Help! Everyone’s Pivoting on Zoom…

It’s a strange time

Everyone’s role has changed A LOT.

It’s a strange time for all of us, not least as individuals, families, communities but also our working lives. The tradition of heading off to your workplace and then returning home… that’s gone for now. We’re all in the same boat, all stuck at home. For many, this means you physically can’t do your role and for others it means, as long as we have some internet, we can proceed to some degree.

For us, at Bullet, it’s been a reasonably easy ride. A lot of the team already work remotely. Most of our clients have already engaged with us to help them digitise aspects of their organisation and so they can carry on. Many of our clients are in the health/social care sector so for them they are busier than ever and we are doing all we can to help them mobilise new tools to help with volunteering networks, track vulnerable patient needs and turn face to face offerings into virtual services. It’s nice to be busy and nice to feel like we are making a small difference.

It feels like everyone is saying…
“We’ll all come out better for this pandemic…”
“Innovate or be gone…”
“Adapt and become stronger…”

What I do know though is that it is not plain sailing out there for all. Browsing LinkedIn and other Social Media we are faced with the wall of, often, overly-optimistic, positive people out there… “use this time to develop new skills”, “come out of this stronger”, “pivot, innovate”… there is so much out there and while it motivates many, it can have an adverse effect on others as they face a real challenge, a fight to survive. Employers facing the prospect of furloughing valuable staff, business owners facing financial hardship – it’s a tough time. We are 3 weeks in now and the initial shock, excitement, fear, novelty… it’s wearing off. We are in this for the longer haul now and the problems faced are very real. For many it’s a case of coming out of this still trading. That in itself could be the ultimate goal. People do want to join the “optimistic, positive, motivating” party but they feel out of their depth. It’s not their fault and it’s not a time to judge.

What we do know is that some organisations will be forced to look at how they work. Having to have people “in” the office is suddenly something we can’t simply rely on. And why should we, in this very connected world, we can, and should, enable remote working. As a digital team, it’s easy for us to sit here and embrace this time but we know that some organisations are just not ‘tech’ focussed. Systems to hold data, sharing of information, collaboration are all common things that we can do online now… there are many, many tools out there for each. For people who are immensely good at what they do, digital technology is not their bag. And it’s all too easy for us more digitally minded to think people should be doing x,y or z to carry on.