Covid-19 popped up out of nowhere in January 2020 and we began following the news reports about this mysterious virus coming out of China.  We all remembered the SARS era and how Japan had sailed through that pretty well. We weren’t particularly worried and expected Japan would sail through this one too. However, around the middle of February our clients starting postponing scheduled in-house training.  This is when we realised Covid-19 was a serious issue.  We had public classes scheduled too and at our own volition, worrying about people’s safety, we decided to postpone them.  We also said to our team to work from home.  If they had to come to the office, they could do so, but try to come in late to avoid rush hour trains and go home early for the same reason.  On March 3rd we had a socially distanced, mask wearing Town Hall. This was the last mass gathering of the clan to date.  We were able to piggyback on our American colleagues ten years of experience delivering LIVE On Line training and we pivoted across to remote delivery of our content.   For the first time in my career, I was leading a remote team, with a single person in each location, some working from a desk, others from their kitchen table, couch or the kotatsu, the low table typical of many Japanese homes where you sit on the floor.  I went out and bought a whole swag of headsets for everyone.  Actually, when I got down to the electronics store, I realised I wasn’t the only one thinking like this, because the shelves were pretty much stripped bare.  I kicked myself for not being sharper and speedier about the new necessities.  Fortunately, we all had laptops, so we could work from anywhere.  We had previously considered moving our server to the cloud and it was then that I regretted we hadn’t taken that step at that time.   I wanted to keep the team together, so we transferred our morning chorei or morning meeting online.  We call it the “Daily Dale”. I made it the rule you have to dress for work, regardless of whether you are working from home or not.  You also have to come on camera.  I required this so we could keep an eye on everyone, in case some people are becoming isolated and depressed, being stuck at home all the time and are starting to withdraw.   In our normal routine, by turn, we each lead everyone through the “Daily Dale” covering the company Vision, Mission, Values etc. We do this every day to re-energise our WHY.  We kept this going so that every day just about everyone could reconnect with each other.  After a while, I realised we needed to reproduce the chit chat opportunities that you get when working together in an office. We started “Coffee Time With Dale” at 3.00pm every day, for those who wanted to catch up informally with their colleagues.   I had four new staff start in January, just in time for the business to plummet and the team to disperse.  They had very little time in the office with their colleagues, especially in those all important early days of starting with a new company.  They needed lots of help on how to do things and where things were located.  I found that leading a dispersed team was much more time consuming than normal.  I was the center of the wheel and I had spoke connections to my reports, but what was missing were the cross spokes connecting them together.  I found I had to spend time telling the others about aspects of a conversation and decisions I had reached with their team mates.  Of course, they wouldn’t answer their phones, so I needed to call multiple times and leave messages.  I also found that the millennials in my team were not good with the phone.  They don’t check their messages. The whole chain of command was bogging down.   Somehow, we have kept it all together so far.  My concern is this situation is likely to last until the end of the year and beyond with everyone working from home.  I had scheduled another full safety Town Hall for January 2021, just to get people together for some face time, after