NEVER WASTE A GOOD CRISIS!
Gerry Skerritt from Dream Team Catalyst looks at strategies for the current times.
M
any of us read the simple but powerful parable Who Moved My Cheese? when it hit bookshelves more than 20 years ago, and some of us got the T-shirt and tattoo in the ensuing years. In the last three months, every single person on the planet has landed a starring role in the movie. As usual, Hollywood got all dramatic on us and deviated from the original plot to serve up an embellishment of epic proportions that would have been better titled Who Nuked Our Cheese & Imprisoned Us So We Couldn’t Find More? You couldn’t blame anyone for getting stage fright. It’s pretty hard not to have performance anxiety when you don’t have anywhere to perform – nobody would be allowed to come and watch you even if you did. OK please, enough with the metaphors. The fact is that there are few industries worse affected by
28 • LOCKDOWN HEROES | MEETINGS 2020
the scourge of the novel coronavirus than MICE and our close cousins, travel and tourism. Like many great businesses, at Dream Team Catalyst, our order book and pipeline went from crammed, to Old Mother Hubbard – almost overnight. After a respectable period of mourning and self-pity (admittedly, we may have overdone it a bit on the self-pity), we remembered the wise words of the great Colombian philosopher Shakira: “You’re a good soldier, choosing your battles. Pick yourself up and dust yourself off, get back in the saddle. You’re on the frontline, everyone’s watching. You know it’s serious, we’re getting closer – this isn't over. The pressure is on. You feel it. But you’ve got it all, believe it.” That’s definitely the last metaphor, but certainly one to keep spirits up, which is so crucial at this time.
FIVE FABULOUS FACTS The genie is out of the bottle and extensive remotely based work is here to stay. There will be big live conferences, exhibitions and events in the future but digital, remote and online will remain an important part of the mix. Embrace it! Over the past three months, we have had a lot of conversations with our clients and immersed ourselves in R&D. We are delighted to share with our industry partners the Five Fabulous Facts that we have learned: Great work can be done remotely, and we have proven it (said with heaps of modesty).
1 2
Collaboration does not have to be done committee-style, around a boardroom table. Most of us had already heard of this but only believe it now because we have actually seen it.
www.theplanner.guru
