The current crisis is not only a test of our resolve and our health infrastructure; it is a test of leadership as well. With many employees working from home, companies are discovering that the challenges of remote work go far beyond just having the right technology and connectivity. How do you reset an entire organizational culture based on the politics and rituals of a corporate head office? This is particularly acute for leaders: what does it take to be an effective leader when there is no one around to lead?

COVID-19 transformed retail overnight. As the vast majority of stores closed around the world, the only way to buy or sell anything was online. The results? Mixed, at best. Supply chains struggled, sites went down, and getting a grocery delivery window was like winning the lottery. It took a crisis to reveal the gaps in digital investment and infrastructure needed for business continuity. Much more will be required if retailers are to reinvent themselves for what comes next.

Robots have long been a source of anxiety for humans. When not terrorizing us as theme park hosts or returning from the future to alter our timelines, they have embodied all our worst fears of work automation and job displacement. The COVID-19 crisis has seen the rapid adoption of robotics in a wide array of industries, from healthcare to logistics, and in doing so, given us a preview of what a mechanized world of a trillion, interconnected bots might be like. It is easy to assume this will be a zero-sum game: robots will replace humans like for like. The reality is more complex and potentially more challenging if we don’t act now to transform the way we think about work.

The 2020 pandemic thrust upon us the new reality of working from home. While for more traditional corporations, remote work came as a shock, for other startups and software companies, it was nothing new. They were designed from the outset to be location independent, to access a global pool of talent, and avoid the overhead of a corporate headquarters. So, when normalcy returns, will we see the resurgence of the office or something entirely different: the distributed organization?

What happens when your five-year plan for digital transformation becomes just an emergency strategy for immediate survival? True, the current COVID-19 crisis is accelerating the shift to a digital, automated, contactless future. But that raises a more complex question: what does disruption now mean in a world in which all the surviving companies are already digital?