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An inspiring example of the net positive is Kenya-based Jessica Posner Odede, CEO of the global not-for-profit, Girl Effect (on which Jim is a board director), who shared with us that she has experienced game-changing benefits from the shift to remote work. We spoke to Jess to learn how she's used leading at a distance to reimagine how the entire organization operates. Girl Effect's mission is to empower girls around the world through youth brands and mobile platforms to change their lives. Focused on designing girl-centered technology, they create content and products that millions of girls, particularly those in Africa and India, use in ways that encourage their health and well-being. Rather than managing the organization and making decisions from a centralized headquarter office in London, where the organization had been based before Jess became CEO in 2019, Jess created a distributed organization, with colleagues on three continents. Prior to COVID-19, Jess moved to Nairobi herself (with her Kenyan husband, Kennedy Odede). The most critical lesson for Jess coming out of 2020 is that it's not just about how you lead a virtual team, but it's about taking the organization to your consumers and rethinking the delivery to dramatically increase your impact.

Other companies are following this principle of changing how the business operates to adapt to the times. Sandeep Mathrani, CEO of flex space behemoth WeWork, for example, told us how he is adapting the business to the times. Before COVID-19, WeWork's main focus was its turnaround – streamlining the organization's overhead expenses and optimizing its real estate portfolio. But as the pandemic took control of the industry, WeWork's strategy shifted to diversifying its member base beyond the company's traditional start-up and enterprise customers. As a result the company moved to digitize its core workspace product through subscription and on-demand models while also targeting industries like higher education and life sciences, which, regardless of the pandemic, are in need of innovative space solutions.

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, which invested an estimated $5 billion to create its space-age Apple Park campus in 2017, has been quoted⁴ in the press that he was both surprised and impressed by employees’ ability to operate remotely. In 2020, the company created products, including new Apple Watches and iPads, that launched on time, even though most employees were working away from the office. He said that Apple will not return to the way they were, “because we've found that there are some things that actually work really well virtually.”