Over the last few months, leaders have had a chance to respond to the impact of COVID-19. Plans for contactless service, process automation, remote work, Cloud infrastructure, and virtualization have been accelerated and implemented. While many businesses have closed and millions lost their jobs - many more have transformed and survived. That's all good news. But now we find ourselves at a precarious point. To call this brief respite from chaos - a 'new normal' - is to invite inevitable defeat. The only question that matters now is: where do we go from here? Without a new plan for the future, we may discover that the real crisis is yet to come.

If automation seemed like a threat to jobs before, in the post-pandemic world, the pace of change will only accelerate. With the rise of remote work, our decision-making, processes and workflows are becoming more digital. That could be a double-edged sword for many employees. True, working from home saves you the time and hassle of a commute into the office. But it is arguably also much easier to replace a human making a decision or completing a task with clever software, when most of the organization’s interactions are now via messaging, video calls and emails. But don’t panic, just yet. What if there was a new job inside your old one?

The most dangerous phrase in the world right now is 'the new normal.' It is a seductive idea - that out of all the chaos and upheaval unleashed by the pandemic, a new stability might emerge. But what if the new normal isn't normal at all? It is a divisive question. For some, the current crisis is but a brief time out on 'business as usual.' But for others - the rapid adoption and spread of automation, robotics, data surveillance, virtualization, and machine intelligence - is neither temporary nor reversible. It is a one-way trip to an entirely new, Cyberpunk-themed reality. What will it take to survive and thrive in such a world?

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?

We live in a time of exponentially improving machines. First chess, then Space Invaders, go and most recently poker - our games now seem mere taunts in a struggle for supremacy between humanity and AI. Even in losing, however, we may learn something about what makes us special.