2021 - The Year of Convincing Others
The vaccine will be available. But not everyone will voluntarily get vaccinated.
As part of my effort to make my ideas accessible to people with visual impairments, I have sought volunteers who read out an article of their choice and email the MP3 recording to abhijitbhaduri@live.com. This article was narrated by Devina Sengupta.
How will you remember 2020? It was the year when we learned words like 'mRNA' or 'Superspreader' and 'doomscrolling'. And 'social distancing' or even the word 'pandemic'. These were not words I had ever used before 2020.
People added sanitizers to their list of essentials. Sanitizers taught us to be generous. We hand over sanitizers to strangers. There is nothing more powerful than self-interest to make us generous.
“There is nothing more powerful than self-interest to make us generous.”
It was year when all what we had wished for, came true. We needed a vaccine and we got a vaccine. We got several vaccines. It is a problem of plenty we will have to solve for - which one of them is safe and affordable and accessible ...
Be careful what you wish for
Those who complained of long commutes and wanting to work from home, got to work from their bed. Even on a video call with the boss, those who were too lazy to put on their work clothes had an excuse. "There is poor connectivity, boss. I am not switching on the camera. OK?" It works every time.
'I want to spend more time with the family', some working parents used to say. Their prayers have been answered and how! Managing child care, elder care, meetings, poor connectivity and embarrassing zoom calls all rolled into one. Be careful before you pray for something to happen.
This was the year when you got to know the true colors of your employer or partner. Some employers installed keystroke tracking software to measure productivity of employees. Some crammed the day with webinars to ensure employees were not wasting time. Most webinars are a waste of time, the employees said.
It was not teaching online that teachers grappled with. It was testing the students through examinations that remained the unsolved mystery.
It will replace, “Can you hear me?”. That is so 2021
The year of shifting boundaries
When the lockdown was announced, a lot of the webinars were about leaders telling their employees, "It is business as usual. When we are back in office in three weeks, you have to make up for lost time." Others pretended to be generous, while they shifted the desktops to employees' homes. The memo said, "Use the weeks of lockdown to be with the family and unwind." The timelines were shifting.
WFH stood for Work From Home until some discovered that team members had interpreted it to mean Work From Hometown. Then it morphed into Work From Anywhere (WFA). The boundaries shifted constantly. In March, people believed that by June, the heat would kill the virus and life would be back to "normal". The employees are still laughing about it. The timelines are shifting.
Now the optimists say that by April 2020, life will be back to 'normal'. The pessimists swear that 2021 will see more of the same. What is your prediction? The timelines are shifting still.
Science has done its job
The vaccine has been discovered. Science has done its job. Time for humanities to do the rest. The question of trust and influence is going to shape the conversation for 2021. Vaccine record is the new visa and the new status symbol. Then there is machismo about not getting vaccinated. A kind of superman syndrome.
“Vaccine record is the new visa and the new status symbol. Then there is machismo about not getting vaccinated. A kind of superman syndrome.”
There is the politics of vaccine distribution funnel that will dominate the discourse. Which countries will get it first? Will the states that align with the center, get preferential treatment? Would the politicians be the first ones to get vaccinated or the last?
Pew, said 39% of people polled (in US) said they definitely or probably won’t take the vaccine. Half that group said they might change their minds if more information becomes available. 21% of people polled said will not take the vaccine and won’t change their minds either.
2021 will be the year of convincing others.
Here are some tips to try out
The employers will have to build trust in safety and hygiene of the workspace. The employees will have to trust that it is safe to sit in one conference room. We tend to assume that the people from our social class are safer than the rest. We stay away from strangers, but the virus spreads from people we trust enough to get close to.
Vaccination records will go digital. Every employer and every country will have to find ways of signalling to others that they are safe to socialize with. Being able to convince others is the new business opportunity and the new leadership skill.
2021 will be the year of convincing others. Until then, best wishes for a healthy and thriving ‘new normal’.
What is your biggest wish for 2021?
A version of this was published on my blog for The Economic Times and Times of India