The Seven Major Post-Pandemic Business Tipping Points

This is an excerpt of the original article. It was written for the December 2021 edition of Supply Chain Management Review. The full article is available to current subscribers.

December 2021

Each December, the focus of the issue is our annual Executive Guide to Supply Chain Resources. This is a comprehensive guide to services, products and educational opportunities targeted specifically to supply chain professionals. But, as with years past, we’re also featuring several articles we trust will give you something to think about in the coming year.

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From April 2020 to June 2020, as we all began to better understand COVID-19 and grapple with the impacts of the pandemic, many of us asked questions about:

• returning to normal;
• understanding the new normal;
• the path to the next normal; and
• the putting aside of normal and a new beginning.

Nearly two years later, as we begin the slow transition to a post-pandemic phase, we are starting to understand that all four of these scenarios will occur. In some aspects of our lives, we will:

1. return to normal;
2. settle on a new normal;
3. enter a progression of moving from a new normal to another new normal and the next; and
4. start anew, where the pre-pandemic normal is replaced by an entirely new post-pandemic normal.

The reality is COVID-19 did not change history, but it did accelerate it. I have been referring to the year 2020 as “one heck of a decade” because during the 10 months from March to December 2020, we had what felt like 10 years of disruption in many areas. What’s interesting to consider is in what areas we encountered massive disruptions and in what areas we did not, and in the areas where we had massive disruptions, what was the lasting impact of these disruptions. In reality, some massive disruptions result in:

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