Hindsight on 2020 will not be 2020!

What can you learn from this year? Certainly a question most of us ask ourselves every year. But 2020 is different and as a result it may seem too soon to ask that question because the year feels like it is continuing and refusing to go away (a little like the President at this point) and even if it does not feel too soon, then you are probably overwhelmed by the sheer scope of any answer. It has without a doubt been a year best described by complex adjectives, conflicted emotions and ever changing strategies.

Even as you read this post there are still questions about the effectiveness and speed of the new vaccines. There are concerns about the new strains of virus that have appeared. Financial uncertainty has tarnished the outlook around a speedy recovery and lets just say that political unrest and outright conflict have shaken peoples hopes regarding where we should look for guidance and leadership.

All in all, 2020 was a year that will be remembered and defined by COVID 19, however it was also a year in which our responses globally to the pandemic helped create the perfect storm. Although we may want to forever look back and blame COVID for our horrible year, surely there are some other culprits we should include in the assessment.

Total lack of true leadership. Let's be honest and admit that so many of the skills around leadership, that we as business people aspire to, were sorely lacking from leaders globally. Had the Presidents, Prime Ministers and Premiers of the world demonstrated the right approach to the crisis, perhaps things would have been different. Business leaders actually stepped up and tried to provide effective leadership (people like Bill Gates, Tom Peters, Simon Sinek) but they were not recognized by the masses.

Intentional failure to trust the experts. I was personally shocked to witness the total resistance to everything that we were being instructed and asked to do by the lead doctors and agencies like the WHO and the CDC. All of a sudden we had alternate ideas that challenged the virus as either a hoax or not deadly and this resulted in a cacophony of responses rather than a unified and standardized one.

Unwillingness to compromise our selfish wants. I cannot help thinking that one day future generations will look back with disbelief and surmise that "all they had to do was stay home for two weeks, wear a mask, practice social distancing, self quarantine when you feel you were exposed and practice lots of handwashing and the virus would have went away?" But instead we couldn't give up our bars, our pubs, our gyms and all of our other necessary activities.

The end result is that as we try to recover collectively as an industry and overall as a people, are that any learnings from 2020 will be tarnished by the catalysts above. We cannot blame declines in travel on just one thing and neither will the recovery for our business hinge on just one thing. We will need to dissect the data and address lingering concerns around air travel, cruise, hotel sanitation, theme park cleanliness and many others in their respective boxes and dependent on the individual making the choice. Our market was already fragmented more than many others but in the post COVID world we have new metrics and criteria to consider that simply didn't exist before. What are you measuring and addressing in 2021 that you never had to deal with in the past? (please share your comments)