L. Honore, with Jennifer Robison Acadian House Publishing, 2012 183 pp. $16.95 ISBN: 978-0925417817

Reviewed by Gerald L. Mitchell

Leadership in the New Normal is a short course in leadership in which the author traces good to great leadership attributes in such forefathers as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and by doing so he really describes the nature of leadership itself. Lieutenant General Honoré, USA (Ret.), postulates that we won our freedom because of leadership during the critical times in our history, such as Valley Forge and the Civil War, and leadership will continue to help us as we transition to the next “new normal” period.

From history and from his own vast experiences in tough command and staff assignments, Honoré shares his thoughts about the first three lessons of leadership:

• good leaders learn to do the routine things well
• good leaders are not afraid to act even when criticized
• good leaders are not afraid to take on the impossible.

The author backs up his assertions with historical examples and with his own highly publicized experiences as commander of Joint Task Force Katrina. He provides a framework for success through leadership, whether it is at the national security level, in the military, in the business world, or inside a family. His motto of “See first, Understand first, Act first” is described in terms of understanding the environment, understanding what is important, and understanding how to determine the best course of action, solution, or option as fast as possible. He also describes how to get subordinates to buy in to the mission. The leadership he portrays is applicable to any and all types of organizations—even at home (and maybe most importantly there).

The story is told of a prize pig that has a leadership lesson for us as we wrestle with the dilemma of resource constraints—near-term, instant gratification versus long-term growth and development. Every organization from the government, military, businesses, and education system faces this dilemma.

What is unique about Honoré’s instruction is that he tackles the difficult issues with an old-fashioned common sense approach. What is the nature of leadership? What are the crucial lessons gleaned from the study of some of our nation’s greatest leaders? How do the important aspects of leadership change with the strategic and global environment? How do leaders instill a philosophy and culture of “mission command” in their subordinates and organizations? How do they know and recognize the right problems to solve? How do they motivate their people? What does education have to do with leadership in government, the military, or business?

The author takes on these questions in sequence. Chapter 1 describes his take on the “nature of leadership.” He goes back to our nation’s beginning and uses George Washington’s ability to lead “a rag-tag army” to victory over a far superior British force. In chapter 2, he extrapolates critical leadership lessons from decisive points in our history that are just as vital today. He writes, “No great change comes without leadership and sacrifice.”

Chapter 3 explores the notion that our nation transitioned through change constantly, always adapting to the new normal, and that leaders must recognize change to be successful. The general describes the key variables he sees in America’s latest new normal and expands this discussion to the global environment in chapter 4. How have “extreme population density, the incredibly fast transmission of information, the rise of terrorism, the interconnectedness of business, and the growth of the ranks of the poor” created the new normal and shaped the global environment of today and the near future? The author offers his keen insights on causes and effects and correlations.

Honoré’s 37 years of service in demanding command and staff assignments under tremendously adverse conditions (think of South Korea and Germany in the dead of winter and the desert heat of the Middle East—or perhaps worse, the political firestorm in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina) shaped his understanding of leadership in changing environments. What leaders learn about leadership itself and mission command when trying to inspire subordinates to accomplish a mission when they are cold, wet, hungry, and tired is invaluable. Honoré shares his lessons learned and answers questions in chapters 5 through 8, which concern how leaders instill a culture of mission command in their subordinates and organizations, how leaders know and recognize the right problems to solve, and how leaders motivate their organizations.

One of the author’s most passionate themes throughout the book is the importance of education in leader development. He points his finger at the education system as the problem behind many of our nation’s social issues—but it is also the solution. He is adamant that a sound education will lead to success in life. He closes with sage advice about the importance of practicing good leadership (and followership) at home. Look around at the next retirement ceremony (or funeral) and determine if that individual followed the general’s counsel about leadership at work and at home.

This is an easy read with plain and simple language that is packed with lessons for any leader in any capacity. It is a great follow-up to his book Survival: How a Culture of Preparedness Can Save You and Your Family from Disasters (Atria Books, 2009). JFQ

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Adapting to the culture of ‘new normal’: an emerging response to COVID-19

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Jeff Clyde G Corpuz, Adapting to the culture of ‘new normal’: an emerging response to COVID-19, Journal of Public Health , Volume 43, Issue 2, June 2021, Pages e344–e345, https://doi.org/10.1093/pubmed/fdab057

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A year after COVID-19 pandemic has emerged, we have suddenly been forced to adapt to the ‘new normal’: work-from-home setting, parents home-schooling their children in a new blended learning setting, lockdown and quarantine, and the mandatory wearing of face mask and face shields in public. For many, 2020 has already been earmarked as ‘the worst’ year in the 21st century. Ripples from the current situation have spread into the personal, social, economic and spiritual spheres. Is this new normal really new or is it a reiteration of the old? A recent correspondence published in this journal rightly pointed out the involvement of a ‘supportive’ government, ‘creative’ church and an ‘adaptive’ public in the so-called culture. However, I argue that adapting to the ‘new normal’ can greatly affect the future. I would carefully suggest that we examine the context and the location of culture in which adaptations are needed.

To live in the world is to adapt constantly. A year after COVID-19 pandemic has emerged, we have suddenly been forced to adapt to the ‘new normal’: work-from-home setting, parents home-schooling their children in a new blended learning setting, lockdown and quarantine, and the mandatory wearing of face mask and face shields in public. For many, 2020 has already been earmarked as ‘the worst’ year in the 21st century. 1 Ripples from the current situation have spread into the personal, social, economic and spiritual spheres. Is this new normal really new or is it a reiteration of the old? A recent correspondence published in this journal rightly pointed out the involvement of a ‘supportive’ government, ‘creative’ church and an ‘adaptive’ public in the so-called culture. 2 However, I argue that adapting to the ‘new normal’ can greatly affect the future. I would carefully suggest that we examine the context and the location of culture in which adaptations are needed.

The term ‘new normal’ first appeared during the 2008 financial crisis to refer to the dramatic economic, cultural and social transformations that caused precariousness and social unrest, impacting collective perceptions and individual lifestyles. 3 This term has been used again during the COVID-19 pandemic to point out how it has transformed essential aspects of human life. Cultural theorists argue that there is an interplay between culture and both personal feelings (powerlessness) and information consumption (conspiracy theories) during times of crisis. 4 Nonetheless, it is up to us to adapt to the challenges of current pandemic and similar crises, and whether we respond positively or negatively can greatly affect our personal and social lives. Indeed, there are many lessons we can learn from this crisis that can be used in building a better society. How we open to change will depend our capacity to adapt, to manage resilience in the face of adversity, flexibility and creativity without forcing us to make changes. As long as the world has not found a safe and effective vaccine, we may have to adjust to a new normal as people get back to work, school and a more normal life. As such, ‘we have reached the end of the beginning. New conventions, rituals, images and narratives will no doubt emerge, so there will be more work for cultural sociology before we get to the beginning of the end’. 5

Now, a year after COVID-19, we are starting to see a way to restore health, economies and societies together despite the new coronavirus strain. In the face of global crisis, we need to improvise, adapt and overcome. The new normal is still emerging, so I think that our immediate focus should be to tackle the complex problems that have emerged from the pandemic by highlighting resilience, recovery and restructuring (the new three Rs). The World Health Organization states that ‘recognizing that the virus will be with us for a long time, governments should also use this opportunity to invest in health systems, which can benefit all populations beyond COVID-19, as well as prepare for future public health emergencies’. 6 There may be little to gain from the COVID-19 pandemic, but it is important that the public should keep in mind that no one is being left behind. When the COVID-19 pandemic is over, the best of our new normal will survive to enrich our lives and our work in the future.

No funding was received for this paper.

UNESCO . A year after coronavirus: an inclusive ‘new normal’. https://en.unesco.org/news/year-after-coronavirus-inclusive-new-normal . (12 February 2021, date last accessed) .

Cordero DA . To stop or not to stop ‘culture’: determining the essential behavior of the government, church and public in fighting against COVID-19 . J Public Health (Oxf) 2021 . doi: 10.1093/pubmed/fdab026 .

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El-Erian MA . Navigating the New Normal in Industrial Countries . Washington, D.C. : International Monetary Fund , 2010 .

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Alexander JC , Smith P . COVID-19 and symbolic action: global pandemic as code, narrative, and cultural performance . Am J Cult Sociol 2020 ; 8 : 263 – 9 .

Biddlestone M , Green R , Douglas KM . Cultural orientation, power, belief in conspiracy theories, and intentions to reduce the spread of COVID-19 . Br J Soc Psychol 2020 ; 59 ( 3 ): 663 – 73 .

World Health Organization . From the “new normal” to a “new future”: A sustainable response to COVID-19. 13 October 2020 . https: // www.who.int/westernpacific/news/commentaries/detail-hq/from-the-new-normal-to-a-new-future-a-sustainable-response-to-covid-19 . (12 February 2021, date last accessed) .

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From thinking about the next normal to making it work: What to stop, start, and accelerate

What’s next? That is the question everyone is asking. The future is not what we thought it would be only a few short months ago.

In a previous article, we discussed seven broad ideas that we thought would shape the global economy as it struggled to define the next normal . In this one, we set out seven actions that have come up repeatedly in our discussions with business leaders around the world. In each case, we discuss which attitudes or practices businesses should stop, which they should start, and which they should accelerate.

1. From ‘sleeping at the office’ to effective remote working

Stop assuming that the old ways will come back.

In fact, this isn’t much of a problem. Most executives we have spoken to have been pleased at how well the sudden increase in remote working has gone. At the same time, there is some nostalgia for the “good old days,” circa January 2020, when it was easy to bump into people at the coffee room. Those days are gone. There is also the risk, however, that companies will rely too much on remote working. In the United States, more than 70 percent of jobs can’t be done offsite. Remote work isn’t a panacea for today’s workplace challenges, such as training, unemployment, and productivity loss.

Start thinking through how to organize work for a distributed workforce

Remote working is about more than giving people a laptop. Some of the rhythms of office life can’t be recreated. But the norms associated with traditional work—for example, that once you left the office, the workday was basically done—are important. As one CEO told us, “It’s not so much working from home; rather, it’s really sleeping at the office.”

For working from home to be sustainable, companies need to help their staff create those boundaries: the kind of interaction that used to take place in the hallway can be taken care of with a quick phone call, not a videoconference. It may also help to set “office hours” for particular groups, share tips on how to track time, and announce that there is no expectation that emails will be answered after a certain hour.

Accelerate best practices around collaboration, flexibility, inclusion, and accountability

Collaboration, flexibility, inclusion, and accountability are things organizations have been thinking about for years, with some progress. But the massive change associated with the coronavirus could and should accelerate changes that foster these values.

Office life is well defined. The conference room is in use, or it isn’t. The boss sits here; the tech people have a burrow down the hall. And there are also useful informal actions. Networks can form spontaneously (albeit these can also comprise closed circuits, keeping people out), and there is on-the-spot accountability when supervisors can keep an eye from across the room. It’s worth trying to build similar informal interactions. TED Conferences, the conference organizer and webcaster, has established virtual spaces so that while people are separate, they aren’t alone. A software company, Zapier, sets up random video pairings so that people who can’t bump into each other in the hallway might nonetheless get to know each other.

There is some evidence that data-based, at-a-distance personnel assessments bear a closer relation to employees’ contributions than do traditional ones, which tend to favor visibility. Transitioning toward such systems could contribute to building a more diverse, more capable, and happier workforce. Remote working, for example, means no commuting, which can make work more accessible for people with disabilities; the flexibility associated with the practice can be particularly helpful for single parents and caregivers. Moreover, remote working means companies can draw on a much wider talent pool.

Remote working means no commuting, which can make work more accessible for people with disabilities; the flexibility can be particularly helpful for single parents and caregivers.

2. From lines and silos to networks and teamwork

Stop relying on traditional organizational structures.

“We used to have all these meetings,” a CEO recently told us. “There would be people from different functions, all defending their territory. We’d spend two hours together, and nothing got decided. Now, all of those have been cancelled—and things didn’t fall apart.” It was a revelation—and a common one. Instead, the company put together teams to deal with COVID-19-related problems. Operating with a defined mission, a sense of urgency, and only the necessary personnel at the table, people set aside the turf battles and moved quickly to solve problems, relying on expertise rather than rank.

Start locking in practices that speed up decision making and execution during the crisis

The all-hands-on-deck ethos of a pandemic can’t last. But there are ways to institutionalize what works—and the benefits can be substantial. During and after the 2008 financial crisis, companies that were in the top fifth in performance were about 20 percentage points ahead of their peers. Eight years later, their lead had grown to 150 percentage points. The lesson: those who move earlier, faster, and more decisively do best .

Accelerate the transition to agility

We define “agility” as the ability to reconfigure strategy, structure, processes, people, and technology quickly toward value-creating and value-protecting opportunities. In a 2017 McKinsey survey, agile units performed significantly better  than those who weren’t agile, but only a minority of organizations were actually performing agile transformations. Many more have been forced to do so because of the current crisis—and have seen positive results.

Agile companies are more decentralized and depend less on top-down, command-and-control decision making . They create agile teams, which are allowed to make most day-to-day decisions; senior leaders still make the big-bet ones  that can make or break a company. Agile teams aren’t out-of-control teams: accountability, in the form of tracking and measuring precisely stated outcomes, is as much a part of their responsibilities as flexibility is. The overarching idea is for the right people to be in position to make and execute decisions.

One principle is that the flatter decision-making structures many companies have adopted in crisis mode are faster and more flexible than traditional ones. Many routine decisions that used to go up the chain of command are being decided much lower in the hierarchy, to good effect. For example, a financial information company saw that its traditional sources were losing their value as COVID-19 deepened. It formed a small team to define company priorities—on a single sheet of paper—and come up with new kinds of data, which it shared more often with its clients. The story illustrates the new organization paradigm: empowerment and speed, even—or especially—when information is patchy.

Another is to think of ecosystems (that is, how all the parts fit together) rather than separate units. Companies with healthy ecosystems of suppliers, partners, vendors, and committed customers can find ways to work together during and after times of crisis because those are relationships built on trust, not only transactions.

Finally, agility is just a word if it isn’t grounded in the discipline of data. Companies need to create or accelerate their analytics capabilities to provide the basis for answers—and, perhaps as important, allow them to ask the right questions. This also requires reskilling employees to take advantage of those capabilities: an organization that is always learning is always improving.

3. From just-in-time to just-in-time and just-in-case supply chains

Stop optimizing supply chains based on individual component cost and depending on a single supply source for critical materials.

The coronavirus crisis has demonstrated the vulnerability of the old supply-chain model, with companies finding their operations abruptly halted because a single factory had to shut down. Companies learned the hard way that individual transaction costs don’t matter nearly as much as end-to-end value optimization—an idea that includes resilience and efficiency, as well as cost. The argument for more flexible and shorter supply chains has been building for years. In 2004, an article in the McKinsey Quarterly noted that it can be better to ship goods “500 feet in 24 hours [rather than] shipping them 5,000 miles across logistical and political boundaries in 25 days ... offshoring often isn’t the right strategy for companies whose competitive advantage comes from speed and a track record of reliability.” 1 Ronald C. Ritter and Robert A. Sternfels, “When offshore manufacturing doesn’t make sense,” McKinsey Quarterly , 2004 Number 4.

The argument for more flexible and shorter supply chains has been building for years.

Start redesigning supply chains to optimize resilience and speed

Instead of asking whether to onshore or offshore production, the starting point should be the question, “How can we forge a supply chain that creates the most value?” That will often lead to an answer that involves neither offshoring nor onshoring but rather “multishoring”—and with it, the reduction of risk by avoiding being dependent on any single source of supply.

Speed still matters, particularly in areas in which consumer preferences change quickly. Yet even in fashion, in which that is very much the case, the need for greater resilience is clear. In a survey conducted in cooperation with Sourcing Journal subscribers , McKinsey found that most fashion-sourcing executives reported that their suppliers wouldn’t be able to deliver all their orders for the second quarter of 2020. To get faster means adopting new digital-planning and supplier-risk-management tools to create greater visibility and capacity, capability, inventory, demand, and risk across the value chain. Doing so enables companies to react well to changes in supply or demand conditions.

One area of vulnerability the current crisis has revealed is that many companies didn’t know the suppliers their own suppliers were using and thus were unable to manage critical elements of their value chains. Companies should know where their most critical components come from . On that basis, they can evaluate the level of risk and decide what to do, using rigorous scenario planning and bottom-up estimates of inventory and demand. Contractors should be required to show that they have risk plans (including knowing the performance, financial, and compliance record of all their subcontractors, as well as their capacity and inventories) in place.

Accelerate ‘nextshoring’ and the use of advanced technologies

In some critical areas, governments or customers may be willing to pay for excess capacity and inventories, moving away from just-in-time production. In most cases, however, we expect companies to concentrate on creating more flexible supply chains that can also operate on a just-in-case approach. Think of it as “nextshoring” for the next normal.

For example, the fashion industry expects to shift some sourcing from China to other Asian countries, Central America, and Eastern Europe. Japanese carmakers and Korean electronics companies were considering similar actions before the coronavirus outbreak. The state-owned Development Bank of Japan is planning to subsidize companies’ relocation back to Japan, and some Western countries, including France, are looking to build up domestic industries for critical products, such as pharmaceuticals. Localizing supply chains and creating more collaborative relationships  with critical suppliers—for example, by helping them build their digital capabilities or share freight capacity—are other ways to build long-term resilience and flexibility.

Nextshoring in manufacturing is about two things. The first is to define whether production is best placed near customers to meet local needs and accommodate variations in demand. The second is to define what needs to be done near innovative supply bases to keep up with technological change. Nextshoring is about understanding how manufacturing is changing (in the use of digitization and automation, in particular) and building the trained workforce, external partnerships, and management muscle to deliver on that potential. It is about accelerating the use of flexible robotics, additive manufacturing, and other technologies to create capabilities that can shift output levels and product mixes at reasonable cost. It isn’t about optimizing labor costs, which are usually a much smaller factor—and sometimes all but irrelevant.

4. From managing for the short term to capitalism for the long term

Stop quarterly earnings estimates.

Because of the unprecedented nature of the pandemic, the percentage of companies providing earnings guidance has fallen sharply—and that’s a good thing. The arguments against quarterly earnings guidance are well known, including that they create the wrong incentives by rewarding companies for doing harmful things, such as deferring capital investment and offering massive discounts that boost sales to make the revenue numbers but hurt a company’s pricing strategy.

Taking such actions may stave off a quick hit to the stock price. But while short-term investors account for the majority of trades—and often seem to dominate earnings calls and internet chatrooms—in fact, seven of ten shares in US companies are owned by long-term investors . By definition, this group, which we call “intrinsic investors”—look well beyond any given quarter, and deeper than such quick fixes. Moreover, they have far greater influence on a company’s share price over time than the short-term investors who place such stock in earnings guidance.

Moreover, the conventional wisdom that missing an estimate means immediate retribution is not always true. A McKinsey analysis found that in 40 percent of the cases, the share prices of companies that missed their consensus earnings estimates actually rose. Finally, an analysis of 615 US public companies from 2001 to 2015 found that those characterized as “long-term oriented” outperformed their peers  in earnings, revenue growth, and market capitalization. Even as a way of protecting equity value, then, earnings guidance is a flawed tool. And, of course, there can be no bad headlines about missed estimates if there are no estimates to miss.

Along the same lines, stop assuming that pursuing shareholder value is the only goal. Yes, businesses have fundamental responsibilities to make money and to reward their investors for the risks they take. But executives and workers are also citizens, parents, and neighbors, and those parts of their lives don’t stop when they clock in. In 2009, in the wake of the financial crisis, former McKinsey managing partner Dominic Barton argued that there is no “inherent tension between creating value and serving the interests of employees, suppliers, customers, creditors, communities, and the environment. Indeed, thoughtful advocates of value maximization have always insisted that it is long-term value that has to be maximized.” 2 Dominic Barton, “Capitalism for the long term,” Harvard Business Review , March 2011, hbr.org. We agree, and since then, evidence has accumulated that businesses with clear values that work to be good citizens create superior value for shareholders over the long run.

Start focusing on leadership and working with partners to create a better future

McKinsey research defines the “long term” as five to seven years: the period it takes to start and build a sustainable business. That period isn’t that long. As the current crisis proves, huge changes can take place in much shorter time frames.

One implication is that boards, in particular, should start to think about just how fast, and when, to replace their CEOs. The average tenure of a CEO at a large-cap company is now about five years, down from ten years in 1995. A recent Harvard Business Review study of the world’s top CEOs found that their average tenure was 15 years. 3 “The best-performing CEOs in the world, 2019,” Harvard Business Review , November–December 2019, hbr.org. One critical factor: close and constant communication with their boards allowed them to get through a rough patch and go on to lead long-term success.

Like Adam Smith, we believe in the “invisible hand”—the idea that self-interest plus the network of information (such as the price signal) that helps economies work efficiently are essential to creating prosperity. But Adam Smith also considered the rule of law essential and saw the goal of wealth creation as creating happiness: “What improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.” 4 Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations , London, UK: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1776. A more recent economist, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, updated the idea for the 21st century, stating that the invisible hand of the market needs to be balanced by the visible hand of good governance.

Given the trillions of dollars and other kinds of support that governments are providing, governments are going to be deeply embedded in the private sector. That isn’t an argument for overregulation, protectionism, or general officiousness—things that both Smith and Sen disdained. It is a statement of fact that business needs to work ever more closely with governments on issues such as training, digitization, and sustainability.

Accelerate the reallocation of resources and infrastructure investment

Business leaders love words like “flexible,” “agile,” and “innovative.” But a look at their budgets shows that “inertia” should probably get more attention. Year to year, companies only reallocate 2 to 3 percent of their budgets. But those that do more—on the order of 8 to 10 percent —create more value. In the coronavirus era, the case for change makes itself. In other areas, companies can use this sense of urgency to change the way they put together their budgets. Sales teams, for example, are used to getting new targets based on the prior year’s results. A better approach is to define the possible , based on metrics such as market size, current market share, sales-force size, and how competitive the market is. On that basis, a company can estimate sales potential and budget accordingly.

In previous economic transitions, infrastructure meant things such as roads and pipelines. In democratic societies, governments generally drew up the plans and established safety and other regulations, and the private sector did the actual building. Something similar needs to happen now, in two areas. One is the irresistible rise of digital technologies. Those without access to reliable broadband are being left out of a sizable and surging segment of the economy; there is a clear case for creating a robust, universal broadband infrastructure.

The second has to do with the workforce. In 2017, the McKinsey Global Institute estimated that as much as a third of workplace activities could be automated  by 2030. To avoid social upheaval—more high-wage jobs but fewer middle-class ones—displaced workers need to be retrained so that they can find and succeed in the new jobs that will emerge. The needs, then, are for more midcareer job training and more effective on-the-job training. For workers, as well as businesses, agility is going to be a core skill—one that current systems, mostly designed for a different era, aren’t very good at.

5. From making trade-offs to embedding sustainability

Stop thinking of environmental management as a compliance issue.

Environmental management is a core management and financial issue. Lloyds Bank, the British insurer, estimated that sea-level rises in New York increased insured losses from Hurricane Sandy in 2012 by 30 percent; a different study found that the number of British properties at risk of significant flooding could double by 2035. Ignore these and similar warnings—about cyclones or extreme heat, for example—and watch your insurance bills rise, as they did in Canada after wildfires in 2016. Investors are noticing too. In Larry Fink’s most recent letter to CEOS, the BlackRock CEO put it bluntly: “Climate risk is investment risk.” 5 Larry Fink, “A fundamental reshaping of finance,” BlackRock, January 2020, blackrock.com. He noted that investors are asking how they should modify their portfolios to incorporate climate risk and are reassessing risk and asset values on that basis.

Start considering environmental strategy as a source of resilience and competitive advantage

The COVID-19 pandemic froze supply chains around the world, including shutting down much of the United States’ meat production. Rising climate hazards could lead to similar shocks to global supply chains and food security. In some parts of Brazil, the usual two-crop growing season may eventually only yield a single crop.

As companies reengineer their supply chains for resilience, they also need to consider environmental factors—for example, is a region already prone to flooding likely to become more so as temperatures rise? One of the insights of a McKinsey climate analysis  published in January is that climate risks are unevenly distributed, with some areas already close to physical and biological tipping points. Where that is the case, companies may need to think about how to mitigate the possible harm or perhaps going elsewhere. The principle to remember is that it is less expensive to prepare than to repair or retrofit. In January 2018, the National Institute for Building Sciences estimated spending $1 to build resilient infrastructure saved $6 in future costs. 6 “National Institute of Building Sciences issues new report on the value of mitigation,” National Institute of Building Sciences, January 11, 2018, nibs.org. To cope with the COVID-19 pandemic, companies have shortened their supply chains, switched to more videoconferencing, and introduced new production processes. Consider how these and other practices might be continued; they can help make companies more environmentally sustainable, as well as more efficient.

Second, it makes sense to start thinking about the possible similarities between the coronavirus crisis and long-term climate change . The pandemic has created simultaneous shocks to supply chains, consumer demand, and the energy sector; it has hit the poor harder; and it has created serious knock-on effects. The same is likely to be true for climate change. Moreover, rising temperatures could also increase the toll of contagious diseases. It could be argued, then, that mitigating climate change is as much a global public-health issue as dealing with COVID-19 is.

The coronavirus crisis has been a sudden shock that essentially hit the world all at once—what we call “contagion risk.” Climate change is on a different time frame; the dangers are building (“accumulation risk”). In each case, however, resilience and collaboration are essential.

Environmental management is a core management and financial issue.

Accelerate investment in innovation, partnerships, and reporting

As usual, information is the foundation for action. A data-driven approach can illuminate the relative costs of maintaining an asset, adapting it—for example, by building perimeter walls or adding a backup power supply—or investing in a new one. It is as true for the environment as any part of the value chain that what gets measured gets managed. This entails creating sound, sophisticated climate-risk assessments ; there is no generally accepted standard at the moment, but there are several works in progress, such as the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board.

The principle at work is to make climate management a core corporate capability , using all the management tools, such as analytics and agile teams, that are applied to other critical tasks. The benefits can be substantial. One study found that companies that reduced their climate-change-related emissions delivered better returns on equity—not because their emissions were lower, but because they became generally more efficient. The correlation between going green and high-quality operations is strong, with numerous examples of companies (including Hilton, PepsiCo, and Procter & Gamble), setting targets to reduce use of natural resources and ending up saving significant sums of money.

It’s true that, given the scale of the climate challenge, no single company is going to make the difference. That is a reason for effort, not inaction. Partnerships directed at cracking high-cost-energy alternatives, such as hydrogen and carbon capture, are one example. Voluntary efforts to raise the corporate game as a whole, such as the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, are another.

6. From online commerce to a contact-free economy

Stop thinking of the contactless economy as something that will happen down the line.

The switch to contactless operations can happen fast. Healthcare is the outstanding example here. For as long as there has been modern healthcare, the norm has been for patients to travel to an office to see a doctor or nurse. We recognize the value of having personal relationships with healthcare professionals. But it is possible to have the best of both worlds—staff with more time to deal with urgent needs and patients getting high-quality care.

In Britain, less than 1 percent of initial medical consultations took place via video link in 2019; under lockdown, 100 percent are occurring remotely. In another example, a leading US retailer in 2019 wanted to launch a curbside-delivery business; its plan envisioned taking 18 months. During the lockdown, it went live in less than a week—allowing it to serve its customers while maintaining the livelihoods of its workforce. Online banking interactions have risen to 90 percent during the crisis, from 10 percent, with no drop-off in quality and an increase in compliance while providing a customer experience that isn’t just about online banking. In our own work, we have replaced on-site ethnographic field study with digital diaries and video walk-throughs. This is also true for B2B applications—and not just in tech. In construction, people can monitor automated earth-moving equipment from miles away.

Start planning how to lock in and scale the crisis-era changes

It is hard to believe that Britain would go back to its previous doctor–patient model. The same is likely true for education. With even the world’s most elite universities turning to remote learning, the previously common disdain for such practices has diminished sharply. There will always be a place for the lecture hall and the tutorial, but there is a huge opportunity here to evaluate what works, identify what doesn’t, and bring more high-quality education to more people more affordably and more easily. Manufacturers also have had to institute new practices to keep their workers at work but apart —for example, by organizing workers into self-contained pods, with shift handovers done virtually; staggering production schedules to ensure that physically close lines run at different times; and by training specialists to do quality-assurance work virtually. These have all been emergency measures. Using digital-twin  simulation—a virtual way to test operations—can help define which should be continued, for safety and productivity reasons, as the crisis lessens.

Accelerate the transition of digitization and automation

“Digital transformation” was a buzz phrase prior to the coronavirus crisis. Since then, it has become a reality in many cases—and a necessity for all. The consumer sector has, in many cases, moved fast. When the coronavirus hit China, Starbucks shut down 80 percent of its stores. But it introduced the “ Contactless Starbucks Experience ” in those that stayed open and is now rolling it out more widely. Car manufacturers in Asia have developed virtual show rooms  where consumers can browse the latest models; these are now becoming part of what they see as a new beginning-to-end digital journey. Airlines and car-rental companies are also developing contactless consumer journeys.

The bigger opportunity, however, may be in B2B applications, particularly in regard to manufacturing, where physical distancing can be challenging. In the recent past, there was some skepticism about applying the Internet of Things (IoT) to industry . Now, many industrial companies have embraced IoT to devise safety strategies, improve collaboration with suppliers, manage inventory, optimize procurement, and maintain equipment. Such solutions, all of which can be done remotely, can help industrial companies adjust to the next normal by reducing costs, enabling physical distancing, and creating more flexible operations. The application of advanced analytics can help companies get a sense of their customers’ needs without having to walk the factory floor; it can also enable contactless delivery.

7. From simply returning to returning and reimagining

Stop seeing the return as a destination.

The return after the pandemic will be a gradual process rather than one determined by government publicizing a date and declaring “open for business.” The stages will vary, depending on the sector, but only rarely will companies be able to flip a switch and reopen. There are four areas to focus on : recovering revenue, rebuilding operations, rethinking the organization, and accelerating the adoption of digital solutions. In each case, speed will be important. Getting there means creating a step-by-step, deliberate process.

There are four areas to focus on: recovering revenue, rebuilding operations, rethinking the organization, and accelerating the adoption of digital solutions.

Start imagining the business as it should be in the next normal

For retail and entertainment venues, physical distancing may become a fact of life, requiring the redesign of space and new business models. For offices, the planning will be about retaining the positives associated with remote working. For manufacturing, it will be about reconfiguring production lines and processes. For many services, it will be about reaching consumers unused to online interaction or unable to access it. For transport, it will be about reassuring travelers that they won’t get sick getting from point A to point B. In all cases, the once-routine person-to-person dynamics will change.

Accelerate digitization

Call it “Industry 4.0” or the “Fourth Industrial Revolution.” Whatever the term, the fact is that there is a new and fast-improving set of digital and analytic tools that can reduce the costs of operations while fostering flexibility. Digitization was, of course, already occurring before the COVID-19 crisis but not universally. A survey in October 2018  found that 85 percent of respondents wanted their operations to be mostly or entirely digital but only 18 percent actually were. Companies that accelerate these efforts fast and intelligently, will see benefits in productivity, quality, and end-customer connectivity . And the rewards could be huge—as much as $3.7 trillion in value worldwide by 2025.

McKinsey and the World Economic Forum have identified 44 digital leaders, or “lighthouses,” in advanced manufacturing . These companies created whole new operating systems around their digital capabilities. They developed new use cases for these technologies, and they applied them across business processes and management systems while reskilling their workforce through virtual reality, digital learning, and games. The lighthouse companies are more apt to create partnerships with suppliers, customers, and businesses in related industries. Their emphasis is on learning, connectivity, and problem solving—capabilities that are always in demand and that have far-reaching effects.

Not every company can be a lighthouse. But all companies can create a plan  that illuminates what needs to be done (and by whom) to reach a stated goal, guarantee the resources to get there, train employees in digital tools and cybersecurity , and bring leadership to bear. To get out of “ pilot purgatory ”—the common fate of most digital-transformation efforts prior to the COVID-19 crisis—means not doing the same thing the same way but instead focusing on outcomes (not favored technologies), learning through experience, and building an ecosystem of tech providers.

Businesses around the world have rapidly adapted to the pandemic. There has been little hand-wringing and much more leaning in to the task at hand. For those who think and hope things will basically go back to the way they were: stop. They won’t. It is better to accept the reality that the future isn’t what it used to be and start to think about how to make it work.

Hope and optimism can take a hammering when times are hard. To accelerate the road to recovery, leaders need to instill a spirit both of purpose and of optimism and to make the case that even an uncertain future can, with effort, be a better one.

Kevin Sneader , the global managing partner of McKinsey, is based in McKinsey’s Hong Kong office; Shubham Singhal , the global leader of the Healthcare Systems & Services Practice, is a senior partner in the Detroit office.

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A National Strategy for the “New Normal” of Life With COVID

• 1 Perelman School of Medicine and The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
• 2 Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
• 3 Grossman School of Medicine, New York University, New York, New York
• Viewpoint The First 2 Years of COVID-19—Lessons to Improve Preparedness for the Next Pandemic Jennifer B. Nuzzo, DrPH, SM; Lawrence O. Gostin, JD JAMA
• Viewpoint A National Strategy for COVID-19—Testing, Surveillance, and Mitigation Strategies David Michaels, PhD, MPH; Ezekiel J. Emanuel, MD, PhD; Rick A. Bright, PhD JAMA
• Viewpoint A National Strategy for COVID-19 Medical Countermeasures Luciana L. Borio, MD; Rick A. Bright, PhD; Ezekiel J. Emanuel, MD, PhD JAMA
• Viewpoint The Pandemic Preparedness Program Eli Y. Adashi, MD, MS; I. Glenn Cohen, JD JAMA
• Medical News & Perspectives Former Biden-Harris Transition Advisors Propose a New National Strategy for COVID-19 Jennifer Abbasi JAMA
• Comment & Response Strategy for the “New Normal” of Life With COVID—Reply Ezekiel J. Emanuel, MD, PhD; Michael Osterholm, PhD, MPH; Céline R. Gounder, MD, ScM JAMA
• Comment & Response Strategy for the “New Normal” of Life With COVID Afschin Gandjour, MD, PhD, MA JAMA
• Viewpoint COVID-19 Vaccination—Becoming Part of the New Normal Peter Marks, MD, PhD; Janet Woodcock, MD; Robert Califf, MD JAMA

As the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 demonstrates, COVID-19 is here to stay. In January 2021, President Biden issued the “National Strategy for the COVID-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness.” As the US moves from crisis to control, this national strategy needs to be updated. Policy makers need to specify the goals and strategies for the “new normal” of life with COVID-19 and communicate them clearly to the public.

SARS-CoV-2 continues to persist, evolve, and surprise. In July 2021, with vaccinations apace and infection rates plummeting, Biden proclaimed that “we’ve gained the upper hand against this virus,” and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) relaxed its guidance for mask wearing and socializing. 1 By September 2021, the Delta variant proved these steps to be premature, and by late November, the Omicron variant created concern about a perpetual state of emergency.

In delineating a national strategy, humility is essential. The precise duration of immunity to SARS-CoV-2 from vaccination or prior infection is unknown. Also unknown is whether SARS-CoV-2 will become a seasonal infection; whether antiviral therapies will prevent long COVID; or whether even more transmissible, immune-evading, or virulent variants will arise after Omicron.

Another part of this humility is recognizing that predictions are necessary but educated guesses, not mathematical certainty. The virus, host response, and data will evolve. Biomedical and public health tools will expand, along with better understanding of their limitations. The incidence of SARS-CoV-2, vaccination rates, hospital capacity, tolerance for risk, and willingness to implement different interventions will vary geographically, and national recommendations will need to be adapted locally.

It is imperative for public health, economic, and social functioning that US leaders establish and communicate specific goals for COVID-19 management, benchmarks for the imposition or relaxation of public health restrictions, investments and reforms needed to prepare for future SARS-CoV-2 variants and other novel viruses, and clear strategies to accomplish all of this.

Redefining the Appropriate National Risk Level

The goal for the “new normal” with COVID-19 does not include eradication or elimination, eg, the “zero COVID” strategy. 2 Neither COVID-19 vaccination nor infection appear to confer lifelong immunity. Current vaccines do not offer sterilizing immunity against SARS-CoV-2 infection. Infectious diseases cannot be eradicated when there is limited long-term immunity following infection or vaccination or nonhuman reservoirs of infection. The majority of SARS-CoV-2 infections are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic, and the SARS-CoV-2 incubation period is short, preventing the use of targeted strategies like “ring vaccination.” Even “fully” vaccinated individuals are at risk for breakthrough SARS-CoV-2 infection. Consequently, a “new normal with COVID” in January 2022 is not living without COVID-19.

The “new normal” requires recognizing that SARS-CoV-2 is but one of several circulating respiratory viruses that include influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and more. COVID-19 must now be considered among the risks posed by all respiratory viral illnesses combined. Many of the measures to reduce transmission of SARS-CoV-2 (eg, ventilation) will also reduce transmission of other respiratory viruses. Thus, policy makers should retire previous public health categorizations, including deaths from pneumonia and influenza or pneumonia, influenza, and COVID-19, and focus on a new category: the aggregate risk of all respiratory virus infections.

What should be the peak risk level for cumulative viral respiratory illnesses for a “normal” week? Even though seasonal influenza, RSV, and other respiratory viruses circulating before SARS-CoV-2 were harmful, the US has not considered them a sufficient threat to impose emergency measures in over a century. People have lived normally with the threats of these viruses, even though more could have been done to reduce their risks.

The appropriate risk threshold should reflect peak weekly deaths, hospitalizations, and community prevalence of viral respiratory illnesses during high-severity years, such as 2017-2018. 3 That year had approximately 41 million symptomatic cases of influenza, 710 000 hospitalizations and 52 000 deaths. 4 In addition, the CDC estimates that each year RSV leads to more than 235 000 hospitalizations and 15 000 deaths in the US. 3 This would translate into a risk threshold of approximately 35 000 hospitalizations and 3000 deaths (<1 death/100 000 population) in the worst week.

Today, the US is far from these thresholds. For the week of December 13, 2021, the CDC reported the US experienced more than 900 000 COVID-19 cases, more than 50 000 new hospitalizations for COVID-19, and more than 7000 deaths. 5 , 6 The tolerance for disease, hospitalization, and death varies widely among individuals and communities. What constitutes appropriate thresholds for hospitalizations and death, at what cost, and with what trade-offs remains undetermined.

This peak week risk threshold serves at least 2 fundamental functions. This risk threshold triggers policy recommendations for emergency implementation of mitigation and other measures. In addition, health systems could rely on this threshold for planning on the bed and workforce capacity they need normally, and when to institute surge measures.

Rebuilding Public Health

To cope with pandemic, and eventually, endemic SARS-CoV-2 and to respond to future public health threats requires deploying real-time information systems, a public health implementation workforce, flexible health systems, trust in government and public health institutions, and belief in the value of collective action for public good. 7 , 8

First, the US needs a comprehensive, digital, real-time, integrated data infrastructure for public health. As Omicron has reemphasized, the US is operating with imprecise estimates of disease spread, limited genomic surveillance, projections based on select reporting sites, and data from other countries that may not be generalizable. These shortcomings are threatening lives and societal function.

The US must establish a modern data infrastructure that includes real-time electronic collection of comprehensive information on respiratory viral infections, hospitalizations, deaths, disease-specific outcomes, and immunizations merged with sociodemographic and other relevant variables. The public health data infrastructure should integrate data from local, state, and national public health units, health care systems, public and commercial laboratories, and academic and research institutions. Using modern technology and analytics, it is also essential to merge nontraditional environmental (air, wastewater) surveillance data, including genomic data, with traditional clinical and epidemiological data to track outbreaks and target containment.

Second, the US needs a permanent public health implementation workforce that has the flexibility and surge capacity to manage persistent problems while simultaneously responding to emergencies. Data collection, analysis, and technical support are necessary, but it takes people to respond to crises. This implementation workforce should include a public health agency–based community health worker system and expanded school nurse system.

A system of community public health workers could augment the health care system by testing and vaccinating for SARS-CoV-2 and other respiratory infections; ensuring adherence to ongoing treatment for tuberculosis, HIV, diabetes, and other chronic conditions; providing health screening and support to pregnant individuals and new parents and their newborns; and delivering various other public health services to vulnerable or homebound populations.

School nurses need to be empowered to address the large unmet public health needs of children and adolescents. As polio vaccination campaigns showed, school health programs are an efficient and effective way to care for children, including preventing and treating mild asthma exacerbations (often caused by viral respiratory infections), ensuring vaccination as a condition for attendance, and addressing adolescents’ mental and sexual health needs. School clinics must be adequately staffed and funded as an essential component of the nation’s public health infrastructure.

Third, because respiratory infections ebb and flow, institutionalizing telemedicine waivers, licensure to practice and enable billing across state lines, and other measures that allow the flow of medical services to severely affected regions should be a priority.

Fourth, it is essential to rebuild trust in public health institutions and a belief in collective action in service of public health. 7 Communities with higher levels of trust and reciprocity, such as Denmark, have experienced lower rates of hospitalization and death from COVID-19. 7 Improving public health data systems and delivering a diverse public health workforce that can respond in real time in communities will be important steps toward building that trust more widely.

Conclusions

After previous infectious disease threats, the US quickly forgot and failed to institute necessary reforms. That pattern must change with the COVID-19 pandemic. Without a strategic plan for the “new normal” with endemic COVID-19, more people in the US will unnecessarily experience morbidity and mortality, health inequities will widen, and trillions will be lost from the US economy. This time, the nation must learn and prepare effectively for the future.

The resources necessary to build and sustain an effective public health infrastructure will be substantial. Policy makers should weigh not only the costs but also the benefits, including fewer deaths and lost productivity from COVID-19 and all viral respiratory illnesses. Indeed, after more than 800 000 deaths from COVID-19, and a projected loss of $8 trillion in gross domestic product through 2030, 8 these interventions will be immensely valuable.

Corresponding Author: Ezekiel J. Emanuel, MD, PhD, Medical Ethics and Health Policy, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, 423 Guardian Dr, Blockley Hall, Philadelphia, PA 19104 ( [email protected] ).

Published Online: January 6, 2022. doi:10.1001/jama.2021.24282

Conflict of Interest Disclosures: Dr Emanuel reported personal fees, nonfinancial support, or both from companies, organizations, and professional health care meetings and being a venture partner at Oak HC/FT; a partner at Embedded Healthcare LLC, ReCovery Partners LLC, and COVID-19 Recovery Consulting; and an unpaid board member of Village MD and Oncology Analytics. Dr Emanuel owns no stock in pharmaceutical, medical device companies, or health insurers. No other disclosures were reported.

Additional Information: Drs Emanuel, Osterholm, and Gounder were members of the Biden-Harris Transition COVID-19 Advisory Board from November 2020 to January 2021.

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Emanuel EJ , Osterholm M , Gounder CR. A National Strategy for the “New Normal” of Life With COVID. JAMA. 2022;327(3):211–212. doi:10.1001/jama.2021.24282

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Virtual leadership starts with taking care of yourself. As they say before a flight, put on your oxygen mask first, then help others with theirs. Be kind to yourself. Pay attention to what exhausts you and what energizes you to better manage your health, energy, spirit, and mood.

In many ways, good virtual leadership is the same as good face-to-face leadership. It’s about doing all the important things leaders need to do, but in a different medium and environment. The research shows that anything leaders do in a face-to-face environment, they need to do more of—and better—in a virtual environment.

Being a leader in a virtual environment is a challenge. So, go beyond good intentions—take action to show your team members they are your top priority. Follow these guidelines to demonstrate what is most important: people.

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Navigating Leadership in the New Normal

May 21, 2020 | Leadership

Defining leadership has always been difficult but identifying it, on the other hand, is so easy, it is almost intuitive. People are naturally drawn to strong leadership and even more so during a crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic has put world leaders in strange positions of having to walk the tightrope, a near-impossible balancing act of a nation’s public health versus its economy. Maybe that is why not everyone is a leader. People naturally shy away from having to make tough decisions. Business owners, who are leaders in their own right, are facing the same balancing act as well. Complexity runs deep in owning a business – the balancing act involves multiple caveats and layers: how to protect your bottom line, how to keep a productive workforce, how to check-in without micromanaging are just a few examples. History has shown that the human race are survivors, time and time again- this is not the first pandemic that we will survive, nor will it be the last.In this article, we explore the different ways you can improve your leadership skills in the new normal.

1) Increase your accessibility as a leader

Right at the top of the list would be increasing your accessibility. Recently, an interesting article posted on Forbes titled “The Next Big Thing: Virtual Leadership ” outlined something very important: “Virtual is not a synonym for invisible”. Especially during this time where workplaces become remote and working from home becomes the new normal, being accessible and visible as a leader becomes even more so important. Great leaders are often held with high esteem not just because of hierarchy but also their personality. Mutual respect in the workplace is not built simply on work performance but simple things such as day-to-day interactions. Leaders can achieve this by encouraging open and honest conversations in their virtual meetings – allow your employees to voice their opinion on issues regardless if it is big or small. Employees should be empowered to approach leaders with problems, be it work or personal. This can go a long way in helping create a more collaborative workforce. One powerful tool that should be used by leaders as well is to seek feedback. While seeking feedback is crucial at every level of a business for the purpose of self-improvement, doing so as a leader facilitates an open office culture. As an employee, knowing that your feedback matters work wonders for your productivity and sense of belonging in an organisation. The increased accessibility as a leader will also build resilience in your organisation for the next crisis that may happen in the future. Start now: culture is cultivated over time and not built overnight.

2) Continue to encourage training and upskilling among employees

Be constructive, not critical. A fall in productivity and revenue may be expected during this time and may not be in your control. Working from home allows for downtime and may be a great time for your employees to regain balance of their work and personal life, that may set them up for more optimized work productivity in the future, post COVID-19. From a leader’s perspective, it also presents a unique opportunity to analyse current business practices and seek improvement. Interestingly, working at an office setting may not as be as productive as one may think: a 2018 report by Marsh & McLennan Insights and Mercer outlined that requiring employees to come to the office just to monitor them has led to presenteeism (the act of being present at work as a manifestation of job insecurity) and will cost organisations in Singapore $7.6 billion by 2030. As a leader, the best thing you can do at this time is to set checkpoints for employees to achieve across a more flexible timeline. On top of that, support them with learning and training tools. While this crisis has caused downtime, one can take advantage of it by equipping their employees with online courses. Ideally, these courses should be geared towards leadership or soft skills that they can apply to both their personal and work life. With the advancement of technology, there are now a plethora of online courses to choose from covering a diverse range of topics. Ideally, choose one that is live and instructor-led to allow for engagement and interaction that your employees may be severely missing during the lockdown.

3) Do not take yourself too seriously

Last but not least, have a laugh – literally. While mainstream media continue to focus on economic downturn and fall in business productivity, it is important to understand how working from home may take a toll on your employee’s mental health. A traditional workday is cut up and structured by home and office spaces. Converging them may be stressful to some and adequate support should be given in case. During this time, encourage sharing of jokes in your work group chats. Take the lead and forward one of those funny memes you received from your friends. This will help build a positive vibe in the day to day interactions of your employee amidst the hourly news updates on mainstream media.

Navigating leadership in the new normal is no easy feat. All that you decide to do now as a leader will set up your business in the future, post COVID-19. Make smart decisions and implement these best practices to make sure that you and your organisation come out the other end not only unscathed, but improved and ready to tackle new business challenges that may come. Let go of the variables that you cannot control and focus on the ones you can. If you have not implemented any of these practices yet, it is not too late – starting small is better than not starting at all, and your employees will thank you for it!

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New Normal vs. Old Normal

Now that we are a full year into this pandemic, working from home or attending school from home has become the new normal for many of us.  The good news is we are starting to see a light at the end of the pandemic tunnel now. Have you noticed that people are still saying, “when we get back to normal,” followed by whatever activity they are missing? 

When we pause for a moment to really think about that statement, we quickly realize that the old normal is just that . 

The old normal.

Our work and home lives have been forever altered by the last 12 months. Many people will choose to continue working from home, while others are clamoring to get back into a physical office or school.  Still others want a hybrid or flexible choice.  What does this mean to how we work and collaborate together while also caring for our own needs?

As a population, we are resilient and creative. We adapted quite well to productive and satisfying work and school lives while being entirely remote. The world of work looks different now. How can we remain relevant and at the top of our game — while also maintaining and building those critical collaborative and enjoyable relationships? 

All you have to do is look around you and within you.  Haven’t you been doing this all along, without realizing you are learning new ways to thrive?

I have recently participated in a number of conversations about this topic, with a variety of people in a variety of forums. What I heard rise to the top were a handful of consistent themes that resonated with me, and I feel that they will likely resonate with you as well.  Let me offer up a few of these that you may not have encountered on the thousands of other lists published in the last 12 months.

1. All parts of our lives are jumbled together.  Use this to your advantage.

We have had a chance to try different activities and operate with an oddly flexible schedule.  We have also given each other grace to adapt. That doesn’t need to change when the world starts to open up again. Life happens.  Those who may not have understood that so well one to two years ago certainly understand that now.  How can you still get all your work done and provide value to both your company and yourself? Take the time to experiment with your flexibility. And while you’re at it, forgive the barking dogs, fighting children and other remarkably human moments you observe from others.

2. Instant messaging is the new office “swing-by.”

Whichever collaborative software you have been using, whether it is Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Skype or something else, we are using the heck out of the instant messaging features. We still have a lot of meetings and classes, we still have a ton of work and we still need to be able to have those immediate conversations. Remember in the office when you would try to catch someone in their office to run something by them or talk about that last meeting?  It was always so hit or miss.  You can do that now via instant message!  It’s also much easier than trying to sneak in a text during an in-person meeting too.

3. The walls have come down and the lines have (mostly) disappeared with global coworkers.

While the pandemic did nothing to change the way time actually works, it did diminish that feeling of being left out by being in an office that is different than most of your coworkers. While we have ALL been remote, the inclusion factor of those who have traditionally felt excluded has expanded. Those days of gathering in the break room for cake, or a happy hour after class, will forever be different.  When we can do these things in person again, don’t forget to bring along your global friends and co-workers using the technology we have become accustomed to using.

These are just a few of the insights gained by many over the past year. So, let go of thinking that life will return to old normal.  It will not. The new normal has much more to offer and has exponentially changed how we will grow and interact with others. 

Embrace the future!

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Education In The New Normal

This was first published on June 3, 2020

Covid-19 has created numerous and significant challenges to the education system, and education leadership must implement a holistic strategy to mitigate the impact of the pandemic and adapt to the new reality.

In April 2020 we published our first insights on Education Continuity During Covid-19 , which provided an overview of country responses to ensure education continuity and outlined a set of recommendations, targeted at education policymakers and delivery institutions, to build resilience into their education systems and ensure continuity during times of public crisis.

In this, the second installment, we dive deeper into the recommendations and look at core initiatives taken by education leadership in response to the pandemic and provide practical guidance and examples. 

Education Leadership Detailed Response Framework

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A Solar Eclipse Means Big Science

By Katrina Miller April 1, 2024

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On April 8, cameras all over North America will make a “megamovie” of the sun’s corona, like this one from the 2017 eclipse. The time lapse will help scientists track the behavior of jets and plumes on the sun’s surface.

There’s more science happening along the path of totality →

An app named SunSketcher will help the public take pictures of the eclipse with their phones.

Scientists will use these images to study deviations in the shape of the solar surface , which will help them understand the sun’s churning behavior below.

The sun right now is approaching peak activity. More than 40 telescope stations along the eclipse’s path will record totality.

By comparing these videos to what was captured in 2017 — when the sun was at a lull — researchers can learn how the sun’s magnetism drives the solar wind, or particles that stream through the solar system.

Students will launch giant balloons equipped with cameras and sensors along the eclipse’s path.

Their measurements may improve weather forecasting , and also produce a bird’s eye view of the moon’s shadow moving across the Earth.

Ham radio operators will send signals to each other across the path of totality to study how the density of electrons in Earth’s upper atmosphere changes .

This can help quantify how space weather produced by the sun disrupts radar communication systems.

(Animation by Dr. Joseph Huba, Syntek Technologies; HamSCI Project, Dr. Nathaniel Frissell, the University of Scranton, NSF and NASA.)

NASA is also studying Earth’s atmosphere, but far from the path of totality.

In Virginia, the agency will launch rockets during the eclipse to measure how local drops in sunlight cause ripple effects hundreds of miles away . The data will clarify how eclipses and other solar events affect satellite communications, including GPS.

Biologists in San Antonio plan to stash recording devices in beehives to study how bees orient themselves using sunlight , and how the insects respond to the sudden atmospheric changes during a total eclipse.

Two researchers in southern Illinois will analyze social media posts to understand tourism patterns in remote towns , including when visitors arrive, where they come from and what they do during their visits.

Results can help bolster infrastructure to support large events in rural areas.

Read more about the eclipse:

Our Coverage of the Total Solar Eclipse

Dress for the Occasion:  What should you wear for the eclipse? Our fashion critic weighs the options , including an unexpected suggestion from scientists.

Free to View:  Six inmates in upstate New York prisons who sued the state won their lawsuit to view the eclipse , arguing it “is a religious event.” But a statewide prison lockdown during the eclipse will remain in place.

Hearing the Eclipse:  A device called LightSound is being distributed to help the blind and visually impaired experience what they can’t see .

Sky-High Hotel Prices: One Super 8 hotel in the eclipse’s path is charging $949 a night . Its normal rate is $95.

Animal Reactions : Researchers will watch if animals at zoos, homes and farms act strangely  when day quickly turns to night.

A Rare Return:  A total solar eclipse happens twice in the same place every 366 years on average. But people in certain areas will encounter April 8’s eclipse  about seven years after they were near the middle of the path of the “Great American Eclipse.”

 No Power Outages:  When the sky darkens during the eclipse, electricity production in some parts of the country will drop so sharply that it could theoretically leave tens of millions of homes in the dark. In practice, hardly anyone will notice  a sudden loss of energy.

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