Whether you know it or not, you and your team are smack in the middle of grieving. Covid-19 has put a violent full stop in all our lives and whether we return to “normal” or not, despite all the whizzy tools of working online, the ground beneath our feet has seismically shifted.

So there might appear to be a theme here given the topic of our last blog (sack your mentor blog), but actually the intent is completely different.

Great performances make me want to jump from my seat and applaud. They make me feel more awake, more passionate, more motivated, more courageous - they make me feel more in every way.

The Covid-19 pandemic has put the nature of global supply chains into sharp relief: how free and open movement of goods and services is a fine principle but one that’s loaded with risk, and that risk is accentuated at every stage when there is reliance on people. Shorter, simpler supply chains, with resilience as the priority, have become an imperative.

We are all witnessing enormous changes to the world that we work in through the impact of COVID-19. It is way too early to tell which changes will be permanent versus those that are only temporary.

I like watching how my kids with a few toys in their hands, and their imagination at play, can create elaborate battles with sophisticated plots. Sometimes I get invited into their imaginative arena to join their forces to fight the enemies. Today we are all invited to fight an enemy we can’t see, but we have given it a name: COVID-19 (or more accurately SARS-CoV-2).

Wherever in the world you live and work, we are all in a scary place right now. More than ever, people are looking to their line managers, leaders and colleagues for guidance on how to cope with change and uncertainty.

Professor Malcolm McDonald offers these thoughts during these difficult times in order to encourage all those of us who are intensely worried by the effects of the COVID-19 driven recession.

Coronavirus (Covid-19) measures are seizing up the global supply chain and have become an emergency for board executives. Once more, the lack of risk management, resilience and agility in supply chains has been exposed. The argument for greater automation becomes stronger.

IT leaders have never been more essential to the success of any organisation – or had more demands heaped upon their shoulders. So how is the role changing? And what are the skills required to step up to the challenge?