Last month, the NYCH senior leadership team conducted a webinar to reflect on our work during COVID 19 and share our learnings. I shared four lessons learned to think about as we move to the next phases. At the end of each lesson, I have a question about moving forward. Here are the lessons and questions.
Lesson 1: The Need for an Experimentation & Learning Mindset
Even though we are in a pandemic with huge negative impacts, I think it’s important to look for the opportunities that also arise during this time. To do this, I think that we need a learning and experimentation mindset
Everything that we’re doing right now is new and as a result, we can learn so much about what works and what doesn’t. What are the old ways that don’t work and may never work again and what are new ways to work?
There are opportunities to experiment and try new things like new ways of engaging with participants, providing services, or leading. So why not try them out now when everything is new and different? Aren’t we all just experimenting?
This is a good time to push our experimentation even further than in “normal times”. Failure isn’t such a big thing right now. We’re in a pandemic and it really doesn’t matter if our technology messes up or if no one shows up for a program.
I’ve encouraged our managers and staff to try new ways of delivering programs, to experiment and capture our learnings to use as we move forward. Staff are trying out new online platforms, developing new programs, and sharing their experiences with each other.
At the end of May, six NYCH staff organized a webinar and presented their experiences of providing online services to an audience of over 100 settlement workers working throughout the country. It went very well and they’re now excited to take on new challenges.
It’s a time to re-think and reimagine all our work. Even when restrictions are lifted, we can’t just go back to the way we did things in February 2020. This is an opportunity to re-examine our organizations, our services, and how we work.
We need to take a critical look at what will and what should change and how we might work differently. How can we best do this?
Lesson 2: The Importance of Communication
I can’t say enough about the importance of communication by the executive director and the senior leadership team. As the communications people say, we can’t over-communicate. In addition to providing necessary information, I found it useful to identify the critical messages that we wanted to communicate and repeat them often.
It’s also important to be transparent and a little vulnerable.
During the 1st week of working remotely, there was a lot of information to communicate so I sent out daily, or almost daily, updates to staff. One day after a week of daily updates, I had a really tough day. I mentioned to a senior management colleague that I wasn’t doing an update because it was just too difficult. She said, Why don’t you just tell them that you had a bad day and you’re trying to cope?
So I did. I acknowledged that emotionally exhausted and talked about how I was trying to cope. I received so many responses from staff, thanking me for the open and honest message, telling me that sometimes they feel the same way and providing me with support.
For the next eight weeks, at the end of every weekday, I’d send out a message to staff. Sometimes it was filled with information, sometimes it was thanking them for their great work, sometimes it was encouraging them to take time for themselves, and sometimes it was about my own experiences. I know my messages have supported staff and helped them cope. I’ve continued to receive positive responses from staff who say they look forward to my messages at the end of each day. What I’ve also realized is how much staff have supported me and kept me going through these very uncertain times.
So as we move to the next phase I will continue communicating regularly with staff, and try to be as transparent and vulnerable as I can be. How do I ensure that I continue to do this?
Lesson 3: Prioritizing Technology & Having a Technology Plan
I don’t think I’m a typical baby-boomer when it comes to technology. Though I am in no way a techie, for a long time I’ve been interested in how we can use technology more effectively, how social media can engage communities, and how we can provide some programs online.
As a result, I’ve been prioritizing technology, whether it means laptops for all staff, adopting project management software, investing in good HR and financial platforms, and promoting NYCH’s online and social media presence.
This is now paying real dividends. We were able to pivot to working online and remotely quite quickly. We still had a few staff who had difficulty with technology, but we had enough staff that were very comfortable and could support those who weren’t.
Even though we’ve done some great work using technology, we still have work to do. Even when we return to in-person services, many of our participants will want or need to continue to be served online or in some hybrid model. For some services and/or for some people online services may be more effective. As we go forward, how do we take our lessons learned and “up our game” to figure out how we can use technology more creatively and innovatively and build the hybrid programs that we know we’ll need?
Lesson 4: It’s Amazing How Agile We Can Be When There are No Alternatives
We literally went from one day providing almost all our services in person to the next day, providing everything online. We went from me really pushing staff to try some online programs to everyone doing it because we had to. And we did it!
Staff, with their manager’s and the organization’s support, adapted. They tried out different ways of engaging, different platforms and tried to figure out what worked and what didn’t work so well. They realized how adaptable and agile they can be and they’ve taken pride in this. When everything is moving so quickly, we realized how quickly we can adapt.
For me, the key now is how to ensure that this adaptability and agility continues when we move to the “new normal” and start returning to our offices. What do we need to put in place and what do we need to do to ensure it continues?