Moving Forward with Positive Indicators for a Strong 2021
Dear Reader,
This article was originally published in the SCCG Management Weekly Newsletter #16 on November 25, 2020.
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We want to take a moment at the top of the article to recognize realities for a lot of our friends and loved ones. We are in a rough period. As we enter the holiday season in the last month of 2020, for many of us, it is difficult to see how or when we transition into a more hopeful world.
This is why, for this issue, we will focus on real factors that can provide a sense of perspective, which can lead us to an optimistic view for 2021.
Pragmatists have long benefited from a willingness to be agile, adapting to realities that shift value and opportunity. Our current situation has enabled massive growth in supply chain infrastructure for e-commerce. Technologies to support secure remote transactions have been around for quite some time, but have struggled with adoption.
The easy winners were of course companies like Amazon and Alibaba, but there were other significant developments born out of need.
The AGA reported that within the gaming industry which saw obvious declines in commercial brick and mortar casinos in all areas after March, 2020, iGaming was the only gaming vertical with year over year growth in the second quarter of 2020. Currently, online casino gaming has been opened in Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Michigan, as well as Nevada, but only for Poker. In addition to online casinos, more than half the US states are on the road to legalizing sports betting, to join the 19 states where it is already legal.
For medical services, the need for people to access health care in a travel restricted environment was real. This lead to rapid changes in Telemedicine regulations that allowed for significant improvements in the security, quality and scalability of Telemedicine technologies. These technological improvements, combined with healthcare providers and patients who were willing to learn how to use these new access points, enabled health care providers to reach patients for whom face to face visits were impossible or dangerous. In the first quarter of 2020, Telehealth usage increased over 150%, and interestingly, over 90% of that usage was for conditions other than COVID-19.
We have seen old dogs learn new tricks. Necessity has changed behavior and now people who would have never considered using remote collaboration tools like Slack, GoToMeeting, Zoom and Microsoft Teams have adopted them and have learned new ways to get work done. On its face, this seems like a quality of life solution, but the reality is far more significant. In the tech sector, for example, the conventional wisdom is that there is tremendous value in concentrating tech hubs where technical talent live, and vice versa.
There is a huge cost associated with this kind of concentration, for the companies and municipalities that support them. Silicon Valley is an example of the kind of extreme change that density can create. Out of control cost of living requiring out of control compensation packages. Lack of capacity for housing and services create huge gulfs in the haves and have nots of these communities. Our forced personal development in these remote collaboration tools are changing this perception.
Tanium, a cybersecurity company valued at over $9 billion is leaving San Francisco for Seattle after already implementing a "work from anywhere" policy that protected their pay, regardless of where they chose to work.
Amazon chose to release its hold on the top eight floors of a South Lake Union office building in Seattle and distribute new and existing talent to its other campuses and offices in locations such as Bellevue.
Hewlett Packard is moving its Enterprise headquarters staff to Spring, Texas, a Houston suburb.
Software giant Oracle is also moving its headquarters from San Francisco to Texas, opting the city of Austin.
Now, most of these companies aren't abandoning these traditional US tech corridors; they're just balancing the labor load across a larger footprint. This creates huge value and quality of life improvements for companies and employees, and helps to reduce some of the unpleasant effects of over concentration in these cities.
Old habits die hard. Sometimes, a big shakeup creates opportunities for us to learn, as individuals and as organizations, that there are new ways to work through our business and personal lives. As leaders, we have always created the most opportunity when, at a key inflection point, we looked pragmatically at the situation and asked ourselves, "how can we do this better, faster, more easily, more economically, more effectively?", and then take action.
If you have seen opportunities for growth and improvement that you believe SCCG can help with, please reach out. We're ready to talk.