COVID-19 has exposed significant global supply chain fragility, leading to another wave of predictions on the death of globalization. Rising economic nationalism is prompting some governments to reassess self-sufficiency and turn inward. Growing income inequalities and corruption have sparked social instability across the globe. Complex, insecure, and opaque global supply chains masked underlying distribution vulnerabilities, including an extreme dependency on China.  

Globalization was already strained prior to the pandemic; now those weaknesses are exacerbated. COVID-19 is a significant disruption, pushing organizations, governments and societies away from pre-pandemic globalization and toward one of two competing paradigms: a democratic techno-utopia or an authoritarian techno-dystopia. These two distinct futures reflect extremes and are unlikely to wholly manifest one way or the other; instead aspects of each will co-exist for the foreseeable future.  

These disparate futures contain a range of risk factors from protecting intellectual property and cyber risk to environmental toxicity and governance. These factors should be top of mind as enterprises reassess their global footprint and dependencies, and subsequent third-party risk management strategies. 

In the techno-dystopia, authoritarian surveillance states, opacity, insecurity, and rigidity define the future, while the democratic and free societies on the opposite end of the spectrum embody the transparency, security, and agility required for resiliency in a post-pandemic world.  

COVID-19 has prompted a complete rethinking of political, economic, and social systems. It also must be a wake-up call. Any risk assessments must account for these growing and divergent futures, as decisions made today will either establish the foundation for the aspirational future or lead toward an even more vulnerable and fragile one.   

Behind Door #1: Techno-Dystopia 

Entrenched authoritarian regimes redefine globalization in their image, fueled by emerging technologies and opaque economic and political systems. This future is largely isolated with limited cooperation contingent upon smaller powers tolerance of predatory behavior by dominant powers. 

Unfortunately, the proliferation of digital authoritarianism is no longer unique to authoritarian regimes, with aspects of it spreading to weak and even entrenched democracies. Exploring the hallmarks of the techno-dystopian model through a multi-factor risk lens highlights how this future already exists in various forms across the globe.  

• Geopolitics – Corruption and suppression of information compliment the lack of rule of law and disregard for property rights, controlled economy, including minimal to non-existent patent protections and expropriation at the whims of the government, predatory trade and dependencies. 
• Cyber – Digital data theft, manipulation, disinformation, censorship, and surveillance, with an ever-growing target set and tools and tactics for data exfiltration and disruption, as well as national internets under government control. 
• Financial – Money laundering, blackmail, predatory lending and economics, underground economies, and bribery. 
• Operations – A disregard for labor safety conditions and mismanaged or government-controlled physical infrastructure, no development of local workforce, and little regard for global regulations or compliance that have been supplanted with lackluster state-run mandates. 
• Governance – Unethical sourcing, environmental and climate disregard, human rights violations, toxic workplace environments, state-owned enterprises acting on behalf of governments.  

 

Behind Door #2: Techno-Utopia  

Backed by the mission to correct the flaws in globalization and create a more equitable, resilient, and diversified global system, aspirational government and enterprise leaders emerge to counter the rise of the digital authoritarian model.

In this view, globalization is down but not out, and cooperation and coordination underpin the path to resiliency with like-minded entities. Democratic governments are the most prone to crafting this future, but with democracy on the decline for over a decade it is in dire need of a renaissance. Unlike digital authoritarianism, there has yet to be leadership and well-defined digital democracies to serve as a counterweight. Nevertheless, there are green shoots of democratic resiliency with some of the characteristics listed below.  

• Geopolitics – Strong adherence to the rule of law, open economy, protected freedom of information and the press so innovation can thrive and is secured, collaborative trade agreements and flows. 
• Cyber – Mutually agreed upon digital norms guide online activity, privacy and security are balanced with resiliency against cyber attacks and disinformation, global connectivity supports global flows of information and free expression of ideas. 
• Financial – An absence of underground and shadow economies, while rule of law renders bribery and money laundering virtually non-existent. 
• Operations – Protections ensure a healthy and safe workforce, focus on local workforce development, while technology promotes greater productivity and efficiency and not government suppression. 
• Governance – Environmental and social governance builds resiliency against and minimizes environmental, health, and social disruptions.  

 

Behind Door #3: Choose your own future 

Of course, no single society or economy personifies all the criteria in either of these futures. They are basically a straw man framing of two extreme notions of the future – perhaps most usefully described as Blade Runner versus Star Trek. Which futures comes next depends on the decisions made today by governments and organizations. 

From health data to exploring near-shoring, reshoring and onshoring options to addressing climate change, the choices made now determine which governments, enterprises, and societies progress toward the aspirational techno-utopia, and which may fall down the dystopian path. 

COVID-19 must be viewed as a wake-up call. Pre-pandemic globalization and Chinese-dependent supply chains are coming to an end. Global restructuring was underway prior to the pandemic, but it has significantly accelerated as public and private sector leaders completely reassess their dependencies, vulnerabilities, and visibility across their entire corporate supply chain ecosystem. 

We are entering a re–globalization of the world without any precedence in the modern era. Whatever new normal awaits, a much more holistic framing of risk must account for this emerging new world order, and the disparate futures contained within it.  A growing patchwork of futures will coexist, determined by decisions made today. Rethinking agility, transparency, and security will be core to resiliency, building back better, and thriving in a reglobalized world system.  

To learn more about building resiliency in the recovery from COVID-19 read this whitepaper or visit interosai.kinsta.cloud. 

COVID19 has turned “social distancing” and “working from home” into household phrases.

This pandemic has changed millions of lives, relationships, and individual engagements. It has also significantly changed workplace interactions. In 2018, only 3% of the workforce worked remotely over half the time. Compare that to today, where three quarters of organizations have 75% of their workforce working remotely the majority of their time, and that number is expected to rise.

As economies reopen, it is increasingly clear that a distributed workforce is here to stay for the foreseeable future. Companies are staggering days in the office and ensuring there are fewer people in the same area to help safeguard the safety of their employees. This raises several core challenges: how can companies retain engagement during times of social isolation and increasing unrest? How does one build rapport with other colleagues? Develop trust? Establish a common culture?

Resilient companies emerge during crises. Leaders that foster a distinct culture of caring and support for their team members create a sense of community that is especially important during challenging times.  At Interos, our culture and community building remain an imperative component of our pandemic planning and our response to growing unease. Although community engagement is now more difficult, it is still not only possible but is imperative to overcome the inevitable feelings of isolation during the pandemic.

The Importance of Workplace Community

As companies transformed into distributed workplaces, individuals simultaneously lost both workplace and personal interactions. The Great Lockdown has disrupted communities, both within the workplace, as well as professional and personal communities.  Many of us are part of professional societies, presented on in-person panels and attended conferences, and cultivated a persona in groups with common goals and mission. Now, we are meeting on-line, connecting via WhatsApp, Skype and other technologies that allow for moments of connectivity.

Unfortunately, technology alone can’t solve the problem. From “Zoom fatigue” to longer workdays and more time spent in meetings, the human element is too often missing from pandemic response plans. Daniel Coyle summarizes this best by noting, “One misconception about highly successful cultures is that they are happy, lighthearted places. This is mostly not the case. They are energized and engaged, but at their core their members are oriented less around achieving happiness than around solving hard problems together.”

Resilient communities that solve hard problems together also build collaborative environments and effectively battle isolation. Friendships and social interactions are fundamental to well-being, but it often requires leadership to purposefully build a workplace culture that encourages these interactions and community building. To help foster engagement and human connectivity, some civic-minded cities are having community-engagement events and giving out grants to those entities fostering community during a time of isolation. At Interos, building and maintaining a sense of community have been foundational to our culture. COVID-19 has only further entrenched this commitment, while sparking some creativity as well.

Social Distancing not Social Isolation

As an extremely fast-growing company, our team continues to expand quickly during the pandemic. Many of our newly hired colleagues have never met other team members in person and have never physically attended an all-hands meeting or joined a company lunch. Leaders who were hired to guide their teams to success did not meet their team members in person before they were forced to work remotely.

Community is more important than ever, and there was no choice but to successfully create a collaborative — yet virtual — community for our workforce to counteract the lack of in-person relationship building and growing national stress. We built our internal community slowly and with care knowing that it is a starting point, a work-in-progress that will go through multiple iterations. Just as our business is to analyze and surface business relationships and look for risk across a range of factors, we placed a similar degree of focus on building and protecting the connectivity between employees and their communities, while keeping an eye out to mitigate challenges and risks that inevitably arise.

Culture is not just about having fun and enjoying each other’s company but about working through the challenges together and going through these challenging times while remaining resilient. To combat isolation and try to alleviate the sense of frustration and helplessness many are feeling during these turbulent times, we have virtual happy hours that integrate families and pets, book club discussions and paint nights. These create valuable non-work shared experiences and pave the way for meaningful dialogues amongst our teams on important issues.

We also are sharing and attending together virtual events from our own disciplines – such as data science for supply chains and women in tech conferences.

Importantly, all of this additional screen time is ‘opt in’. But they are also accompanied with semi-weekly leadership updates, technology briefings, and manager check-ins for our well-being. Leadership roundtables share ideas on what to do to take care of each other, our teams, and how to move the company through this “new normal.” We also have allocated resources to ensure our employees have the technology to succeed. Stipends to help with internet connectivity or a second monitor are a few examples of how we can further support our team.

For each of us, our professional communities are also extremely important and we highly recommend connecting with industry groups external to your company. Whether it is happy hours with colleagues that we used to see at conferences, or joining virtual meetups and expert discussions, there are endless opportunities to remain engaged in your industry and continue to develop professionally while building a community.

Of course, we all look forward to in-person, human connections. We might even be a little bit excited to return to the office. But until then, community building and engagement are fundamental to offset the sense of isolation that inevitably emerges during such a challenging time. With some creativity and a human touch, we can get through this time together and stronger than ever.

To learn more about Interos and our commitment to our employees, visit our careers page.