​How Are You Pivoting?

​Like many others, my range of emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic has varied depending on the day and time. Sometimes even second by second, my emotions have changed.

However, from a professional perspective, over the last six weeks, if I had to choose one word to describe my daily activities, it would be pivot. During this time, at multiple points each day, I've had to change course quickly and refocus my priorities and efforts. For example:Pivoting between work and home responsibilities. Obviously, working from home takes on a new meaning when the entire family is working and schooling from home. Finding a way to balance my responsibilities as a parent with my responsibilities as an employee during this time is something that I'm still trying to figure out. That said, like many others, I'm going back and forth between the two throughout the course of each day.

Staying on top of volumes of communications and ensuring I respond to the critical items timely. As I've mentioned in prior posts, my work style occasionally involves logging out of email during the day so that I can focus on addressing critical items on my to-do list. However, in this environment, particularly in the earlier days of working from home, some of the communications that I received had a much greater sense of urgency. As such, I'm pivoting to respond quickly to those urgent messages.

 Changing course to help team members who are dealing with challenges. The team members who I work with regularly are facing challenges of their own, just like all of us. To ensure that I'm available for my colleagues when they need me, I'm pivoting to respond to them, sometimes more quickly than I may have before this crisis.

Pivoting to ensure the right frequency and form of communication. When my organization initially went to remote work, many of the communications within my team were to provide important company, department, and team updates. As we have continued to work in this environment, in some ways, it is business as usual in a new normal. The number of new information updates has declined, but balancing the frequency and type of communicating continues to be critical.

Our team has continued to pilot and embrace different technologies to ensure we have the right level of connection. While I'm not always the earliest adopter of technologies, I'm enjoying some tools that I may not have otherwise tried. Some of these tools help enable the water-cooler conversations that I used to take for granted.

 Pivoting to ensure that I'm responding adequately to the needs and challenges of my organization and internal audit clients. No organization is immune to this pandemic. As such, I'm trying to ensure that I'm also helping my organization and my internal audit clients think through risks and options to respond to those risks. Part of this work has included staying up to date on the stimulus programs that are available to help different organizations.

 Pivoting to stay connected and "read the room" when we aren't in the same room. One of the skills that many internal auditors rely on is the ability to read and recognize the nonverbal communication of those with whom we are interacting. While I'm still working through this one, I recognize that video/web conferencing is more effective than voice calls alone. 

I hope you, your loved ones, and your co-workers are well during this time. As we all adjust to changing course more quickly and frequently than before, I hope that some of the positive innovations and ways of connecting — even connecting with peers in another office location — are things that we continue to embrace as we adjust to our new normal.
What are the ways in which you are pivoting?