Corona virus effect: challenges and opportunities for myself (April 8/2020

(30/07/2012E.C.)
Introduction
The first Covid 19 case happened in China in the city of Wuhan in Hubei province in November
2019. However, it was widely reported in January 2020. Since then the virus widespread to the
rest of the world starting from Asia to Europe and America. By now the virus has spread to all
continents and 209 countries in the Earth planet. Lockdown is the top measure by which billions
of people have been obliged to stay at home.
The first case in Ethiopia was reported on March 13/2020 (04/07/2012E.C.). After four days, the
government of Ethiopia shut all schools and universities. Preventive measures like hand washing,
physical distancing, not touching faces, and symptoms of the illness started to be widely
announced through the media. After a week the government again took another measure by
which government institutions were directed to reduce staff to stay and work from home.
Following all these measures my organization, Addis Ababa Chamber of Commerce and
Sectoral Associations took its own major. The management decided that except some core
activities, other staff could work at their home. Except one representative from most of the work
units, other staff stayed and started to work from home.
In my case, I have not strictly engaged in office works. Sometimes I did not stay full time within
a day and sometimes I have been working from home.
Measures at home for emergency preparedness
At home, we bought the important items used to prevent the virus, like mask, sanitizer, hand
glove, and hand wash soaps. At home, we have our emergency preparedness monitoring system
and every week we evaluate our progress. We also developed the values that govern us during
our stay at home. The five values are:
 Collaboration
 Cleanliness
 Physical exercise
 Sharing lessons learned
 Helping others
At home, we are five, including two children, spouse and home assistant. The home can be used
as an office, school, meeting place, hotel and hospital (when someone may be affected by the
virus or have any flue).
Each one at home discussed what to do to maximize the opportunity of staying at home and use
the time effectively.
My personal strategy
During this time, I am going to carry out the following major activities.
1. Follow up the impact of the corona virus on political, economic, social and technological
factors and make country and organizational analysis in a continual manner.
2. Explore solutions on impact of the corona virus on the country and organization
3. Browse about corona virus and share for others
4. Explore technological solutions for working remote including online training program,
digital meetings, webinars, teleconferencing, etc.
5. Design training and coaching programs that I can offer for the public
6. Complete the meditation class I started by myself and a guide given through online
7. Read, practice and explore more about meditation and other related materials
8. Organize my reflections so far and identify areas for writing books
9. Write the book started before.
10. Find out support I can offer to the public.

Monitoring home emergency preparedness

At home, we discussed about our status, implementation of our values and individual progress.
Each one of us shared what we have done and assessed the current situation. The mood of the
discussion was impressive and the implementation process was found to be adequate. As far as
helping others is concerned, the spouse reported that she supported food items to three people.
On next monitoring discussion we found that we have been implementing our values we set and
each one of us shared lessons learned during this time. We also found that few social
responsibility has been done by which I offered birr 300 to bank for coronavirus support. There
is still a room to do more.
The discussion was led on rotational basis and each one of us are responsible for that.

Monitoring my personal strategy

I have practicing the Maum meditation each day. I also included death meditation and carried out
for the last 40 days without interruption. I am doing the later meditation every morning and
found that the two meditations are interconnected. While doing these mediations there was a
kind of resistance at the beginning. However, I have noticed a kind of behavioral shift and I
decided to keep on doing. Finally, I found that both meditations are useful to connect myself
with the truth and share for others.
As far as exploration about meditation is concerned I listened to and practice mediation and
related discussions on self-awareness, consciousness and body and mind relationship video clips
especially by Rupert. I need to keep on exploring related subjects and practices. I have been
writing my reflection both on computer and note book. Most of the reflections were focusing on
consciousness, awareness, thinking, mind, body and meditation.
Every day within certain ranges I have been following up about corona virus and read its
implications on world as well as country economic situations. Further thought is required to
explore its social implications. This has to be strengthened further.
As far as my practice on the technology is concerned I downloaded the Skype and Zoom
applications and utilized for online mediation guide and group meditation. I have conversation
with a friend using Skype and Zoom. I listened to a video on how to design online training.
Further effort should be made to equip myself with the technology.
I have designed one training program to be delivered using webinar platform through zoom
technology. I approached one of our partner, Import Promotion Desk (IPD) and delivered
training on webinar based and e-learning training program.
Sharing for others is not as such strong and I have to escalate this variable.

What is my overall thinking and feeling?

One of the training program, I designed was called ‘crisis management for business
sustainability’. It is a new training program that I managed to design it through webinar platform.
On this training program I have included topics like crisis planning, crisis leadership, crisis
communication, behavioral dynamics of crisis and self-management and engaging others to
manage these behaviors and innovations during crisis. I have gone through the literature and
organized myself with the messages I want to convey for participants. The training needs to be
experiential and contextual in the sense that I have to believe in those points I put on the
material. In that regard, I have to apply these thoughts on myself and my organization so that I
can tell the story.
The lessons I gained from this process is the importance of mindset to go forward or go beyond
the impact of the crisis and connect to the future. When I see the future, do I see brightness or
dark? Do I expect more innovations in the Chamber or deterioration? Sometimes I am lost in
technical parts when I was designing the training programs. One important point I can grasp here
is that the Leadership should give adequate time for thinking and explore possibilities as much as
possible in a continual manner’. I could not do this one because of focusing on the technical parts
of running online training programs.
In some cases negative thoughts came to mind when I thought of not having adequate job and
continuous interruption of business. At the same time there is no adequate discussion among the
management group about the possibility of the future even if we have divided tasks among
ourselves.
As far as innovation at the Chamber is concerned we targeted virtual training and project
planning as the most relevant business lines that we can take advantage of the coronavirus
pandemic. On the technology we have gone far and by now managed to get zoom account so that
we can run webinar based training. We are also on progress to design e-learning in the coming
month. However, other crisis that happened in the country, that is political crisis, again affected
these initiatives. As a leader we have to think as well what other mechanisms we have in place to
address these challenges. I feel like that we don’t have innovation team and all the projects we
have at hand are just a kind of firefighting.
Do we have scenario planning for the crisis? How many scenarios do we have that our planning
should take into account? What strategic priorities do we have after crisis recovery?
My environmental scanning practice is also very much limited except that I have been following
up the media. The main source of information for me now is the same source.