Bruce Cotterill

Here’s to the heroes of 2020 – and a better 2021

Most people I speak to can’t wait for 2020 to end. Businesspeople in particular seem keen to move on in the hope that 2021 might be a better year.

Of course, there is still plenty of uncertainty about what the next couple of years may bring. But for now, it seems right to take stock of the lessons learned from this most unpredictable and disruptive year.

Of course, the Covid-19 pandemic will provide most of the headlines when the history books record the year 2020. While the pandemic itself created plenty of alarm and even distress, some of the flow-on effects produced heroes, disasters and plenty of additional surprises that none of us would have predicted.

I vividly remember the dark days of March, April and May. As a company director I was buried in crisis meetings. Not normal meetings of course. A new-ish approach called Zoom. From 7am until 9pm most days, we were in uncharted territory. That happens when revenue collapses. So there were decisions to be made. Lots of them. And short timeframes.

Do we take the wage subsidy? Can our people work from home? How can we retain our people? If we aren’t allowed in the office, can we renegotiate our leases? How do we make sure that our essential workers are safe? How can we supply our mission-critical customers? Are there opportunities in here somewhere? What will the new normal look like?

Like many others, we learned how to respond to these and many more challenges and we were back to close to normal sooner than many of us dared to dream.

But the questions remained. What would it take, and how long would it take for our economy to bounce back?