Episode transcript The transcript is generated automatically by Podscribe, Sonix, Otter and other electronic transcription services.
Ricardo (4s): Hello, everyone. Welcome to the five minutes podcast Today I'd like to talk about the Corona virus or COVID-19. And of course, what is their impact on this, on your initiative, in your project, in your product development? So what do we see recently if you open the news and if you start watching and looking at on social media or what we can see easily that when a crisis like coronavirus, which is quite an expected and, is quite frightening for all of us comes to do this kind of stage, this global stage. Like today, it's very easy to see people in panic and people taking a non rational decisions when they face a challenge to make decisions on their project or their life.
Ricardo (51s): So what I decided to do during this weekend, I try to put some thoughts and try to identify basic on my own experience, because of course I'm not an expert in Corona virus. I'm not a doctor, I'm not infectologists. So I'm just an engineer, but I'm very used to crisis because I have so many at my time at the UN and also in my whole life, my first article was about trouble project that I said, I need to give some rational principles for us to decide, and I of course prepare it or something like an assessment. I call this exposure assessment. So what I decided to do, I created a set of 20 Statments in a two page document that will help you to evaluate how serious is coronavirus for my project.
Ricardo (1m 42s): Today with the information I have now. So what I did, I collected different dimensions off the virus, the impact and that what we see happening in several organizations. And I tried to summarize this in this page to help and guide you to make this decision. I did this. It's very important. I did this of course, in a absolutely pro bono way. This Assessment is Creative Commons so you can share, adapt, use So. I did the back best I could to help people to really put in place this week some rational thoughts on what we should do in face of Coronavirus, in our projects.
Ricardo (2m 24s): So in order to do that, how I decided to split this, I split this in three dimensions. First. It's what I call concrete and regional dimension or exposure. Second organizational exposure, and third or a project is exposure. The two initial ones are more related to your macro environment, your organization, and the place you operate mainly. And the third one is more about your own project.And why? Because this three tiers are absolutely interconnected. So let's go to the first one on the countryside. What I want to know from you, and you should do these with your team is how much do you trust in the country or regional leadership too, tackle, handle and make the best macro decisions in terms of government to help your society.
Ricardo (3m 17s): And this is a very tricky question that you should put some thoughts, because depending where you are based, you will have different answers. Maybe you will say I'm fully confident that I am living in a place that is serious enough and experienced enough to handle that. Or maybe you will say the opposite and these will expose you to different levels of severity if the coronavirus strikes you out. Second is your organization and why I'm telling about your organization, because sometimes let me give you an example, you have an IT project where everybody works from home. You have very small interaction.
Ricardo (3m 58s): You have no supplier's a lower budget. So everything seems to be quite stable for you, even with coronavirus. However, you operate for a company that is absolutely extremely affected by the virus, for example, an event company or a tourism company, or aviation or healthcare. So it doesn't matter. You are good, but your company will face such a dramatic challenge. Take your product may be at risk, an indirect risk. And this is exactly what I try to capture. So basically its for example, let's suppose that you sell fish and your work alone.
Ricardo (4m 38s): So you say, look, I don't have too much. I take my boat, I go and take the fish and I take my fish and I sell my fish. The problem is that I sell my fish too. For example, just as an example, I sell my fish to hotels in China. Then it doesn't matter if your operation is good. If your client is facing challenges, you will face challenges automatically in an almost direct way, so on your organization. So I want to understand how is the mood? How is the structure? How is the ability of my organization to handle that? And then on the third level. So on the organization, I have eight statements.
Ricardo (5m 18s): And then on the project side, I have another set off statements, 11 statements where I want to know your project. Because for example, maybe your company is not facing challenges, but your product, it is located in a critical area or your project requires a large number of people working in the same place. A lot of physical interaction, a lot of travel and use of public transportation. Or for example, you have an very specialized team. So if someone gets infected, you will be in trouble because replacement will not be easy. Temporary replacement. So for example, you have a work that you cannot stop.
Ricardo (5m 58s): For example, your producing a project delivered on a project, there is a seasonal product. If you lose that seasonality you will miss your revenue. There is no way of delaying it. If you lose, you lose that money. Or for example, you depend on a lot of supplies that come from affected areas because it's for sure global supply chain who will be dramatically impact using that. You we'll use this statement and you will receive a score, a final score, a simple score that we will put you in a green, yellow or red green means you should monitor yellow means you must take some action. You must replan some actions.
Ricardo (6m 38s): You must drive to understand what can be done remotely. You reduce, travel and red, you take extremely serious measures because if you are on a red statement means you are very close to be hit. If dependent, really becomes a pandemic. So I did that and look, this is my own chaplain. So this is not the definitive too, but like what I did is this will help you to guide your decision. So, and again, this is Creative comments. You just take, if you don't like what a question don't want to use just the scape or create one or what we want is really to make a rational discussions before we talk and say, Oh look, things are becoming crazy.
Ricardo (7m 20s): Oh, how do you know that? Oh, I saw on Facebook. Look, Facebook is wonderful. WhatsApp is wonderful. Social media is great, but it's not the most reliable source of information. We need to be serious Now your not because there's a lot of people depending on this. So it that. So if you go to http://rvarg.as/covid19, you can download the Assessment. And I created during the weekend, a 30 minute video where I go step by, step on the Assessment trying to help you how to read because the Assessment is just a fraise, so trying to explain to you, what do I mean by each of that? If you don't like the statement just create yours, but please make a thoughtful and rational decision because panic and irrationality now just create more mess and no results at all.
Ricardo (8m 12s): So thank you very much for listening to this podcast. I'm sure all will be fine very soon. OK. Thank you very much. And see you next week with another a five minutes podcast.
