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News and Views

COVID-19 Covered: How to Ramp Up your Brand Positioning in a Pandemic

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There is no better time than now to build and strengthen your brand positioning and messaging through digital platforms

The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed the world into a new normal: a life conducted online. How can companies leverage on this to build and strengthen their brand position and messaging during this extraordinary time? Experts from The Great Room community weigh in.

Now. Now. Now.

Kevin Wang, Principal Consultant of digital growth consultancy Webprofits, which operate out of our coworking space in Singapore, points out why digital marketing is ever more important in this current climate: people are more active online now than ever, with Facebook/WhatsApp reporting 40% increase in usage due to the pandemic.

And with companies tightening budgets, resources should be strategically deployed to deliver the greatest impact. “CPMs (cost per thousand impressions) are cheaper on digital platforms. We are seeing CPMs dropping across industries, and within our network of digital partners we have seen between 15% – 70% decreases in CPMs,” shares Kevin.

And while it might seem counter-intuitive to be spending on marketing during an economic downturn, Kevin also highlights that brands that maintained ad spend during a time of crisis have, historically, came out much stronger than those who reduced their ad spend. It is just as the old marketing dictum goes: “When times are good you should advertise, when times are bad you must advertise”.

“The spread of COVID-19 and its resulting isolation measures have been an accelerator for digital-first marketing and advertising,” opines and Angie Akaraskul, the Client Services Director at social video company Brave Bison. According to App Annie, social media use has increased by 20% with consumers now spending more time online than ever before due to ‘stay at home’ and ‘work from home’.

Business as Unusual

Unusual times call for unusual strategies, for the same messaging that could be well received normally could now come across as offensive and tone-deaf. Kevin and Angie both stress that the key to getting your message heard the right way, you have to first listen: not just to anything, but your customer’s pain points.

“The best and the most long standing brands are the ones that place their consumers at the heart of everything they do, from product development to purchase,” says Angie. And consumers are now likely be feeling:

  1. Worried and fearful. Consumers are likely to feel shaken and worried about the financial security of their future, so they’re more likely to think twice before making a purchase – especially on higher-value goods.
  2. Bored and anxious. Consumers are more likely to buy into escapism and are looking to recreate their normal routine from the comfort and safety of their homes.
  3. Missing family and friends. Consumers want to feel connected more than ever before and are eager to learn more about new ways to connect with loved ones.

Angie highlights that while some Fortune 500 brands have taken high-level CSR initiatives and reacted well to the current consumer climate and sentiment, it is also possible to successfully pivot in a simpler and equally innovative way: “A number of fitness brands are now hosting virtual workouts (F45, Nike, Yoga Movement), bespoke travel experiences have transformed into bespoke stay at home services (Random Dots) and Shanghai Fashion Week has partnered with Alibaba for a see now and buy online shopping experience. The point is to create meaning to your brand by fulfilling your consumer’s needs; show them you care!”

Build your platform(s)

For brands with a different positioning, Angie identifies three emerging platforms to leverage on: video-sharing social networking service TikTok; social networking service Houseparty, which has surpassed 9m downloads in March alone; and Yubo, the leading social discovery platform for Gen Z, which has seen an increase of three million users, to 28 million users, since the lockdown. Citing the example of TikTok, she says to brands who want to reach out to Gen Z and Millenials, but are cautious about using a less established platform: “As a disrupter platform, there’s less competition for share of voice on TikTok which means there’s more opportunity for brands to reach their audience.”

And though extremely established, YouTube continues to be an important platform. “A recent study found that during the Coronavirus crisis, 64% of consumers expected their YouTube consumption to go up. This shows the massive global relevance the platform still holds in the industry and should still be considered as a pillar in any strong marketing plan,” says Angie. “Brave Bison has used YouTube to great success in the past, from telling brand stories to reach a wealth of new audiences, to gaining brands global recognition catapulting them into the next stages of growth.

The platform offers great versatility and its huge audience can be tapped with the right content.” Similarly, while new platforms present exciting opportunities and new ways of interaction, Kevin feels that Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn remain key platforms in these times. “If you are not mastering your messaging on these three platforms, there is no point expanding your presence on other platforms,” says Kevin, who feels that the biggest opportunities for the majority of brands still lies in optimising engagement on these ‘traditional platforms’. 

Moving pictures

Brave Bison – which produces, distributes and monetises videos for digital platforms – also prescribes video as the content format of the times. The World Economic Forum reports that over 50% of Gen-Z’s report an increased consumption of online videos more than any other mediums since the lockdown, presenting a huge opportunity for brands to acquire a new fan base and deepen their relationship with existing ones.

“Brave Bison can confirm these findings as we have started to see its effect on our O&O channels. As of March 22, there has been a 13.2% increase in minutes viewed on Facebook compared to the previous two weeks and our influencer partners have also seen a 30% uptake on content,” reveals Angie.

Yet this doesn’t mean pushing out any moving picture – you need to push pictures that move, says Angie: “The rapid rise of successful YouTubers and TikTokers is proof that all that’s needed to create an effective piece of content is an authentic story, a credible voice and a smartphone.”

Goals versus Storytelling | The Power of Storytelling

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Workplace goals are useful, but they’re just part of the process. Here’s why storytelling matters.

Who doesn’t love a great story? Whether you’re reading it, watching it, or listening to it, a compelling story will have you captivated; for minutes if not hours. Stories are something we hear and tell every day; to ourselves, to our friends, to our colleagues. Here’s how to wield the skill of storytelling for your own success, and for the success of your team and your organisation.

Telling your own story

Goals are a useful tool, but they’re not the end game.

“A goal has a timeline, there is a strategy put in place with an end date and a determined outcome, either yes, it has been achieved, or no. If not, then you adapt the goal yet again for another end date,” says Selin Demir, General Manager of The Great Room in Bangkok, a hospitality-led premium co-working space conveniently located in Gaysorn Tower, at the heart of Central Bangkok, with additional locations in Singapore and Hong Kong.

Bigger than goals are stories. American author, blogger and speaker Jeff Goins has plenty to say on the subject of goals versus storytelling. “All a goal can do is help you achieve something. The real trick is to get clear on the something,” says Goins, who wrote The Art of Work and Real Artists Don’t Starve, among other books, after he left his role as a marketing director to pursue a full-time career as a writer.

What, then, is that something for you? Goins puts forward five questions that may help you determine what that something is – and figure out how to pursue it.

  1. What do you want?
  2. What will stop you from getting what you want?
  3. Who must you become on this journey? (“The game is always about wanting, growing and learning,” says Goins, who points out that you may learn more from not getting what you want than from getting what you want.)
  4. Who will help you on your quest?
  5. What will you learn?

As you can see, these questions are much like the questions you would ask if you had a story you wanted to tell, or an idea you wanted to turn into a story.

To begin with, you, as the writer of your own career/life story, may not know the answer to all five questions, and that’s okay, in fact it’s part of the fun. But it will be extremely helpful if you can figure out the answers to questions 1 and 2 when you’re first kicking things off.

Knowing these two answers will help you set relevant goals that will help you achieve what you want.

Create collaborative stories

Whether or not you realise it, you’re constantly using stories in your interactions with others. In the workplace, you might use them to convince colleagues, clients or potential investors to support whatever you’re working on; you might use them to galvanise teams in challenging situations; and you might use them to help those you manage understand where there’s room for growth.

Stories also come in handy in presentations, or when you’re speaking to a crowd of people. An audience is, after all, more likely to remember you if you’ve told a story – your ideas are more likely to stick. “Stories add a human touch,” says Demir.

“I’m a fan of anything that brings people together and storytelling is one aspect of this,” adds Demir. “It’s unique to everyone, specific to one person yet widens all our perspective. It can help build trust and a long term partnership too. Good storytelling allows you to bond with people beyond working relationship or even friendship. It taps into your emotions, motivations and creativity, even if you don’t think you’re creative (like me)!”

The challenge, of course, lies in communicating these stories, especially when, as Demir says, people’s backgrounds are so diverse that stories can get lost in translation – and then there’s no buy-in.

The key, says journalist Carolyn O’Hara, lies in getting clear on the message you want to convey, and tailoring it to fit your audience. This is the baseline of any story: know your message and your audience from the get-go, and always weave your story/stories around them.

And, says O’Hara, don’t make yourself the hero of your story. Sure, use your own life experience as the starting point, but avoid turning your story into an opportunity to celebrate your own achievements: do that, and you’ll instantly lose your audience’s attention. Instead, focus on a struggle and the lessons learned or experiences had – whether yours or someone else’s.

Back to goals

While Goins is in favour of stories instead of goals, we’d argue that goals can be a valuable part of the storytelling process. With your own stories, goals can help you achieve your answer to question 1 (what you want).

Goals can also be useful milestones when you’re working with others, too. Treat them as the anchor points in the bigger picture, which can sometimes be hard to see.

“Goals clear your mind, helping you and your team focus,” says Eva Zhang, General Manager of The Great Room Hong Kong, a premium co-working space at One Taikoo Place in Quarry Bay.

Zhang’s tips for achieving workplace goals? “It’s all about setting the strategy and action plan to accomplish the goal,” she says. “Setting up SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely) goals is key. We do this quarterly with OKRs/KPI, and adjust when the situation changes. Hong Kong’s current situation is a good example.”

Once the SMART goals are set, Demir says she then asks herself, “Are we all aligned? This part is about making sure each team member’s understanding and contribution to the goal is relevant to them – like making sure the parts are assembled properly.

“Checking in with the team and reviewing the performance is crucial, as it’s like oiling the machine as it operates. It’s done in a timely matter that’s relevant to the goal. This allows us to adjust as we go along. If it doesn’t work out, we realign ourselves accordingly. Of course if it does and is achieved, we celebrate. We never forget to celebrate.”

The Power of Pause

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When life is good we enjoy it fully and when life throws us a curveball, remember that better days are on the way… 

The human race has never before united by a singular enemy, democratic and global. And we are responding, in record time and record numbers.  As scientists race towards new diagnostics, antivirals, vaccines and therapeutics at exponential speeds, we are also figuring out new things for ourselves.  We still need to believe, even when it is difficult to do.  We need to straighten our shoulders and develop a little resolve to ride out the uncertainty. 

As we approach this collective interlude, we won’t be standing still. We will use this time to continue to make room for deep work and play (digitally and within our households, of course), to organise our thoughts and recharge with loved ones, make space for new ideas, and plan our next social—whilst harnessing the power of pause.

In the meantime, the team has been busy at their respective hives putting together a list of Wonderful Things to serve our community’s new online culture. I am using the pause to create new habits and cultivate traditions at home. Dare I imagine looking leaner and more mindful when we return to The Great Room.

Finally, as we adjust to our new normal, use this intermission for an extra hug after composing that important email, and hop on your video call in athleisure wear after an online Ashtanga session. Because “there is virtue in work and there is virtue in rest. Use both and overlook neither”. 

I look forward to welcoming you back with the mother of all Monday Breakfast Clubs and a cheeky night cap (or 3). 

Conversation with My Mentor – Jaelle Ang and Mark Edleson

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Highlights from the inaugural session of this signature series at The Great Room

At The Great Room, we believe in the sharing of wisdom. For in the age of data deluge, wisdom is what will give us the clarity to move forward by leveraging on the massive amount of information – rather than be distracted. Conversation with My Mentor was thus created: to gather deep insights and stories through the intimate interaction shared between mentor and mentee.

In this inaugural session, Jaelle Ang, CEO and Co-Founder of The Great Room chats with Mark Edleson. A legend in the hospitality industry, Mark has been associated with a number of successful brands in his multiple roles: as a founding partner of hotel management company GHM Indonesia and leading global operator of resort spas Mandara Spa Asia, and founder of Alila Hotels & Resorts, which was acquired by the Hyatt group in 2018. Here, we sift out the shining nuggets of wisdom:

Let life bring you to your destiny

I had no intention of being a banker, just as I had no intentions of being hotelier in my next phase of life. I started out in the American Peace Corps when I graduated university at 20 years of age. After the Peace Corps, I backpacked around Southeast Asia for three or four years and decided one day, on a beach in Kota Kinabalu, to get on with my life and do something. So, I went back to graduate school and studied anthropology, Indonesian language, literature and economics—knowing I wanted to eventually come back to Southeast Asia.

After graduating I applied to any company that I remember seeing on a billboard for in the region and eventually joined Citibank. When I quit in 1983, I became the first expat in the company’s history in Asia to resign and continue to stay in Jakarta. People thought I was crazy.

I went into corporate advisory work and did that for about 10 years, where Aman Resorts was my biggest client for the last five years. An Italian friend and Australian architect were doing a little hotel near my house in Bali and I was helping them with corporate structure and bank financing.

One of them knew Adrian Zecha and said: ‘We’re building this little hotel in Ubud and it is sympathetic to Aman Puri in Phuket – the first Aman resort – perhaps you want to come and have a look?’ This eventually became Aman Dari. I was there, got to know Adrian, and he left me on the board after it opened. After that, I would organize the joint ventures, board of investment approvals and bank financing for the next five Aman resorts opening in Indonesia, and became so enamored with the boutique hotel business that I eventually went full time into it in 1993 through a partnership with Adrian. That was the genesis of my winding path to hospitality.

Values build the company

We opened Alila in 2001, influenced by Aman to do something small and culturally, environmentally-oriented. Adrian can do things that are perfect without putting too much consideration to the commercial end game, that’s why nobody will ever be able to do anything as special as him. I don’t quite have that charisma, so I have to be more owner friendly and be dynamic in our pricing, pay attention to seasonality and make sure that there is cashflow for the owners.

Yet even so, I had a strong social, community and environment sustainability focus. Trying to introduce sustainability into the capital development of the hotel is not always easy because it was a cost, and we have to convince bottom-line-oriented developers that the cost was worth it. But even if that is sacrificed in the construction phase, how we operate the hotel can help to save the company money, and also make a difference. They might be small things, like using energy saving devices or saying no to plastic straw. Yet these small steps gave the company a strong core value that attracted strong people to work for us, because they bought into our vision of a boutique hotel that respects the environment and the local culture. Our people enjoyed coming to work each day because they felt that they were working for that cause.

Believe in the intangible

Our first hotels in East Mangis and Ubud were in beautiful locations with small communities, and it became apparent to me that these environments and community cultures were becoming less important to visitors and being trampled on. Back in the 80s my wife and I would spend a lot of time going out to the rice fields to visit an artist – but nowadays, the painters position themselves near hotels and restaurants.

That this physical and cultural environment be maintained and sustained was important to us. Did that benefit our business? Did we increase occupancy because of that position? I would be hard pressed to prove that statistically it benefited us in that perspective, but to the end of building the personality of the hotel that would attract people to come – for we are a bit ahead of the curve –  over time this is becoming more and more important in the hotel business.

Giving up opportunities for sustainable growth

I see a lot of businesses today that would grow at all costs, and balancing (between growing quickly and sustainably) was a constant challenge (even in our time). With my financial background and conservative nature, the focus was always on cashflow, especially since we didn’t have a lot of capital in the original partnership. We could either use cash generated from organic growth or ring in more people and dilute our capital – which I had a few experiences in, and in retrospect might not have benefited the growth of the business in the way we wanted.

Thus, my tendency is to grow organically and slowly with the cash we can generate. We had offers from Brazil and Portugal, and while they sounded fabulous and would have been great for the brand, I also think about my executives who are already travelling so much – they would be down for a week just for one design meeting in Brazil. So, I said: we have half the world’s population in Asia, let’s keep our radius to Tokyo, Dubai and Singapore. We missed some growth opportunities to take the brand globally, but that was our discipline.

Make exit plans

I consider myself an entrepreneur before a hotelier, and for any business I went into, I realise it is good to have the exit in mind before you start, and the exit usually involves a sale. Having that in view give you direction and helps you in structuring the business, and in deciding the kind of people to bring in.  Building a brand in this industry is very tough: one has to face the competition from the big brands, the global disruption and the technology, with people spends tens and hundreds of millions on it.

We got up to 16 properties, and I saw that my partners with 60 or 90 properties are still struggling. So I decided that it was better to get out if we can get a good sale, and find something else fun to grow. My projects have always been a bit short-attention span, but this was 20 years – Alila was a child that we nurtured, so it was bittersweet.

A leadership role in metamorphosis

It is important to bring people along as you grow: to be accessible to your team, and to keep them motivated and together. You have to keep having fun too, so hire people to do the stuff you don’t want to do! You have to decide what you are best at and prioritize your time. My strength was in bringing people together, I gave confidence and supported the team in doing things. But you have to do a bit of everything to see how your own skills will benefit the organization on a bigger scale.

Essential survival skills

I had a very liberal education – my Masters was in international affairs and Asian studies, and I did economics, anthropology and literature. Education can give you a broader outlook on life. One of the things we also talk about is constantly having to adapt: every 10 years in my time, but every six months these days. Keeping your eyes open, keeping an open mind being able to learn is the key. I didn’t know anything about banking when I went into it. Similarly, I had to learn quickly and adapt while doing financial advisory, spa, and all the other industries I entered. A lot of it is intuition and luck, but it is also being willing to adapt and finding the right people to associate with

Go Deep: How Focused Work can Set You up for Success

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Forget multi-tasking. Deep work is the key to boosting productivity and performance. Here’s how to do it.

Last year, a McKinsey Global Institute survey, “The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies”, found that most professionals spent an average of 28% of their work-week reading and answering emails. Your inbox is probably just one of the many distractions you now face throughout the working day, and it’s likely keeping you in a superficial state where you don’t really accomplish anything of significance. The antidote? Deep work.

What is Deep Work?

Deep work – a term coined by author Cal Newport, who wrote Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World – refers to the process of undertaking cognitively demanding professional activities that require you to block out anything that could distract you; whether that’s the tap on the shoulder from a colleague, the overflowing inbox, your admin tasks or your friends’ social media posts. Instead, deep work is about setting aside a decent nugget of time in which to focus on one task, and one task only.

Some of the world’s most successful people make time for deep work, from Carl Jung and Bill Gates to authors J.K. Rowling and Neal Stephenson. At The Great Room, which provides hospitality-led premium co-working spaces in Hong Kong, Singapore and Bangkok, Cofounder and CEO Jaelle Ang carves out space each week for deep work.

“Deep work requires large chunks of time without external conversations or split periods,” she says. “Usually, I’m able to do deep work after the kids go to bed – from 8.30 – 10.30 pm; I call it my second shift, or larger, four-hour chunks on Sunday afternoons when I need to review designs, review feasibilities, write strategy, op-eds… In the typical weekday at work, there aren’t many opportunities for deep work chunks, as my time is filled with meetings, emails and calls.”

Here are some quick tips on how to get into that focused work headspace in order to maximise productivity and performance, so you can block out distractions and finally achieve that big dream.

The Four Rules of Deep Work

Newport breaks it down into four essential rules:

1. Work deeply.

Put “smart routines and rituals” in place that will help minimise procrastination and distraction. While he says there’s no one formula fits all, he suggests ritualising your work location – pick somewhere quiet where you won’t be disturbed; at HK shared office space The Great Room, the dedicated offices and Workhall for its hot desk members were designed with concentrated, serious work sessions in mind.

In addition, ritualise how long you’ll work for and how you’ll work – get structures in place, like cutting email and internet access, predetermining a number of pages read or words written – and what you’ll do to support that work. That could be working with your coffee or tea of choice at hand, playing music designed to get your brain accessing gamma and beta frequencies… etc.


For co-working space provider The Great Room’s CEO, Ang, music works best when she’s doing right-brain work. “Like writing or designing,” she says. “I need stillness when I do left-brain work, like structuring and reviewing spreadsheets.”

2. Embrace boredom.

Deep work is like training for a sporting event: it requires effort and practice to get to peak performance. Part of that effort involves accepting that you’ll naturally get bored while you’re trying to work on your project of choice; instead of giving in to distraction and checking email or hunting down a snack, lean into the boredom. You can get past it (the only way is through!).

3. Quit social media.

It’s the opposite of deep work, offering very little ROI.

4. Drain the shallows.

Minimise the amount of time you spend on low-value tasks like email, phone calls and meetings.

Other Insights

Here are some quick, final tips to get you in the deep work zone:

  • Say yes to a project/subject that evokes a “terrifying longing” in you, rather than saying no to other distractions. You’re more likely to engage with your task if you’re excited or inspired by it. Say yes to it, and watch as it drowns out all the noise.
  • Be prepared for attention residue. If you need to get into deep mode for more than one project, be aware that part of your focus will lag behind as you switch between your tasks. The trick? It goes back to Rule #1 of deep work: work deeply. The longer you spend on each task, the more you optimise your productivity.
  • Consider investing in a website and application blocker like Focus or Freedom to help you combat distractions.
  • Systematise idleness. Make guilt-free downtime a part of every day: this will help your brain recharge and gear up for the next deep work session, and it will also help you unravel problems, too. Newport recommends ritualising shut-down, bringing downtime in at a set time at the end of every workday.

5 Tips for Leading Through Adversity

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It’s during anxious times that strong, unshakeable leadership is ever more necessary to keep both businesses and morale from plummeting, so we’ve roped in a professional for advice. Helping corporate captains steer their ships through troubled waters happens to be what Paul Harvey has built his career on. From The Great Room at Centennial Tower, Harvey applies his extensive experience with executive coaching and leadership development programmes to his role as partner at organisational design consultancy Synthesis. Here are his leadership strategies for guiding a team through crisis.

1. Connect with others

The best thing you can do at this stage is to talk about your experience and your feelings. It isn’t always easy in the Asian context but reaching out to trusted family members, friends or colleagues will help to alleviate those feelings of being lost or alone. Right now the whole world is struggling with the same Covid-19 challenges, so the opportunity to empathise with and comfort one another is available if we take the risk of opening up.

2. Talk about underlying feelings

Discussing the new work-from-home procedures and the logistics of sharing tasks is important but you need to create some time to talk about everyone’s underlying anxiety, about how to support each other, and even of hopes and dreams for the future. This will also reduce the need to rush around trying to complete tasks that aren’t even that useful. Doing things distracts us from these anxieties but the best way to alleviate such feelings is to build a set of support resources to help everyone through the change.

3. Take care of yourself

Leaders don’t just have to manage their own anxieties, they also have to contain the anxieties of their teams. So you have to take time each day to recharge. Whether it’s running, writing in a journal, taking a walk in nature or playing with your kids, find something that will rejuvenate you. Leaders who are drained, overworked and overstressed are less able to think clearly, be empathetic and act as a support to others — all things that they will need to do more of during a crisis.

4. Exercise a more directive style

In times of crisis, followers are seeking clarity and certainty from their leaders. Teams in a heightened state of anxiety are less able to process complex or nuanced information, so keep your communications short, clear and to the point. Leaders would also be well advised to create forums where employees can talk about their experiences and feelings. All you have to do is acknowledge what is shared; you don’t have to fix them. Because if these feelings aren’t acknowledged, they will show up in employees’ actions — teams will be less collaborative, less innovative and more protective. If you’re noticing these signs, it means more communication and dialogue is needed.

5. Let people go at their own pace

Transitions aren’t linear, so it’s possible to feel hopeful one day and confused and lost again the next. Some team members may even transition faster than others, but forcing everyone to transition faster than they are ready to will only lead to resistance. By creating psychological safety for people to share honestly without fear of retribution, the leader is creating a culture that enables people to adapt better to change. For teams that are less comfortable talking about their emotions in a group setting, Synthesis’ organisational psychologists can help leaders create that environment. We use a variety of techniques, including practices like calligraphy and poetry, to create a space where people can open up without feeling like they’re in the spotlight or unduly separated from the crowd.

Fighting an Invisible Enemy: CEOs against the COVID-19 Slump

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Does the viral crisis call for wartime CEO mentality?

Make no mistake, this is war. Yet it is a war like no other, for the opponent is not a competition after market share or trying to outdo you in a tech race. It is an insidious virus that hijacks the lives of the man of the streets, that locks countries down, that disrupts markets to the point of sending the world-wide economy on a slide downwards. Is it time to wake up the wartime CEO in you?

Charging Through Rough Seas With A Unified Mission

The wartime CEO needs everybody to move in step, according to his plan – no room for deviances. A unified mission, clearly communicated by the leadership, is what companies in crisis need right now, according to a report by Deloitte Insights (ref: https://bit.ly/3bjHyLS) which identifies the fundamental qualities CEOs will need to guide their enterprises through the crisis. American management consultancy Bain outlines it even more clearly in wartime settings: (ref: https://bit.ly/2UbmIsh), prescribing the establishment of “a dedicated senior team in a war-room setting”, outlining macro scenarios and translating them to contingency plans.

Move fast, move aggressive

Bain further stresses the importance of swift action, recommending the outline of “no-regret moves” within days of the crisis, rather than weeks. “As CEO, you must be out in front with a planned cascade of possible actions, probably more aggressive than your team can imagine right now,” recommends a report published by the consultancy.

A perfect example: Facebook. After long battles over scandals that have eroded the trust between the company and the public, brand perception is on the uptick, thanks to the company’s swift response to the crisis. As early as February, Facebook was leading other tech industry giants to collaborate with the World Health Organisation (WHO) to discuss solutions to the outbreak. It continues to help WHO and other health organisations disseminate accurate information to its users.

The social media platform has also rapidly rolled out other initiatives, from banning ads for surgical masks, sanitisers, disinfectants and test kits to prevent scams and price gouging, to a $100 million program to help small businesses. “Aim for speed over elegance,” advises Deloitte Global CEO Punit Renjen (ref: https://bit.ly/3bjHyLS). “Resilient leaders take decisive action—with courage—based on imperfect information, knowing that expediency is essential.”

Make the difficult decisions

While Facebook sized up the situation and turned it into opportunity, few companies have the same luxury of vast resources and reserves to dip into in an economic crisis. Most would be first tackling the issue of revenue decline, scaling down operations, stabilising disrupted supply chains, and slashing costs.

In his blog post Peacetime CEO/Wartime CEO (https://bit.ly/2QGguhY), American businessman and New York Times bestselling author of The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz writes: “Peacetime CEO builds scalable, high volume recruiting machines. Wartime CEO does that, but also builds HR organizations that can execute layoffs.”

Indeed, now is the time to carrying out those plans that nobody likes executing with the business’ continuity as the core mission in mind. The silver lining in this is the opportunity for leaders to show solidarity with their community: Trip.com CEO Jane Sun and chairman James Liang has announced that they will both not take any salary starting from March 2020, and members of the senior management will take voluntary pay cuts of up to half of their salary.

Amidst broad cost-cutting measures, the CEO of Singapore Airlines (SIA), Goh Choon Phong, will also be taking a 30% pay cut, while those holding executive vice-president and senior vice-president positions will bear 25% and 20% pay cuts respectively. Yet, tackling a Black Swan event as the COVID-19 pandemic isn’t just being ruthless, aggressive and goal-oriented.

It takes as much of thinking with the head as it takes thinking with the heart. While it is early days to see which companies will emerge victorious, so far, the CEOs who are winning are showing as much empathy and compassion as they are training their focus on financial performance. For ultimately, businesses are built by people, to serve people.

Personal Kanban: How This Organising System can Boost your Productivity

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While many productivity tools focus on achieving more and ticking the boxes, this handy, adaptable system emphasises working and living better. Here’s how it works, and how you can make it work for you.

Events, tasks, deadlines, people to please, kids’ activities to juggle, presentations to prepare for. Like many of us who live multi-hyphenate lives, Jaelle Ang, CEO and co-founder of hospitality-led, premium coworking space operator The Great Room, knows how this goes. “As a multi-hyphenate, entrepreneur and mother, I still have an unreasonable belief having it all. I believe that one can have it all, just not all at the same time,” she says.

“I no longer believe in seeking balance in life, I feel it’s like a trap to do that. It is important to seek the deepest clarity of what are the glass balls and rubber balls in your life now,” she says. “There are five balls in my life: health, spouse and kids, family, career and social. I always remind myself that my health is the glass ball – if I drop it, it could break irreversibly. My career is a rubber ball; it is likely that I will hit the ground (because it doesn’t ever, I am probably not doing enough or doing anything worthwhile) at some point in time, but I can and will bounce back.”

A useful – some might even call it game-changing – tool for managing all those glass and rubber balls is Personal Kanban (PK). It came into being because Jim Benson realised work life, personal life and social life cannot be treated as separate entities. “Work / life balance is not sustainable,” he says in the book he co-authored with Torianne DeMaria, Personal Kanban: Mapping Work | Navigating Life. “When we compartmentalize our lives, these elements [professional, personal and social] become pathological, pushing us from one task to the next in order to satisfy their own jealous needs.”

Benson describes PK as “A visual launchpad to personal effectiveness, spontaneous collaboration and an integrated life.”

While there is no productivity panacea that can turn you into a hyper-achieving speed demon, no matter where you work – whether that’s as a digital nomad out of a shared office in Hong Kong, from home or in a corporate office – PK can deliver something many other organisation tools don’t: fulfillment. It does this by helping you visually map everything that matters to you, within and beyond the walls of your workplace, so that you can prioritise and focus.

For the corporate team, PK is handy because you can share boards and follow team progress, and for the multi-hyphenate working remotely in a coworking space, it’s useful because it helps you stay disciplined and on track with your tasks – in work and in life.

How Personal Kanban came into being

PK has its roots in a scheduling system first created for the automotive industry, by an industrial engineer, Taiichi Ohno at Toyota. Developed with just-in-time manufacturing in mind, kanban used cards to track production in factories, in this way preventing the build-up of excess inventory at any stage of the production process.

Benson used variations of this technique in his work in software development, then he further developed the method into Personal Kanban with his colleagues at Modus Cooperandi. It helped them understand their workload, work flow, and also limit the amount of work in progress – and it’s this last part that’s key.

The rules

Recognising that we can only do so much – and realistically, we only have capacity for one task at a time (multi-tasking is so passé) – PK has adopted two rules, one of which is: limit what you’re working on at any one time. It’s rule number two, so let’s backtrack a bit and start with rule number one: visualise your work.

“Visualising work gives us power over it,” says Benson, who later honed the method with his co-author, DeMaria. “We now have a physical record of all those demands on our time. This larger view of our work and our context allows us to make better decisions.”

You can use a whiteboard, you can use sticky notes, or you can use a digital tool like Trello, Zenkit, Jira or Taskworld, to help you visualise your tasks. Benson and DeMaria encourage the use of a whiteboard and physical sticky notes, at least to start with, because “hands-on experience reinforces what we learn.” But many PK advocates use digital tools instead of physical ones, and these seem to be highly effective – especially if you want to have your PK board with you on your smartphone when you’re travelling.

Back to the second rule: limit your work in progress to just three tasks at a time. “You can only do as much work as you can handle. You can’t overload yourself. Once you do, your ability to finish and your ability to focus breaks down,” says Benson.

How to apply Personal Kanban

Here’s how it works, in a nutshell:

  1. Write down all the expectations you have on different sticky notes.
  2. Create an Options column, and put all your tasks in it. It’s much easier for your brain to take in your tasks this way, as it’s more visually pleasing than a jumble of tasks.
  3. Create a Doing column. Limit what you put in this column to three items, and no more.
  4. Create a Done column, and move tasks you’ve finished into this column.

Finish one task before you move something else onto your ‘doing’ list. “You finish, you focus [on something else]. You’re giving yourself the luxury of being able to complete something with quality, which means that you like your work when it’s done,” says Benson.

Insider tips

The beauty of PK is that you can make it your own. You don’t have to stick to three columns: you can have far more, and you can name them whatever you want, as long as you stick to Rule 1 and Rule 2 (maximum three tasks in the Doing column at any one time).

You can create a Backlog column for every single task you need to do, big or small. Don’t leave anything out: be honest with yourself Oh and this doesn’t simply have to relate to work – your PK board can include tasks you have to do outside of work – like booking your kids into swim class, paying for those concert tickets, date night, whatever!

Then put those you’re ready to do now in a Ready column – work that’s waiting to be done. These can be funneled into the Doing column when you’re good to go on them.

Long-time PK user Sven Wiegand suggests dividing your board into tasks to be done today (create a Today column for this), this week, this year, and he also has a Waiting column for those tasks that require someone else’s input in order to be completed. You can find out more about his approach here.

As well as being a useful organisation tool for individuals, PK is ideal for teams – especially if part of your team is working remotely out of a coworking space, or if they’re working in agile workspaces. You can put team tasks on a PK board using a digital tool like Kanban Zone to help you track workflow, giving everyone on your team access. You can even create different PK boards for different projects.

For further insights into Personal Kanban and how to use it, check out Benson and DeMaria’s site here.