The world continues to experience the tragic turmoil under the influence of the SARS COVID-19 pandemic situation, which has been an eye-opener in various means. It has been a wake-up call from the comfort zone and complacency in which organizations, countries, economies, and people operated.

However, it has emphasized and created opportunities across various sectors and redefined the way we lead our countries, run our business, and live our lives.

To survive and sustain these times and beyond we need to integrate leadership across political, business, educational, social, and family levels by harnessing individual and collective skill, energy, and efforts to successfully navigate these difficult times.

The footprint would include:

1. Create a clear political strategy that balances economic growth, sustainability, healthcare, and well-being of citizens

2. Need to create an adequate medical infrastructure to be able to handle medical crisis AND the importance of investment in healthcare (most of the countries invest more on their defense rather than healthcare)

3. Need to balance law enforcement with empathy/humanness

4. Need for societies and individuals to go beyond personal interest and differences to help each other and build collaborative relations across boundaries by sharing resources

5. Need for humanity to come together and fight the common enemy i.e., the SARS COVID virus by cutting across geographical and social differences

6. The importance and significance of education go beyond imparting degrees and building social awareness, emotional intelligence, and spiritual awareness of their responsibilities as global citizens to create a sense of purpose and leave the world in a better place than where we found it and driving meaningful change

7. Embracing technology and newer ways of working and learning to co-exist with technology to make our lives more meaningful and productive.

An important part that would lead to success is the TALENT (PEOPLE) who will provide the key differentiation to successfully navigating the new normal and beyond.

A few key steps to enable countries, businesses, educational institutes, and social sector to create a sustainable talent pool of motivated, engaged, and HIGH PERFORMING employees is

1. Have a clear definition of who your talent is – what are the key skills (technical, functional, behavioral, and managerial skills which will make them successful)

2. Creating a strong differentiator for Performance -establish key metrics which differentiate high performance

3. Define key behavioral indicators for both high performance and potential

4. Have a reward strategy that balances immediate performance and long-term potential

5. Integrate a Talent strategy that balances developing, Attracting, Retaining, and Engaging Talent

6. Creating and leveraging high-performing and high-potential internal role models and mentors (at all levels) to replicate the individual and organizational success

7. Leveraging external coaches to enable talent to achieve career goals and maximize potential

8. Create strong enablers which align business processes and culture to create high and sustainable performance