07/21/2020

Making Strategic Decisions in the Context of COVID-19

The long-term impact the pandemic will have on society is still uncertain

Organizations trying to navigate through the COVID-19 (coronavirus) crisis often find themselves alternately paralyzed by the hyper-uncertainty of the moment or swamped by a crushing number of choices. So over the course of April and May 2020, our team at the Monitor Institute by Deloitte talked with more than 75 social sector leaders about how they were managing in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, to see how we could help. We found that different organizations are preparing for wildly different futures.

Some leaders drew parallels to the 1918 Spanish Flu, which killed more than 675,000 Americans and caused unspeakable suffering for about two years. Yet after that crisis, many in the country just moved on. One historian called the 1918 flu “America’s forgotten pandemic,” writing that, “Americans took little notice of the pandemic and then quickly forgot whatever they did notice.” Even today, there are few memorials or remembrances for a virus that killed more Americans than all the wars of the 20th century combined.

Some people we spoke with see the COVID-19 crisis in much the same way: wrenching and painful, but ultimately an event that our communities will move past.

Please select this link to read the complete blog post from Stanford Social Innovation Review.