Change Management

As a student of change I must confess that one of my early thoughts when Covid 19 coronavirus began to spread was 'Well this will be interesting'. Altering long-established behavioural patterns is hard for people. You always go to the pub on a Friday night. You always visit your Mum on Mothering Sunday. You always hug and kiss people when you welcome them. And so on.

My first observation, personally, was how aware I have become at the regularity with which I touch my face. There's an itch; scratch it. There's a moment's awkwardness; wipe your mouth / stroke your chin / a million other tells. It is hard to stop. But I am, at least, more aware of how often I do it.

There is a certain wisdom in crowds. We can organise our progress through a busy concourse in opposite directions without there being many instances of collision. There is a certain stupidity as well. A failure to realise that we are a crowd whether we like it or not. On being given a day off work and an encouragement to be out in the fresh air but socially distanced, thousands of people drove to the seaside yesterday. Snowdon attendance broke records.

The first person to stand up at an all-seater stadium gets a better view. But pretty soon everyone has to stand to get the same view and no-one is enjoying their seat. So public open spaces are now being closed because too many people used them selfishly.

We are a strange species, socially. We have organised a terrifically complex social structure within which people have vast freedoms. It is assumed that most will use their skills for the greater good of the whole, although the use of money makes the relationship one-step removed.

What is changing? We are using technology. There has never been a better time to be connected in a plague. We are ordering food without leaving home. There has never been a better time to be fed in a health scare. We are a society that has become used to things that previous pest-houses would have seen as unimaginable luxury. Who knew that a generation who cannot go out without an iPhone would value the company of real people so much? We don't like not meeting. It is too hard a change. How do you mass-change the psychology of society? Probably only with guns. Watch this space.