The Way foward after COVID-19 as There is no returning to the normal life that was?

As the world recoups from the COVID-19 pandemic, McKinsey and Company's 'three skylines' system offers an accommodating model. However the coronavirus interruptions requires changing the typical request of activity. Evaluating needs and needs and mapping them after some time can support governments, organizations and people react to 'another ordinary.' 

Following quite a while of the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and across the board lockdown, we should now assess how the emergency has upset the key dynamic structure for associations and attempt to construct another one to look past the prompt emergency. 

One of the exemplary vital structures utilized by organizations for supporting development in ordinary occasions is McKinsey and Company's " three skylines " system. First presented in the late 1990s, the three skylines structure depends on the possibility that organizations that support development after some time oversee activities across three key "skylines." 

Skyline one activities are the center business activities that give the most worth today – they require operational greatness and predominant execution and are the domain of experienced supervisors. Skyline two activities are those that address demonstrated new open doors on the cusp of scale-up – they require situating and business fabricating and are the domain of strategists and business designers. Also, skyline three activities are the long wagers, regularly dependent on the desire for interruptions – they are the domain of visionaries and futurists.

Another structure for the post-COVID-19 world 

Yet, what happens when a significant interruption like the COVID-19 pandemic hits the worldwide economy in an enormously quickened time allotment? Out of nowhere we are through the mirror: the skylines are convoluted, and a world imagined distinctly by futurists is happening continuously on information terminals, interpersonal organization feeds, and TV screens. 

Practically overnight, skyline three has now become skyline one, as style houses scramble to change over creation lines to make careful veils, car organizations to deliver ventilators, and brewers and aroma house to make hand sanitizer. Presently the last skyline speaks to the world that used to be the first: the one where individuals can leave their homes to head out to bistros and cinemas, go out on the town to shop and buy trivial products, and travel locally and globally pretty much uninhibitedly.

The impact could be worse in hard-hit regions such as North Africa and the Middle East. Image: Statista

And yet in this new world, we can still use a version of the three horizons framework, one shaped by the nature of the pandemic and our responses to it. In this scenario, the first horizon is the one where much of the world is now or is likely to be soon. This is an emerging crisis horizon, where society is scrambling to respond to the radically changed situation and taking drastic measures to “flatten the curve” of the pandemic.

Most likely this will be followed by a second horizon that does not represent full recovery but is not the full crisis anymore. In this horizon, the most stringent restrictions are raised but others are kept in place, and supply chains and travel plans are subject to disruption by emerging restrictions on the back of secondary outbreaks. This is the horizon where the public health crisis is followed by its economic impact and shaped in part by governments’ response.

And then there is the new third horizon – the “after” – when the reaction to the COVID-19 health crisis has been assimilated into a new normal or ceded the stage to new disruptions. On one hand this “new normal” won’t be just a return to the “before,” as the pandemic response is accelerating several transformative processes that might be hard to reverse – from the expansion of governments’ role in the economy to the adoption of remote working protocols. But it is also unlikely to be a completely different world from the pre-pandemic: we have learned from the financial and technological disruptions of the past 30 years that there are parts of the fabric of society – from long lived infrastructure to complex regulatory frameworks – that are difficult to change quickly.

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Lessons from the three horizons framework

Some of the lessons from the original three horizons framework will likely hold true for this new one. The first is that the urgency of the immediate needs of horizon one initiatives always risk taking resources and attention from horizon two and three. If that is true in normal times, it is particularly true in a crisis.

The second is that without strategic discipline, many organizations might be rearranging initiatives into an unbalanced portfolio. In this context, overinvesting in horizon one and three at the expense of horizon two might be particularly dangerous, as horizon two might turn out to be the most critical juncture for many organizations to regain their footing after the wave of disruption.

But these lessons need to be adapted to a situation of disruption and uncertainty. As horizon one in a crisis is much more tumultuous and fast-moving than in “normal” times, it requires much more attention from top leadership attention. Similarly, clear foresight on horizon three becomes more complex in times of disruption, pulled between the possibility of reverting to the past and opening the space for further major disruptions. But what might be particularly challenging in this time is to effectively build and support an effective portfolio of initiatives for the second horizon, which might both mature faster than in “normal” times, and be harder to predict due to the rapidly changing regulator environment.

Taking a three horizons framework can help not just business but also governments, social enterprises, and even families and individuals, in assessing their priorities and allocating energy and resources, so that they are not overwhelmed by tunnel vision during the crisis and throughout the recovery.

This article originally appeared on Medium .