Let’s look at Paradigms again. Paradigms can be defined in terms of a game. A game has a set of rules, which participants must follow. The game has boundaries such as a basketball court, baseball park, or tennis court.
The game requires specific skills to thrive and practices to compete well. A professional baseball player runs bases; hits a curveball, fastball, slider, and fields a ball. Players keep score. The game score defines winners and losers. We’re all VUCANs now in COVID time. New work, career, and job paradigms due to COVID require new personal practices to survive and hacks to succeed.
In the above figure, the growing gap between the Complexity of Business and our Current Practices results in schedule, cost, quality, and tech variances or risks. These result in tension, dysfunction, and even fear. If your present practices diverge too much from the complexity of work and current practices, then your work and even employability may be at risk in COVID time.
If your personal practices are out of date, then sooner than later you’ll lose your marketability and employability. As business and work become complex, all of us are losing our ability to keep up. Too much change – too fast – no direction.
Work Lesson Earned: In COVID time, you’ll need to evaluate your personal practices frequently. You’ll need to invent new ways of working and even develop safety hacks. These hacks are your personal practices and risk habits. To succeed, you’ll have to manage your time, quality, communications, risk, tech, and performance commitments. And, you may have to do this on your own time and nickel.