With one line, William Goldman taught Hollywood everything it needed to know. COVID-19, with the same sense of irony, is doing the same but on a much larger scale. William Goldman's insight into Hollywood and COVID-19 share one thing in common. And that is, "Nobody knows anything."
We live in a crazy time, unprecedented at least. It doesn't look like anything that we have seen before—locked at home, looking at the news, waiting for the answers. What makes it even worse is the amount of contradictory information that we keep getting day by day. From politicians, health authorities, business leaders, news companies.
All the stories that are told yesterday are being contradicted the very next day by the same people. The spectrum is quite extensive and for many worrisome. You have heard this before. Coronavirus is not a big thing (at the beginning) - Coronavirus is the worst pandemic in the last 100 years. You can get infected twice - You cannot get infected twice. Tests are accurate - Tests are not accurate. Coronavirus can be transmitted through various surfaces - Coronavirus cannot be transmitted through products that you buy in a supermarket. And this goes on and on.
Like a pandemic, the same chaotic views are spread across all other areas of life. You don't need to be an expert to conclude that nobody knows anything.
None of us have been in this situation before. All that we learned, and we think we know is being challenged.
The closer we were to the life we had before COVID-19, everything didn't seem to be a big issue. The farther we are from the life we had before, the more we are becoming aware that going back to normal isn't an option. And our reality is that "nobody knows anything."
How to thrive in this situation?
The phenomenon of COVID-19 is that is impacting everyone at the same time. The world economy, businesses, individuals.
The hard-hitting lesson is that everything that we learned and know is not that useful anymore. Everything that we learned and understood, we need to unlearn. And this will be the most challenging thing to do.
Agility and innovation will become the two most popular business words post-COVID for sure. But, before that, we would need to do something more fundamental. Unless we unlearn what we know, no amount of agility and innovation will help to turn the culture around.
There is a fundamental flaw in the system. We have learned to operate in a society with predictable outcomes.
In many martial arts, we are practicing forms (katas). Katas are practiced within advance prepared techniques, either attack or defense. No matter how well we are ready, the readiness is futile if the attack comes from the side we never thought of or practiced. But there is something that we can do. We can practice a martial art without the form and any practice of predictable outcomes. It is called Yiquan. For all martial artists out there, I urge you to read more about its fundamental principles. Without any predictable outcomes, practitioners of Yiquan are always ready. It doesn't matter in what form or side the attack comes, defense and attack are happening at the same time, instantly. There is a lot of presence and sensibility without any predictable outcomes or rigidity. Predictable outcomes only limit your reaction, agility, and response.
Like Yiquan, we can decide to practice marketing without a form or any predictable outcomes. To do so, we need to unlearn everything we know about marketing. By letting go of all predictable outcomes, we are giving us a chance to thrive in the "nobody knows anything" world.
For me, this is the most important lesson that we need to take out of COVID-19 - LEARN TO UNLEARN. And it's not about what you have learned in the past, but you would need to unlearn today what you learned yesterday.
Going back to William Goldman's insight into Hollywood. Nobody knows if one movie is going to become a blockbuster or not, yet people are making movies. Some are taking refuge in Big Data and AI to find an answer. There is a company in New York that is using AI to predict whether a song will be a hit or not. I doubt that Big Data and AI will become a magic bowl that will provide us with all the answers we wish to know.
Take a different perspective.
The most important thing is not what you are going to learn but how quickly you are going to unlearn it.
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