Shaping a better new normal

First published in the Wakefield Daily Item Forum, March 8, 2021.

Things are looking up.

With vaccine distribution ramping up and a new administration that believes in science-based policy, we can begin to see a return to normalcy. Dr. Anthony Fauci has said we could see a “degree of normality” by the fall if 70-85% of US citizens are vaccinated by the end of summer.

The collective lift in spirits that such an outlook provides is big and we need it badly. But we also need to be cognizant of the potential risks and costs of a headlong return to prepandemic norms.

Take one norm in particular: the daily commute to a physical office. For many years, I have lived and worked outside Boston, and so have made the daily commute by car, wending my way along back roads through several towns. More and more often over the years, as I crossed over Interstate 93 about ten miles north of the city and glanced at the traffic below, the southbound highway into the city resembled a parking lot. The image burned into my brain: thousands of mostly single drivers in separate cars, not where they want to be, not productive, burning fossil fuels into the atmosphere, stopping and starting in a zombie-like state for miles on end, and doing this every day, again and again and again. It was insanity.

The pandemic shocked us out of this insanity, disrupting many of our routines. As unimaginably horrible and costly as COVID-19 has been – over half a million deaths and millions of jobs lost – it has also starkly highlighted how things we had been doing for years had become costly, mindless default settings.

To use a familiar metaphor: if our insane prepandemic habits were represented by a frog gradually boiling in a pot on the stove, then the pandemic plucked us from the pot, giving us perspective on our predicament. Will we turn down the heat, or jump back in?

Sadly, the likelihood that we will jump back in is strong. The economic forces pressing us to return to old habits will be enormous. Psychology is also a factor – our human need for the comfort of the familiar, especially after the trauma of 2020, is palpable.

So, how can we ensure that in shaping the new normal, we avoid getting pushed back into the bad habits of the old normal?

Basic economic sense will help. During the pandemic, the utter sensibleness of flexible, remote working has been forced on companies large and small, and many have recognized that not only is it possible to accomplish their corporate missions working remotely, but there is opportunity for increased profitability in reduced physical footprints.

Perhaps more significantly, the disruption of the pandemic has provided an opportunity for truly recentering the locus of work – especially knowledge work, which can be done digitally – around the job to be done, without the dominant constant of the physical office. This represents a subtle but important mindset shift – never again will leaders and managers around the world see bringing people together at a physical office as the exclusive, or even primary, driver of getting work done.

Additionally, with the continuing increase in the accessibility of information via the web, the information-gathering rationale for much routine business travel has been on the decline for years. The pandemic has only more sharply highlighted this truth.

For all of us as individuals, the key to avoiding a return to mindless norms is, not surprisingly, more mindfulness. I remember one day last spring, when Massachusetts was largely in lockdown: as I carefully planned a foray into Wakefield town center, consolidating several previously separate errands into one trip, it hit me – this is how we should think and act all the time. Just because we can hop in the car several times a day and go wherever we want as often as we want, doesn’t mean we should do that.

And what about that daily car commute? The decrease in transportation activity during the pandemic caused a substantial decline in carbon emissions globally, with the U.S. having the largest drop. With congestion returning, one has to wonder: can we shape a new normal that eliminates the insanity of daily traffic jams and the waste and brokenness of the system that they represent?

We must. But this will take more than individual mindfulness or government reform. The only way to have a chance at solving a problem this massive is with equally massive collective will. Not merely a plurality of people opining that we can’t go back to the old normal, but a critical mass who refuse to go back. We need a popular movement.

Can we possibly do this? Yes, we can. As the November election, the Georgia runoffs, the BLM movement, and the 2017 Women’s March showed us in the political realm, with motivation, intelligence, and organization, the people have the power. The same is true in the economic realm. If our organizations ask us to go back to commuting five days a week (many won’t), we must ask them why. If the reason they give is anything remotely resembling “because it’s what we did before,” that’s not good enough. Mutual support is crucial. We must all be willing and able to point to each other and say to our employers: “Look, see what they’re doing? Why aren’t we doing it too?” This is the only way such a movement can gain real momentum.

I yearn as much as anyone to get back to seeing my family, friends, and work colleagues in person more often. I also realize there are many people – first responders, front line service workers, medical professionals, and others – for whom there is no option of working remotely. But many of us do have the option, and we know the old normal is history. We have been plucked from the boiling pot and we have seen the folly of our ways.

Now is our chance to create a new, better normal. There is no going back.

© Jeff Kehoe