Contributed by John Sanei, a futures strategist who conveys smart, effective strategies to business owners and entrepreneurs to help build the courage and clarity they need to forge the future they want. Sanei is Africa’s first Singularity University faculty member who served as a panelist during EO’s future of leadership event with moderator Winnie Hart.

In the past 12 months, salary cuts, crashing economies and general crisis paralysis have left many leaders wandering aimlessly through the smoking debris of their businesses.

So, has leadership as we know it had a breakdown? No.

In fact, I think it’s a breakthrough.

Tragic, yes, but it’s also given leaders across the world an opportunity to rebuild.

The ways of yesteryear won’t hack it, though. Because this unknown future still has to unfold. The future, like architectural plans for a house, will still evolve, adapt and expand.

A 17^th-century Japanese poet and samurai (how can we not relate to a samurai at a time like this!) said, “My barn has burned down, now I see the moon.” Over the past 80 to 100 years, we as human beings have been experiencing a saeculum―an evolvement of structures from growth to maturity, entropy and now to destruction.

This bleak loss has altered the work-balance perspective, added responsibilities and also posed a big question: How to drive teams, reinvent business models and create content and safe workplaces and spaces while still responding to the digital wave the virus has thrust upon us.