The impact of the Delta variant, the Great Disengagement, and a case study in employee empowerment

1. There’s an old military expression: No plan survives first contact with the enemy. It’s been repeated countless times with many variations, including, famously, by Winston Churchill and Dwight Eisenhower. But perhaps no one summarized it as well as the boxer Mike Tyson, who said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

There’s an old saying to the effect that planning is essential, but plans are worthless. That’s kind of what happened in the summer of 2021, as organizations across the country and around the world were moving forward with their return-to-the-workplace policies. The COVID-19 pandemic had subsided all through the first half of the year as vaccination reached virtually all Americans who wanted it. The challenge was that not all Americans wanted it, and then a highly contagious new strain of the virus, the Delta variant, swept through the country.