When a busi­ness de­cides to be­come a “force for good,” it is sig­nalling its in­ten­tion to de­liv­er ser­vice at the high­est lev­el of hu­man val­ue. Just think of how this ide­al can im­pact a world in need of heal­ing, com­ing out of this pan­dem­ic. Just think of the po­ten­tial to res­onate with cus­tomer con­stituen­cies. Just think of the au­to­mat­ic bot­tom line im­pact.

It’s im­por­tant to re­mem­ber that while the pan­dem­ic seems to be win­ning the bat­tle, it must nev­er win the war. In rav­aging our lives and liveli­hoods, the pan­dem­ic has al­so emerged an equal mag­ni­tude of hu­man­i­ty, from sac­ri­fi­cial front­line work­ers to neigh­bourly acts of kind­ness.

We know that go­ing in­to the fu­ture, it will not be busi­ness as usu­al. I sus­pect that many cus­tomers, like my­self, will be­come more se­lec­tive with our pa­tron­age, choos­ing those busi­ness­es that have demon­strat­ed a “so­cial con­science” dur­ing this pan­dem­ic. Yes, we do have mus­cle mem­o­ry as cus­tomers.

In a pre­vi­ous col­umn, I shared that busi­ness­es should take this unique op­por­tu­ni­ty to el­e­vate their ser­vice qual­i­ty and to re-in­tro­duce im­proved ser­vice stan­dards to their cus­tomers when we emerge from this lock­down. We should not let a cri­sis go to waste.

So Deep­ak Chopra has said that “all great changes are pre­ced­ed by chaos” and late­ly, I’ve been pon­der­ing the ex­is­ten­tial ques­tion of how lead­ers can re­pur­pose their busi­ness­es as “forces for good” as we nav­i­gate to the next nor­mal.

There is so much wis­dom to be har­vest­ed from our ex­pe­ri­ences through­out this cri­sis. This wis­dom, if har­nessed well by lead­ers, can en­able busi­ness­es to be­come pow­er­ful in­flu­encers of new val­ues that can emerge a re­freshed world that is more char­i­ta­ble to hu­man ex­is­tence.

Speak­ing of re­freshed, of course we can­not have missed the mag­ni­tude of how this lock­down has im­pact­ed na­ture.

Moth­er Na­ture has been al­lowed some oxy­gen whilst the hu­mans have been away. The air seems less al­ler­gic, the wa­ter­ways have be­come more sparkling and wild an­i­mals are be­hav­ing like do­mes­ti­cat­ed pets.

First of all, be­ing a “force for good” means that a busi­ness is com­mit­ted to a no­ble in­ten­tion along­side its prof­itabil­i­ty mo­tives. Whilst there may be per­ceived ten­sion be­tween these two prin­ci­ples, they can co-ex­ist if lead­ers are not dis­tract­ed by the op­pos­ing na­ture of the two forces. The “force for good” sys­tem works best as a com­bi­na­tion of lead­er­ship de­c­la­ra­tion, lead­er­ship ac­tion and lead­er­ship ac­count­abil­i­ty.

This pan­dem­ic has been an ac­cel­er­ant of sweep­ing changes, de­liv­er­ing many learn­ings that can be tri­alled to pro­duce a set of use­ful lead­er­ship prac­tices. Per­mit me to share my ten mus­ings on my take­away lead­er­ship learn­ings.

1. De­cide on the no­ble in­ten­tions that will de­fine your busi­ness. In­sist that your busi­ness be de­fined by mo­tives that go be­yond prof­itabil­i­ty. An au­then­tic­i­ty mark­er is how a busi­ness treats its em­ploy­ees and not nec­es­sar­i­ly pub­lic­i­ty points for its cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

2. Move ear­ly and move fast to ac­ti­vate change. As we’ve seen with the pan­dem­ic, those who re­spond ear­ly to change are less bru­tal­ized by the change. Ac­tu­al­ly, it pays to self-dis­rupt or live in an “al­ways ready for change” mode.

3. Lead with con­fi­dence, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing times of un­cer­tain­ty. A leader is test­ed dur­ing dif­fi­cult times. It makes sense though, to be a “learn­ing leader” who is sharp­en­ing his or her saw, con­stant­ly. Abra­ham Lin­coln once said that if he were giv­en six hours to cut down a tree, he would spend the first five sharp­en­ing his axe. Makes sense.

4. Make trans­paren­cy your watch­word. Lead­er­ship cred­i­bil­i­ty sits on steadi­ness and be­liev­abil­i­ty. A leader’s words and ac­tions should be solid­ly hand­cuffed.

5. Ig­nore the “noise” of self­ish­ness and self-in­ter­ests. We see lead­er­ship in its most po­tent state, when so­cial jus­tice gov­erns how “all” con­stituents are served. No group or in­di­vid­ual should feel alien­at­ed when be­ing led by the same leader.

6. Sur­round your­self with ex­perts and stay hun­gry. When lead­ers un­der­stand their lim­i­ta­tions, flaws, blind spots and ac­knowl­edge their “ig­no­rance” on mat­ters, they re­lease oxy­gen and pave the way for re­al progress.

7. Keep the right met­rics in view. When gath­er­ing da­ta, be­gin with the end in mind. We need to be wary of the flaws as­so­ci­at­ed with con­fir­ma­tion bias in col­lect­ing da­ta and should make every ef­fort to iso­late the nice to know, good to know and need to know da­ta.

8. Fo­cus on the wel­fare of all con­stituent com­mu­ni­ties. When the pow­er­ful and the dis­en­fran­chised are both served with em­pa­thy and a sense of even con­cern, lead­ers earn re­spect in the area of so­cial jus­tice.

9. Com­mu­ni­cate con­stant­ly as a rule and over-com­mu­ni­cate dur­ing chal­leng­ing times. Lead­ers who share per­ti­nent in­for­ma­tion reg­u­lar­ly, re­duce the like­li­hood of false news, con­coc­tions and mis­chief mon­ger­ing. Un­con­trolled in­for­ma­tion can cause un­nec­es­sary pan­ic.

10. Know your place as a 360° leader. Lead­ers are ex­pect­ed to be ground­ed and im­mune to de­rail­ment. Their voice of san­i­ty can of­ten spot hid­den op­por­tu­ni­ties and pre-empt griev­ous out­comes.

On-board­ing the “force for good” DNA in­to your busi­ness, should not be a hard sell to in­ter­nal con­stituents, es­pe­cial­ly if the busi­ness is re­spect­ed al­ready for hav­ing a con­science. Con­trary to the pop­u­lar­ly held be­lief that hu­mans are re­sis­tant to change, I be­lieve that we are both re­sis­tant and wel­com­ing. How else can we ex­plain our com­fort with the ma­jor changes as­so­ci­at­ed with wel­com­ing a ba­by, mov­ing in to a new house, or get­ting mar­ried? Clear­ly, we have the propen­si­ty to wel­come or re­ject change. It de­pends on “what’s in it for us.” We’re just choosy.

Smart lead­ers should not miss the por­tal cre­at­ed by this ac­cel­er­a­tion to re-in­tro­duce their busi­ness­es with new val­ue propo­si­tions.

A word of cau­tion. If the leader is lead­ing the charge, it may be a good idea to do a tem­per­a­ture check, just to en­sure that he or she is not go­ing in as the biggest risk to the change.

Just in case.