Adapting to the new world

Adapting to the new world

Try to find opportunities in every challenge

We are entering a new world as the Covid-19 pandemic starts to ease. Although cautious, businesses are starting to open up to customers once again. All of us will be facing new changes and challenges.

Our world will never be the same again. But the reality is, it was never going to stay the same anyway; it never does. Change is always around the corner, and some changes are more drastic than others. Whenever change occurs, individuals and organisations alike face new obstacles and challenges. 

Those challenges hold opportunities — if we are able to spot them and grab them. We have already seen how, during the Covid-19 crisis, many individuals and businesses reframed their mindset and way of working to find opportunities in the huge challenges that emerged. We can surely do the same post-pandemic. 

While this article mainly covers the challenges and opportunities from an organisational standpoint, individuals can still apply the lessons to their personal context. Here are some of the challenges we’ll face in the new post-pandemic world and the opportunities we can take from them.

The first challenge is the acceleration of digitisation. During the recent lockdowns, organisations had no choice but to move from the usual way of working into the virtual world. While some were already well-equipped for the digital world, it was still a major challenge to many that were not prepared. 

While preparedness was one issue, different factors were at play in industries such as hotels and food that rely heavily on physical customer interactions. Organisations such as these needed to find whole new ways to provide products and services to their customers to keep their businesses running.

The opportunity we can find in this challenge is to drive the digital transformation we have already been planning for. Over the last couple of years, everyone has become aware of how essential it is to digitally equip our workforce. Most organisations have made transformation plans; now is the time to deliver.

The second challenge we may face is the way of working. For those of us whose working lives have always revolved around an office, two or three months in lockdown have not only changed our way of working, they have also changed our way of thinking. We’ve been exposed to many new ways of working that we never thought were possible. 

This is pushing organisations to rethink and reframe the way they run their businesses in order to keep up with the challenges they will face now and in the future. Also keep in mind the bigger picture beyond the current debate over office versus remote work: there will always be new ways of working that can help us perform more effectively and with greater impact.

The opportunity we can find in this challenge is the chance to redefine and reskill our people to stay agile and resilient. Agility was already a big buzzword pre-pandemic. Many organisations want to become more agile in the face of rapid change but only a few have succeeded at doing so. Now more than ever, we must shift into a more agile structure so that our businesses can continue to flourish.

For organisations, instilling agility can be difficult but it is necessary should they want to overcome new challenges that will inevitably come their way. It’s the same for individuals. Agility allows individuals and organisations alike to adapt to changes quickly, putting proactivity first, instead of simply reacting to change.

The third challenge is the major shifts in people’s behaviour. Whether it’s in the way we consume things and how we go about our daily lives, we are seeing new priorities emerge, such as those related to cost-saving and hygiene. 

The opportunity we can find in this is to make the changes necessary to create new business models and innovations to answer the new needs of our customers. The world is always changing, and sooner or later we would have had to adjust, but now we might need to do so more quickly.

These challenges and opportunities are in a general sense. However, in each industry, business and even job role, there will also be more challenges and opportunities in the new world. In the more distant future, there will be many more challenges that we must face and learn from. In every case, consider the opportunity and you will be on the right track to success.


Arinya Talerngsri is Chief Capability Officer and Managing Director at SEAC - Southeast Asia’s Lifelong Learning Center. She can be reached by email at arinya_t@seasiacenter.com or https://www.linkedin.com/in/arinya-talerngsri-53b81aa. Explore and experience our lifelong learning ecosystem today at https://www.yournextu.com

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