Monday, 9th of November 2020… the DAX goes through the roof and breaks through the 13,000 mark. What happened?

The crash of the Zoom share between 12:00 and 13:00

Very easy: BioNTech and Pfizer announce that they will apply for approval for their corona vaccine. And they will do so this month. Not to mention the fact that I am interested in what makes organisations tick that manage to complete an unpredictable task in about a tenth of the usual time. And this does not only include the two companies mentioned above, but also explicitly includes approval authorities, investors, “thinking suppliers” and many others. So apart from that: why is everyone so enthusiastic about the shares? A look at the loser of the day gives an explanation:

Performance of the Zoom share on 9 November 2020 (own chart)

A few minutes after the announcement from the vaccination sector, another stock is going down similarly drastically: Zoom – the darling of investors since about mid-March. What? No more online meetings? Was that what was meant by “back to normal”?

The organisation of disorder is less and less central

No – even if (almost) all of them are vaccinated ‘from tomorrow’ … the zooming will continue. Not because travelling is contagious or because driving for the two hours meeting is not worth it after all. The reasons are different: Digitalisation, globalisation, scattered and at the same time networked information. In the future, it will become increasingly important to make an initial quick decision together with several people. ‘Show the rough direction’ – no need for detailed plans after endless preparation and analysis. And just as long face-to-face sessions including Power Point battles. It needs a short spontaneous conference of all those who contribute information. And they are not always sitting in one and the same place right now. Leading at a distance, lateral leadership, quick decisions by consensus are not extraordinary measures in pandemic times. They are characteristics of a less hierarchical, less predictable and less centralised organisation of organisation. Organising the disorder of things – that is leadership in the digital transformation.

Frank Wippermann

picture: Shutterstock (249397207)