We thought World War III would come in the form of nuclear weapons. Now, the whole world is fighting together against a virus. We’re even reaching out to adversaries such as North Korea and Iran to offer them help as we battle a common enemy.
In just a matter of days, that enemy brought the world economy to its knees. It’s going to take a unified effort to defeat it. It’s also going to realign how we do business, especially here in the United States.
I’ve always been a glass-half-full kind of guy. Despite runs on toilet paper and paper towels and some price-gouging here and there, our country will come through this stronger than ever. We’re going to discover through all of this that we have been working much too inefficiently. I spend an hour each day just commuting to and from work. I have friends who spend as much as two hours each way. Although they use public transit and can get some work done on the train, there’s no substitute for quiet, uninterrupted work time.
Why I never did my radio show from my home studio before is a mystery to me. My studio is now my workplace. I have large stretches of undistracted time to gather material and think through what I want to deliver as the end product on the air. I suspect my show will be the better for it.
We’re seeing a realignment all throughout our economy. Amazon is hiring 100,000 additional workers. Walmart is adding 150,000. These are good-paying jobs with solid companies. Home delivery is booming — whether it be office supplies, groceries, meals. This may be temporary, but I suspect a lot of this will stick. Once people discover the freedom of working from home, it’s going to be hard to convince them the old commute grind makes sense.
Think about what getting all those cars off the road is doing for air quality, not to mention gas prices. Even those who fret over global warming should see the upside of the new economy.
Imagine the money saved when companies downsize their business space. The electricity costs, the maintenance costs, the cleaning costs. Many companies will discover they can make it with a lot less square footage. Much of that commercial real estate space will be transformed in the new economy to packaging and distribution centers.
According to New York University, there are about 4 million people just in Manhattan on any given weekday. Over 1.5 million of them are commuters. Imagine how much more manageable Manhattan would be with 1.5 million fewer people.
No, it’s not realistic to think that all of the people working from home during the coronavirus will do so after the virus is defeated. However, many businesses will discover that they’re much more productive without all the office gossip, gabfests, and infighting. I once had a general manager who would drive through one of our city’s major parks during the day to see if she could catch salespeople napping. If you have to do that, you’ve hired the wrong people.
Most work is easily quantifiable. Salespeople can be judged on whether or not they’ve met sales goals. Projects can be judged on whether or not you deliver them on time. You don’t have to ride herd over them to do it. They either perform or they don’t. If they don’t, you find someone who will make sure they do.
Yes, it’s tough out there these days. It’s frightening. We don’t know what the future holds. What we do know is that we will get through it, and we may be a different society because of it. The folks who came out of the Great Depression and World War II were fundamentally changed. Hard times do that. If we’re smart, we’ll make those changes for the better.
Phil Valentine (@ValentineShow) is an award-winning radio talk show host (and now podcaster). He’s the author of three novels and the nonfiction book The Conservative’s Handbook. He broadcasts each weekday afternoon from SuperTalk 99.7FM in Nashville.
