Pandemic diaries: What Covid-19 has taught me about myself

I have two young children and, since schools stopped, I had to learn how to become a teacher; even though life has been disrupted I wanted to make sure their education is going forward. My wife Isis Nyong’o had been going through a merger so she was extremely busy.

Lucky enough, I taught at Rutgers University in the United States years ago, and so I understand the idea of developing a plan. Thanks to my psychology degree, I also know about development and how children learn. I was able to come up with a study plan. Obviously, we’re not as good as the real teachers, the people who have been trained in it, but we’re trying our best and the kids have been motivated; I think they’ve been happy to spend more time with dad.

Learning new skills

And because I haven’t been commuting to work, I have three extra hours each day, which I’ve been using on online courses. One of our goals at work was to come out with a better and stronger staff. We told everyone to think about the skills they’ll be needing in the near or far future because of the changes caused by Covid-19, and obviously one has to lead by example.

I took two courses on Coursera, an online learning platform. One was on network dynamics of social behaviour, offered by University of Pennsylvania, which is interesting because you learn about how information travels, how diseases spread, and so on. I was mostly interested in gaining knowledge around why certain products go into certain networks, for instance. I did another one on neuroscience. I’ve also been spending time reading and learning about E-commerce.

Even though things have been disrupted, certain aspects of my life have remained the same. I still meditate every morning, and I still block time in the evening to think about ideas. After my wife and children have gone to bed, I like sitting in a chair and thinking about new ideas and the future of the business and the industry and how to help clients.

Ninety per cent of this is usually nonsense, but every once in a while, something good comes out. This practice has been very useful during the pandemic because it helps me put things in perspective. I think about my old ideas and fantasise through the future. By reflection, I can see how many of them are off or not relevant anymore.

I’ve learnt a lot about myself

This pandemic has taught me a lot about myself. It has tested me in ways that have helped me build confidence. I always tell my younger team members that people will look at you as having potential, and as you get older, you can’t be the old person with potential. You have to have dealt with adversity and actually managed problems; you need to have accomplishments under your belt and not just potential.

I am proud of my decision-making during this period. Earlier in the year, I reached out to a former boss who lives in China to wish him a Happy New Year. He said everything was fine except for this virus (which wasn’t even called Covid-19 then), and I decided to do research because it was distressing someone I respect.

I realised it was serious. And once they started having cases in places like Iran and Italy, I immediately started thinking about how it would affect us in Kenya. I advised my team not to hire, pushed promotions back, and put our business development into overdrive (we won the biggest advertiser in Kenya during this period).

It was weird talking about the virus in late January but my gut told me to take Covid-19 very seriously. And my team and I said let’s do all this just in case the virus spreads to Africa. A week before Covid-19 was reported in Kenya, we piloted our first ‘work from home’; when the first case was reported, we were already working from home.

We have done better from a survival perspective than all of our peers in the industry. We have had no layoffs and no salary reductions and a lot of that came from us recognising the seriousness of Covid-19 even before it spread to Africa.  

Stop looking for normal

A lot of people think the worst of Covid-19 is over, that things have happened and now they understand the new normal of it. I don’t think that’s true. There will be as much massive change in the next months as there have been in the last few months.

People who are still trying to look for normal are thinking about it wrong. I think they need to think about how to build flexibility into their business models and focus on additional abilities for teams to collaborate, and think about how things will keep shifting at an industry level.

How you treat people now will define how people think about you for a long time. I hope everyone understands the demands they are making on their staff. Not everyone lives the same lifestyle, and thinking about the safety of your staff and putting it at the forefront is the kind of empathy that’s important right now.