Finding Silver Linings In the Pandemic
Welcome to the Data Era
We live in a workplace where we have so many numbers that are deemed to be important. The number of hours we need to work, the number of dollars we need to make, the number of followers and clients we need to have, the number of profits we need to increase, the number of contacts we need to make every day, the number of employees we need to have and so on. Whether they are arbitrarily chosen or “data science” driven, we are all searching for the perfect ratio, the best data, the magic numbers that we need to get in order to be successful and happy.
In business, we are overflowing with numbers. In the last two years alone, helped by the exponential prevalence of digital life, 90 percent of the world’s data has been created. Some 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are produced by humans every day.
And instead of simplifying how we think and do business, it complexifies everything. Sure, we get more insights into our market, competition and customers, but we also risk putting more pressure on our teams and creating disorientation in the decision-making process.
On a more personal note, COVID-19 numbers have changed our lives as well. Some 148 million of us worldwide have been infected and more than 3 million have lost their lives. Everywhere on Earth, we can feel a sense of insecurity and grief from losing jobs, savings, homes, friends, family.
The truth, in a nutshell, is that the life we knew no longer exists.
Following Fear, We Find Growth
This deeply uncomfortable accelerated change shows us evidence that we, too, might change, releasing the past and giving birth to new ideas, new relationships and new perspectives. CEOs and leaders who had expected to be back to business as usual with the same work culture and workplace may be in for a rude awakening.
The recent Microsoft’s Work Trend Index shows that 40 percent of people globally are considering leaving their employer this year. To explain this number we have the traditional reasons like a desire for career growth, dissatisfaction with leadership teams and “disassociation” from company culture (one of the WFH effects). But the sentiment shared by so many workers is that every day at work must mean something more now.
This massively chaotic and unsettling pandemic year made us experience fear and vulnerability at a traumatic level. But it tells us what matters. And we’re looking at how we got here, what needs to be transformed, what needs to go. This crisis acted as a great awakening with the realisation that the time for everything is now. As the first step to freedom and to happiness, people have decided to stop waiting and to express a new facet of who they are and who they might become.
900 Months
To make sense of this shift of motivation as well as the increasing complexity of our work, there is a number that I hold as truly important. A number that motivates and focuses me every day. It is the number 900, the number of months in the average life expectancy.
This number gets even more startling the more you look into it. We spend 300 of these precious months asleep. That leaves us with 600 waking months — 600 waking months to live the life we dream off, 600 waking months to pursue the things that ignite heart and soul, 600 waking months to discover our true and most powerful self and 600 waking months to experience a life of peace, ease and joy as much as we possibly can.
Of course, there is no way of knowing exactly how many months each of us will live. The truth is that when we break it down, whether it’s 950 months or 850 months, we realise the time is, in fact, very short.
Once we grasp the truth of how important and special time is, we can begin to look at our own lives and ask the important question of what we are giving our time to — and are these things the really important things to us in our one life.
With one-third of our life spent at work, we need to become aware of the “time thieves” in our work, like disorganisation or bad task distribution, as well as the things that take us away from the things that are really important, that makes us feel alive and aligned.
This is our one and only life; it is not a dress rehearsal and time is an incredibly special gift. If we can’t infinitely expand the amount of time we have on this planet, we can expand the time that we do have. By becoming present and more aware of our own life, our own work, we realise that we all have the ability to start making better decisions about where we invest our precious time.
Setting a New Set of Rules at Work
Changes — or the start of them — experienced now are likely to be long-lasting and profound. As leaders we need to embrace this paradigm shift embodied by the desire for trust, authenticity, empathy, meaning and grounding not only at a personal level but also at a professional level.
It means reclaiming the why we do what we do and why should anyone care. Because what makes any organisation thrive is resources and will.
For businesses and brands, the time to show only their best side is over, the mask slipped from their face. It is time to audit their own relationships with their employees, their customers, society and the planet. It is how they show up. How they experience others.
It means awareness. It means transformation. It means courage. It means difficult decisions like choosing stakeholders over shareholders, corporate activism over wait and see approach, conscious capitalism over late capitalism.
I’m sorry. I know many of us are tired. More than tired. We’re weary and fatigued. But transformation has such gifts to offer us. There is so much richness here, so much receiving if we only strip away the pretense and sit in collaboration with our employees, our customers, our stakeholders and our true selves.
In listening, there is opportunity for optimism and to learn the lesson of the pandemic. Here are some silver linings:
- Remembering our Interconnectedness
If we had created imaginary boundaries, sectioning ourselves into countries and states, we now know that we are all living together, breathing the same air, drinking from the same water, eating food grown from the same Earth. We share everything on this planet with other people, and those people are our brothers and sisters — and potential customers, employees and investors.
- Business Exists in Continual Exchange
With the reality of our interdependency in mind, we can build a strategy that enhances cooperation, respect, and togetherness. Everyone plays an important role in a company. Relationships can truly make or break your business. Even the largest companies have realized in 2020 that without their “essential” workers and partners they can’t function. People whom the business world used to regard as replaceable and low-tier are now considered essential to our success, which should give us cause to reconsider the level of respect and care we provide to everyone on our teams, from the bottom to the top.
- Preserving Connections and Nurturing Company Culture
Culture is driven by humans, not machines. Keeping a sense of community while working remotely is vital. Zoom and Google Meet are great, but nothing replaces the human element. As leaders, we need to find creative ways to keep everyone feeling connected and part of a team. Good communication, authenticity, empathy and an understanding of the people we work with are all more important than ever. People need to know that they are still part of a company that cares and is doing everything it can to protect and nurture them through the pandemic and beyond. The exact same thing can be said for communicating with clients. They need to know that we are still in business, able to service them, and are also keeping them and our employees safe.
- Empathy and Patience Are Always Necessary
I believe most of us have learned how essential it is to be aware of the many challenges our employees, co-workers, and partners are facing in their lives. As leaders, It is our responsibility to help them manage the incredible amount of stress they are under. And it’s not just about work stress; it is about finding ways to support our teams and mitigate the stress of the pandemic and the increasing racial and socioeconomic tensions. It’s not only the right thing to do for our people, but it is also sound business practice. We need to provide constructive pathways to discuss challenging issues and we need to implement policies that help our employees find balance and resilience in their lives.
Herbie Hancock on Making Mistakes
How do You Want to Engage the World?
“For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself”
-Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
After a very challenging year that has tested us in every way possible, there is optimism in the air from vaccine rollouts out in many corners of the world and springtime. I see springtime as a worthy antidote to a year marked by tragedy, sadness and stress. This is when we fall in love, again, speak without thinking, say yes to things we would normally refuse. It becomes more difficult to say no when the whole world around us appears to be an astounding affirmation of the resiliency, richness and plain, perfect beauty of life. In honor of spring, let’s envision the many possibilities for the future of good work. The world needs your leadership.
