Business leaders are used to dealing with some sort of crisis within their companies pretty much every day and their ability to keep those small brush fires from wiping out large swaths of their operations is the factor that determines their level of success.
The problem company officials are facing in combating the effects of the coronavirus pandemic is it’s a foe they simply can’t see or contain.
That adds a level of mystery to the timeline for economic recovery—and that’s the last thing any business owner wants, says economist Chris Kuehl.
“The thing businesses need more than anything is certainty,” he said during today’s NSCA webinar, “5 Patterns That Will Change and 5 That Might.”
“Businesses leaders are used to dealing with crises of all kinds and moving on. When you’re dealing with something you can’t see, it’s a huge challenge.
“Right now, everything we’re doing is kind of on the fly. New information we get changes old information and that happens just about every day, if not more often. Businesspeople have to anticipate what’s going to happen,” says Kuehl, who dismisses the idea of a “new normal.”
“The old normal was just as volatile as the new normal,” he says. “We’re just facing new challenges and crises. We have to keep that in mind.”
The current recession still hasn’t reached the depths of its 2008-2009 predecessor, says Kuehl, and all signs now point to a swoosh-shaped economic recovery in either the third or fourth quarter of this year, but that might change depending on how long people are told they should stay in quarantine.
What Patterns Could Be Affected
Because nothing with the COVID-19 pandemic is simple, there are several things about life in the business world that it will change forever, says Kuehl. They include the global supply chain, employment patterns, technology and work, the role and reach of government and globalization.
More companies are storing materials they might need in their warehouses as they’re faced with about 40 percent of global cargo being stuck on ships during the pandemic, says Kuehl.
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Robotics and artificial intelligence are playing more prominent roles in today’s economy, he says.
Consumer behavior, capital and lending markets, education and training, political situations and the medical community are other economic areas that could transform as a result of the ongoing virus outbreak around the world, says Kuehl.
Lenders are concerned about the ongoing depressed market and borrowers’ ability to repay their debts, he says, and online learning is being embraced as a permanent fixture when Kuehl says it needs to be viewed only as a temporary solution to a problem that will eventually go away.
The material students learn is less important than the environment in which they do it and the people with whom they do it. That’s where the real value of an in-person education comes for most people, says Kuehl, who was a college economics professor for about 15 years.
“We honestly don’t know how long all of this is going to last,” he says. “This is a recession that’s dictated by edict. Once the pressure is off, there will be an economic recovery. The question is when that will happen.”
