Extra-condensed knowledge
Condensed knowledge
- We currently exist within a world that is unfrozen from the constraints of routine, habits, and norms. By leveraging this moment to explore, experiment, and learn, organizations and their community stakeholders have a unique opportunity to redefine the scope of their priorities and collective actions.
- This unfreezing process has brought with it the possibility for radical change: We are living in a moment rich with opportunities to fundamentally improve how we live, how we relate to society, how we interact with government, and how we do business.
- Four Top Areas Ripe for Change
- Our public health system. Currently, hospitals in the U.S. are revenue-oriented businesses (even when they are tax-exempt nonprofits).
- Our educational system. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed how intertwined economic activity is to educational structures: People cannot go back to work until their kids go back to school.
- Our supply chains. The lack of access to personal protective equipment and pharmaceuticals has made it abundantly clear how globally distributed our supply chains are — and that we lack control in those operational networks.
- Our environmental system. The COVID-19 pandemic has provided a glimpse into a possible future — one that showcases blue skies clear from smog and the reappearance of wildlife in their (restored) natural habitats.
- The Challenge of Paralysis. Each of these areas — often considered intractable barriers to change that are too complex to address — represents one tangible way through which major change might escalate to generate a future that is more equitable and sustainable than our current circumstances.
- However, the challenge of this moment — of existing within an unfrozen world — is decision-making paralysis. It can feel like too many variables are changing too quickly to be grasped and integrated into a coherent plan.
Category 1: A new, better world for everyone
[genioux fact extracted from MIT SMR]
Authors of the genioux fact
References
What New Normal Should We Create? Morela Hernandez, July 22, 2020, MIT Sloan Management Review, Fall 2020, Vol 62, No 1.
Morela Hernandez is the Donald and Lauren Morel Associate Professor in Business Administration at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia (@dardenmba). Links to Hernandez’s work are online at morelahernandez.com.
She is the Academic Director of Behavioral Research at Darden (BRAD Lab) and co-founder of the Convergent Behavioral Science Initiative (CBSI). She has courtesy appointments at both the School of Medicine and School of Engineering and Applied Science at UVA. Prof. Hernandez received her Ph.D. from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. Prior to academia, Professor Hernandez worked in finance at Enron in Houston, Texas - experiencing the roller-coaster ride of this now infamous business case.
Given her professional background, it might come as no surprise that her research interests and expertise focus on the ethics of leadership. She also studies the role of diversity in organizational systems and decision-making practices. She is widely published in a number of top-tier academic journals, including Academy of Management Review, Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, and Psychological Science. Her work has also appeared in media outlets such as Time magazine, the New York Times, MIT Sloan Management Review, and the Washington Post, as well as featured on National Public Radio.