Cognizant Consulting: A Virus in a Viral Age

by Cognizant Consulting

Unless you’ve been totally off the grid, you’ve probably noticed the world is consumed with the topic of coronavirus.

As of this writing, I am well thank [insert name of your personal deity here] and have felt no ill effects (thank you for asking) as I’ve traveled from Boston to Austin to Boston to London to Boston and back to the sanctuary of Cape Cod in the last few weeks.

As I’ve been moving about and watching those straddling the fine line between genius and lunacy, I’ve been musing on what COVID-19 may mean for the future of work.

The Meaning of it All

Here are a few of those (fever-free) thoughts.

  • Will COVID-19 add further impetus to anti-globalization, make the “Chinese century” less likely, increase momentum toward a material reassessment of social media (perhaps the most potent virus in this whole story), and inch us closer to “working at phone” (let alone “working at home”) becoming a norm, not an exception?
  • Working @ home still doesn’t work, apparently. On the other hand, I wrote about this very topic in a recent blog on the 20th anniversary of my moving to the U.S. When I left Tamesis (the name of the Gartner office in southwest London) in late 1999, 90% of analysts worked in the office 90% of the time. A few years later, when I spent an unanticipated summer back there (visa problems, don’t ask), 90% of analysts were working outside the office 90% of the time. The gestalt switch was very noticeable to me, because by that time, I’d been working from home quite routinely in the U.S., where it seemed quite normalized…

Read the full article on the Cognizant Consulting website.