Several months into the pandemic, Peter Newell’s Palo Alto, California-based innovation consulting firm BMNT hadn’t skipped a beat. Business was up as more clients sought its advice on how to adapt to a world grappling with Covid-19 and his already distributed team made the remote work transition seamlessly. Still, Newell faced the same challenge all leaders faced, that of supporting a team that’s juggling work, child care, and countless other challenges.
Now six months into the pandemic–with no discernible end in sight–that task is all the more urgent.
“Hope has pretty much worn off … that an immediate solution to [Covid-19] is coming,” Newell says of his team. “There has been a mixture of responses, everything from people exhibiting superhuman behavior to make everything work for everyone around them, to ‘I’m burning out,’ and everything in between.”
