Ending our first full week of national #lockdown, EasyEquities held its first completely remote staff meeting. Normally we get together at Easy HQ on a Friday afternoon to reflect, share and to celebrate. And there was no way a virus would stop that.
About 90 Easy team mates got together virtually for our monthly award session. This month we had a lot of people to acknowledge for the great work they've done. The meeting coincided with the release of our financials, where we've made great progress but there's more info on that here.
To kick the meeting off, we had a guest speaker of note. Internationally renowned speaker and futurist, Graeme Codrington, joined us for an already unique moment in Purple Group history to make it exceptionally insightful.
In case you’re not already aware of who Graeme is, you can’t really summarise the author and futurist in one blog, let alone a few sentences. Covering a wide range of topics, Graeme authored a number of titles from ‘Mind Over Money’ to ‘Mind the Gap,’ totaling eight books. He is also a co-founder of strategic insights company TomorrowToday. His insights on the future are derived from in-depth understanding of trends and social analysis.
Graeme put the Coronavirus outbreak at the forefront of the staff meeting. Sharing the negatives and positives in the global responses we’re seeing to the COVID-19 outbreak, the talk underscored the importance cooperation and leadership in a time like this. We also delved into the more minute details of the Coronavirus, such as likelihood of contamination.
The big takeaway from his talk was that our government and South Africans were on the right track toward addressing the spread of COVID-19. A lot is left to be desired in bigger markets with some countries still not placing travel bans and minimising travel. We’re at a critical stage in the pandemic and there’s a lot more to come out of this outbreak. Economically, an aftershock is still to come, and as a country and planet we need to prepare further for it.
Team Easy has been prepared to work remotely since 2018, when we started implementing an Agile approach to the business. This made Graeme’s shout-out on how Easy are managing the lockdown, and catering to clients in this new world, all the more satisfying.
Scary as our new reality is, Graeme's conversation with us felt reassuring overall. I just wish we could have had drinks with the man to pick his brain further, but I get the feeling that Team Easy and I will get that opportunity soon enough.
As individuals and as a nation, all that’s left to do is to cooperate and work together. After all, we’re in it together.