Pragmatic governance during the COVID-19 Pandemic
The Current Environment and Historical Precedents
As COVID-19 continues to spread disruption to the cadence of daily life around the globe, “the new normal” is a fast-evolving concept.
While these times feel unprecedented, there are lessons we can learn about mobilizing and galvanizing societies from a communication planning, resource management and incident response perspective by studying the Spanish Influenza epidemic of 1917-1918 and World War II.
We are already seeing both public and private sector mobilization for testing, countermeasures and treatments, and increased production and distribution of essential supplies and equipment. This will be accelerated further with the U.S. government’s declaration of a national emergency on March 13th, which
will provide added resources and expedited frameworks for development and deployment at the local, state, national and global levels.
With this in mind, CEOs and boards should consider convening a special session to assess and inventory what human resources and material support your organization may offer or be called to provide at whatever level is necessary. Everything from such mundane infrastructure capabilities as multi-site video conferencing capability to logistics/warehousing support should be catalogued with named subject matter experts.
Download our latest paper for a look at how to maintain business continuity as the situation evolves.
