President Trump’s daily briefings march on, treating us to graphs and projections about the medical and economic consequences of the coronavirus. Recently the president also began to opine about reopening the country for business, visibly leaning towards sooner rather than later. Last Friday, he upped the ante, saying he would shortly make “without question, the biggest decision” of his life: whether to end or prolong the current shutdown and stay-at-home guidelines. This afternoon the president upped once more, insisting the decision would be a federal government, not state-by-state, call.
Presidential prerogative or not, America is now gripped by a major dilemma: to re-stoke our economy and society but likely also re-accelerate the COVID-19 death count; or to stay the current “curve-flattening” course longer, grasping a livelihood-destroying solution colorfully described as holding your head underwater beyond final breath,in order to save your life.
Mr. Trump’s challenge is not so much “whether”—because eventually the shutdown must end—but rather when and how. The president’s two biggest questions now are about that, and justifying the choices that must be made, i.e., “what’s the strategy for ending the shutdown?” And “why should we citizens believe it’s the right one?”
Strategy Making
What, in fact, is a “strategy?” To keep it simple: “pursuing a set of intentional, coordinated actions to reach certain agreed-upon goals.” If you’ve ever developed strategy for a large, complex organization, you know how hard it can be. That said, our nation’s current lack of something comparable for comprehensively managing the coronavirus has been a fearsome disappointment.
The proverbial visitor from Mars might ask, “why, with such expertise available, has your collective problem-solving been so fragmented? Or, “why has your showpiece federalist system produced such conflicting efforts among your states and national government?”
Finger-pointing aside, we might still allow some humility about this nation’s initial response. The intensity of this virus was not adequately understood by most people at first (yes, including government officials), and it quickly overwhelmed our trusting nature and lethargic bureaucracy. The exponential crush of mortal infections has been aptly described as “a surprise storm that capsizes [your] boat” and tosses you panicking into the sea: no time for planning when all you can do is cling to a life raft and be grateful you didn’t drown right away.
But over the last several weeks, while clinging to our rafts, we’ve been steadily learning more. When will we know enough to start planning longer term? Especially because all the incoming new knowledge keeps changing our sense of the “most critical issues.” How does anyone create strategy in such shifting winds and waves?
Well, savvy executives and other professionals do it every day. Even before COVID-19, the global economy was plenty turbulent and unpredictable. The art of strategy has evolved in rapid step, following a “lean start-up approach” to meet the volatility of the new world. Gone are the old methodologies of lengthy, bureaucratic analysis and arcane logic trees. The best strategies are now built rapidly and revised iteratively, through continuous market learning: generate a hypothesis-“beta product,” quickly release and test it, learn from your frequent failures, revise and repeat the cycle—until the right model emerges and gets traction. Over time, take it to scale, but keep revising as you learn more.
Blending Old And New
This more dynamic approach also benefits from blending in some of the classic strategic discipline. For example: clarifying (and periodically updating) a vision of success; combining opportunity and cost analysis with trial and testing to prioritize the best option to reach the vision; identifying resources and accountability to scale up as tests start to succeed; establishing formal mechanisms to learn and adapt the strategy at regular intervals.
While the White House stages its daily briefings, multiple proposals for a long-term COVID-19 strategy have been bubbling up across the nation (and also across the world). Most follow one of three fundamental approaches, with varying adaptive flexibility: (i) Keep America largely shut down until vaccine/therapies are developed; (ii) Start opening, but rapidly build more medical capacity while accepting more deaths, as “herd immunity” develops; iii) A combined solution that segments populations with rigorous testing for back-to-work or quarantining/care, adjusted for demographic vulnerability and system capacity.
There are also assorted more radical approaches being proposed.
In Search Of Strategic Balance
The White House has lots of good material to start on a comprehensive, long-term strategy for all of us. The Coronavirus Task Force must start integrating the wisdom of many well-drawn ideas, while also bringing best-of-breed “lean” thinking into the mix. Our nation is overdue for a well-drawn plan for the next several chapters of managing this pandemic: a strategy for how we will find the appropriate balance between saving lives and getting back to work, and making the right trade-offs between need, opportunities, and risk. We must also hear how the plan’s design will accommodate forthcoming new knowledge and further changes in the environment. More harsh winds and unpredictable waves will come.
Civic Expectations
Finally, this nation has the right to hear a fact-based defense of the strategy to be presented—that it is indeed the right choice. It’s time for our president to shift from update briefings, and start answering the not just “what” but now also “why” and “how” strategic questions:
1. What assumptions about the disease and our economy in the coming twelve months guided the decision you are making and the strategy behind it?
2. In making the decision, what other strategic choices did you consider? What were their relative merits, costs, and potential trade-offs? How did you make those assessments?
3. What is the “vision for success” for your preferred choice—if all goes well, what can we look forward to? What sacrifices—human, economic, social—will the strategy demand of us citizens?
4. How will this strategy be implemented? Who has accountability for its rollout and success? How should we measure their performance?
5. What will this plan require of our democracy? How should states, the federal government, and citizens now work together? How will this be different from today?
6. How will this strategy adapt to new and unpredictable circumstances over time?
7. What accountability will you, as this nation’s president, personally accept for the strategy’s long-term success?
Originally published on Forbes.com