In just a few weeks time, the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak that first emerged from Wuhan, China has become an emerging global threat with some health officials calling the virus a global pandemic. While the virus has yet to reach the scale of the catastrophic Spanish Flu of 1918 that killed 195,000 Americans alone, or even the Avian Influenza of 2013, governments, businesses and officials are taking dramatic action: cancelling events, classes and travel in all arenas of life. The annual technology, music and film festival SXSW Festival was cancelled, as was the Women of the World Festival, Mobile World Congress, and countless other business, technology, media and cultural events. Others events were moved online, or postponed indefinitely.

What can community and business leaders learn from this viral outbreak? A lot. And hopefully, we can adapt and work through this crisis—coming out the other side with a more resilient community or organization. These are my take-aways on how we might adapt to meet this current crisis, and future hazards, biological, economic or other.

Embrace Remote Meetings

With the COVID-19 outbreak many in-person meetings and events are shifting online to avoid person-to-person transmission. That's great for the environment (less carbon used to move people together) and based on advice of health experts it is one of the most effective ways to cut down on the spread of this deadly virus. But even after this outbreak, organizations should lean into remote meetings and remote work technologies, so the companies can become more resilient against all types of community and business threats.

While we've had remote VPN systems and Web and virtual meeting technologies like NetMeeting and GoToMeeting for almost 30 years, these tools have not been fully embraced by businesses and governments, and are still seen as a sub-par experience compared to in-person meetings. The truth is with modern high-bandwidth connections, efficient video CODECs and low-latency meeting technology, the Skype or Google Hangout of today is nothing like it was even just five years ago. The picture and audio is sharp, the interactive features are accessible, and the virtual meeting feels so much more like the in-person experience it is replicating.

It's time every business leader audits their current practices and embraces the technology when appropriate for board meetings all the way down to all-staff addresses. Yes, IRL face time matters, but this concept matters less in a global workforce, whether during a crisis or not.

Embrace Remote Work

Beyond just implementing additional virtual meetings and conferences, each leader should also look at the online dashboards and systems he or she has in place to empower staff members to work remotely. This can include buying enough licenses so everyone in the organization can be on the same SaaS tool at the same time to developing practices to allow your staff to log in and get work done from anywhere, anytime. Cloud file storage tools like Dropbox, streamlined communication tools like Slack and workflow processes solutions like Monday.com all exist, so onboarding solutions has never been quicker. Leaders just need to integrate the right ones to make remote work more seamless.

While this audit and evolution of your practices will take capital, organizational buy-in, and plenty of time, in the long run you'll be able to confront the next challenge as a more robust organization, whether the hazard is health, weather or economic in nature.

How would people work remote all the time anyway?

I once had a senior HR leader at a global travel technology company say to me "how would people work remote all the time anyway?" As her words met my ear all I could think was crazy talk! Tens of millions of professionals in many different industries already do this, and have for more than a decade and a half.

We need our senior leaders to let go of their past assumptions, objectively review where these practices make sense for their company, and then commit to this new operational paradigm. The question to ask should be "How can 'working remote' work for us and what do we need to do to make this the new norm?"

Evolve Your Culture

A big part of combating a major global threat like COVID-19 is evolving your organization's culture to be more agile and responsive. This will look different for every company, but could include ensuring staff are equipped with laptops instead of desktops (yes, the latter actually still happens) and that your employees bring them home each night along with any other tools in the event an emergency arises. This evolution in culture can include how employee manage their "away", "busy" and "available" messages in your chat client so IM discussions are as synchronous as dropping by a coworkers desk in person.

This evolution in culture and business practices could even be as simple as being hyper clear on the new roles and responsibilities when performing a reorg, or adding a new team. The better your team knows who does what the quicker they will be able to respond. The bus analogy from Jim Collin's From Good to Great is a great model to consider when communicating reorgs and responsibilites.

The questions a leader might ask can include:

• What parts of the culture are slowing down a response to a crisis like COVID-19?

• What parts of our operations can evolve so that we don't have to "build new" when a threat does arise (think meetings, email templates, action plans)?

• How can your culture and business processes anticipate and respond to future crises?

My hope is that at the individual, community and organizational level we're able to overcome the COVID-19 outbreak as quickly as possible. Whatever the lessons we learn along the way, let's be sure to apply them and evolve our organizations to meet the next threat head on, even when today's hazard no longer dominates news headlines.