Committed to Exploring Risk

It was less than a week before we went to print with this issue, and my phone rang late in the day.

It was Scott Sinder, The Council’s chief legal officer. He has never missed a column deadline in 15+ years. And rest assured, he wasn’t going to this time. But it was the timing. The coronavirus has been a rapidly changing crisis. Every day a new conversation, new details, and the possibility of being out of date. He didn’t want to get it wrong. How close to deadline was too close?

Being a monthly print magazine, we generally focus on topics that develop over time and allow for space and dialogue. We plan our editorial content months out. But when the coronavirus pandemic happened, with such a direct impact on all of us personally and professionally, we couldn’t ignore the issue at hand. We had to take a hard look at our content in the moment.

But shifting an editorial strategy overnight is daunting. My immediate reaction was, how can we tell a story with any accuracy when things change daily? The change in number of people dying and sickened, the change in legislation for suffering businesses, the change in what scientists and doctors seem to know about the virus. We have two and a half weeks between our last possible edit and when the magazine arrives in mailboxes. So much could happen.

But, as a team, we talked it out. We talked about remaining focused on the core topics that will always matter to you, our readers, and connecting the implications of the pandemic as they become more apparent to those issues. Topics like technology, public health, and leadership—already on our agenda—will remain top of mind.

We also discussed the power of our digital platform, leadersedge.com. Because we know that, while these long-term implications are necessary to explore, right now many of us want as much information as possible on the virus, the economy, the government response. So we’re applying our unique lens to shorter, more real-time digital content up front, as well as follow-on digital pieces to our print features as the landscape changes. All of this can be found at leadersedge.com/tag/coronavirus.

As for our May 2020 issue, we took an early look at some of the implications of coronavirus for our healthcare and employee benefits systems, for gig workers, for pandemic risk legislation, and for new markets like esports. Some of these were topics we were researching before the pandemic, and we just twisted our focus to account for this crisis. Others we’ve only begun to delve into in response to the crisis and will likely take much longer to fully understand.

We will continue to ask questions and search for the potential risks rising out of the pandemic for your business and for your clients. Leader’s Edge is committed to exploring risk in an ever-changing world. That is our mission, and it is truer now more than ever.