Over the last ten years, big cities like Milan have grown exponentially.
The skyline has begun to take a different shape, like that famous episode of Fantasia 2000 where, on the notes of George Gershwin, the contours of the skyscrapers of New York are outlined.
We started building higher and higher, hoping to build bridges between the earth and the heights of the business. Once we reached heaven, we realized that our development ideas lacked the foundation. On the basis of our dreams for a better economy, there were no foundations to start from.
A pandemic was enough to make us realize that it was time to get off our glass pedestals to start building all over again.
We are facing a turning point in history, where nothing will be the same as before. It’s a new September 11th that will change our face forever. It is no longer a mystery, in fact, that this period of forced quarantine has changed our perception of reality for a very long time. We are facing an era that will be slow to disappear.
We try to bring order to understand what has changed and what needs to change, before declaring our ivory towers an existential failure.
First of all, we must remember that human beings have reached the greatest technical and cultural goals thanks to an innate survival instinct. Our ancestors have already acquired the basic instinct to adapt to changes when they abandoned their sites of origin and moved to new territories in search of new lands to cultivate. All this led them to explore new ways of survival due to the climate that changed from territory to territory and with it, the flora and fauna. A new diet, new habits, and new challenges to face. All this spirit of adaptation has been passed on to us over the centuries and, in theory, it should still work today.
In the last fifty years, society has evolved at an unimaginable speed thanks to new scientific discoveries, the flourishing of democratic values and justice and, it seems strange to say, thanks above all to the arrival of social networks. All this eagerness to chase the future has helped us to progress and at the same time has accustomed us to the frenetic pace that now makes up most of our days. Even the perception of time has changed.
It all starts with marketing. In recent years, each brand has focused its marketing strategy on two elements: the low price and the “time factor”. This reflection intervenes precisely on the second. We are used to getting everything immediately in record time. Faster shipping, fast food, and information obtained with a simple click. Everything must be available immediately. This speed, so unnatural for human beings, risks jamming and imploding on itself.
Now a new challenge is opening up for humanity that has to do with the “time” factor. A virus has arrived, which does not think, does not reason, and does not communicate with us. It follows different rhythms from ours that are not dominated by the billing period or tax deadlines. This virus takes its time, what nature has decreed to be the life cycle and the right rhythm for it to rise, grow, and then disappear or transform.
If on social media we are used to following a new influencer once a week or following a case of crime on TV for just a couple of months, this virus tells us a different story. He tells us he will be with us for a long time, maybe years.
It will therefore be necessary to change our scale of values starting from the quality of the time we live. To do business, you will need to change your strategy not from the timing of production and delivery, but from the quality of life I provide to employees and customers.
Will we be able to change our rhythms and adapt to all this? Will we have the strength not to “forget” so quickly, as we do with gossip and the scandals of politicians?
The time has come to take your time.
We all need to slow down for a moment to give in to nature. Otherwise, the risk will be to go back to building an ineffective system, like the one that was hit by surprise by the lockdown in March.
Smart-working is an ancient invention. The term economy derives from the Greek oikia which means “home”.
Over the centuries the economic interests of human beings have revolved around their homes. For example the great Roman villas from where the nobles managed their agricultural and trading activities. Or the famous workshop-houses of medieval cities where between the bed and the hearth there were the press and the workbench.
The way of doing economics as we know it today was born only recently, just over a century ago. When, following the two industrial revolutions, large factories began to rise and displaced the working class from the fields and shops to shared workplaces. It is no coincidence that co-working as a concept was born in factories.
Today the dimension of work has shifted further. From the offices, we have returned to life at home.
We have returned to perceive the home as an essential element of our life. Everything that we used to leave behind in the morning as soon as we got on the metro platform has now bounced off us. Let’s talk about things like cooking hot dishes, watching TV with your family, making love with your partner; but also negative things such as old grudges, broken relationships, and domestic violence.
Even religions, which have always been one of the greatest social element, have changed their face. There is no longer any need to go to church or mosque but just turn on a computer and pray in the privacy of home.
Even now, when the quarantine has been over for several months, all these habits have not changed. Liturgies are often online, conferences are held on Zoom, and university lectures in many cases will be telematic throughout the next semester.
Again, there are many things to change. Let’s talk about new formal needs for man:
• labor laws that protect the right of a company’s employees to clearly delineate the difference between workspace and home space;
• laws that better protect the defenseless who suffer harassment and abuse by their relatives in the intimacy of their homes;
• an economy capable of reformulating the market based on the new life prospects of employees and consumers;
• marketing strategies that know how to communicate with a society that has just changed completely.
How to say … a door closes and a bigger opens. Every historical event changes society but not for this reason it decrees its end. We have seen that if on the one hand, the offices begin to empty in the name of smart-working, on the other hand, the courtyards of the houses begin to repopulate. This means that nothing ends a life but that everything evolves into something new.
It is precisely from the innovations that arise that it is necessary to start to reformulate our future.
The biggest challenge that the business is facing in this period passes precisely for communication.
In recent months, the way people communicate has changed.
Colleagues communicate by message, abandoning the ancient ritual of coffee at the machine. Customers prefer to video call rather than come to the meeting venue. Half of the employees work several hundred kilometers from the parent company and the backgrounds of the chats in meetings range from the coasts of the Salento sea to the peaks of the Trentino Dolomites. We are talking about a world where distancing is the only form of approach allowed.
We have created a paradox never seen in history.
A paradox with a rather boring tone if we think about the fact that communication, in addition to changing, has become homologated. In recent months we have seen a series of advertisements with a flat tone of voice that is always the same. The whole narrative was about the usual phrases “everything will be fine” and “stay at home”. The same phrases are repeated by brands several times a day and always in the same way. No large company has had the courage, taking advantage of forced changes, to say something different and out of the ordinary. Those who did it, those who tried to change things remained hidden or unheard.
While we are still in a panic about the future and the anxiety of the pursuit of normality does not give us rest, everything around us is changing definitively. In fact, we don’t know what to do.
This is the reason that should push our company to invest in the search for new scenarios. It is not enough to simply adapt to change. It is necessary to evolve to make this change something positive and productive for the future. In short, in a nutshell: NEEDS TO EVOLVE TO PROGRESS.
Business is a delicate ecosystem, the result of natural selection. We can say that COVID has influenced him more than humans themselves.
For a company to survive it must change its gaze, its values , and its point of view.
We must adapt to new forms of communication between human beings to position ourselves intelligently on the market.
Only those who can understand first where and how people live in this period will be able to bring positive results soon.
All those who remain behind, trapped in old and utilitarian productive visions, will see their projects collapse definitively.
On the other hand, anyone who will have the humility to come down from the dome to examine its foundations will have the incentive to win.
We at Hydrogen have been looking for this stimulus for more than ten years, that desire to return to the “zero points” of our customers to adapt the genetic code of their activities so that they speak to a constantly evolving society.
Continuous listening, sociological and anthropological research, empathy.
These are the foundations on which we want to raise our tower to the sky.
