“I never lose. I either win or learn.” – Nelson Mandela
For starters, wishing you and your family a very happy New Year.
For me personally this past year was extremely challenging. It was filled with professional and personal heartaches, along with some momentous positives. I will skip the details, but suffice it to say that in my lifetime I have never experienced the amount of stress, uncertainty, and angst that 2020 delivered.
Fortunately, every storm passes and the sun eventually emerges to shine again.
To say that I have gained a lot from 2020 is an understatement. This might sound horrible and insensitive, but in many respects, I am very thankful for the last 12 months. While I would not want to live through it again, I have learned and grown tremendously.
Here are some of the key lessons I learned.
Expect the Unexpected
So often in our personal and professional lives, we are surprised and caught off guard by an unexpected external force. Something we did not anticipate, or even imagine possible.
Whether it is an insensitive comment from a friend, a political move by a co-worker, losing a job, a direct assault on our business from a competitor, or, perhaps, even a global pandemic, the world of work is full of VUCA forces (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, uncertainty). These can cause a wide range of impacts from just “having a bad morning” to seriously jeopardizing your livelihood or the viability of your organization.
The best solution to any problem is always to prevent it from happening in the first place. While predicting unknowns is not always possible, developing a good situational awareness of your environment and marketplace is a great place to start.
You might be surprised, as I was, at how many “clues” you missed by rushing through your daily routine and not paying closer attention.
Developing a better understanding of your surroundings will help to better define possible threats. You can then begin to brainstorm their potential impacts, and your response, should they arise. This type of Scenario Planning is a key aspect of VUCA Strategic Planning, and doing it regularly will help to ensure you and your organization are more resilient against any threats.
External forces are very real. We cannot ignore them. However, we also cannot allow them to consume us.
When they hit us, we have to address them, learn from them, and then focus on moving forward.
Crisis Can Lead to Introspection
Another big lesson from all the VUCA forces that hit me this past year was this: The event does not define us. It is how we choose to respond that counts.
I have seen three common response patterns, and depending on the situation, each of them has merit:
- You can decide to hunker down and hide. Sometimes we get lucky and the storm will pass by leaving us unscathed. Unfortunately, for many issues in the world of work, hope is not a strategy, and the issue will still likely be there tomorrow.
- You can lash out. With the right strategy, fighting back can sometimes be effective. However, if you get it wrong, things can get messy in a hurry.
- Or, you can take it as a learning opportunity and figure out how to move on. Sometimes we have to accept the things we cannot change, and pivot.
There is a lot of value to be gained from detaching yourself (taking a neutral and objective view), reviewing what happened (being honest, not overstating it but also not sugarcoating it). This allows you the time and space to figure out what you could or should have done differently (if anything). Which hopefully will lead to internalizing the lesson (so you do not repeat the same mistake again), and then figuring out the plan to quickly move on.
Another lesson that 2020 taught me was I am often guilty of not taking enough time for introspection. I think it is a common executive ailment – everyone is so stretched for time, moving fast, and always focused on solving problems quickly. This merciless cycle does not afford the time we need to process and learn.
Like many professionals, the pandemic forced me to work from home and prevented any business travel since March. This has given me more time to think, to learn, and to strategize about the future than I have had in the past 20 years. As an added bonus, the time with family and a better work/life balance has been priceless.
Crisis can lead to healthy introspection, if you take the time to do it.
Introspection Leads to Reinvention
By allowing ourselves time for introspection, something magical happens. We not only gain clarity, but also a newfound confidence to revisit and challenge the status quo. I have found that the more profound the external force, the greater the potential opportunity for change.
As evidence, we do not need to look much further than what has happened in the world of work over the past 10 months. The global COVID-19 pandemic caused many organizations to make rapid and far-reaching changes to how they get work done. A few examples of this dynamic workforce and workplace reinvention:
- As evidenced by the unprecedented spike in US unemployment, almost every organization cut headcount in 2020. While we can debate whether some organizations did not cut enough, and others perhaps cut too far, the reality is millions of jobs are likely not coming back in their prior form. Many of these roles will resurface as more flexible, contingent jobs.
- Some industries (for example, travel) may never come back to the same pre-pandemic level, while others (for example, home delivery) will reach new highs.
- In 2020 we proved that almost every white-collar role can effectively be accomplished working from home. Many studies I read actually showed an increase in productivity for these newly remote workers. As the pandemic recedes, it will be interesting to see what organizations decide to do with their remote workforces, and their need for traditional office space.
- Many highly skilled professionals will take advantage of these radical changes in the workplace and reinvent their careers as experts for hire (like how I am helping some awesome growth minded organizations with my 1CMO Consulting services!), achieving new levels of career satisfaction and work/life balance.
- The research firm Gartner, predicts that by 2024 only a quarter of workplace meetings will take place in person. The meteoric rise of virtual meetings will have far-reaching impacts. Not only eliminating the need for a lot of corporate real estate, but also changing the dynamic of field sales (and all the things that accompany it like business travel and entertainment!)
- The Gartner Future of Sales 2025 report predicts that by 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will occur in digital channels. In other words, not in person.
These are just a few examples of how organizations, and the individuals who work in them, have been forced to challenge their historical assumptions when confronted by a crisis. The ability to test different approaches, see what sticks, and then quickly pivot, is the winning approach.
Reinvention Leads to New Opportunity
I am looking forward to seeing what the year 2021 has in store.
As we begin slowly emerging from our pandemic-forced hibernation, my prediction is that there will be many new opportunities (both personal and professional) in the upcoming year, visible to those who are paying attention to their surroundings and actively looking for them!
My practice of growth strategy consulting is certain to benefit from a rising optimism in the markets. And I suspect many readers of this article will be able to say the same.
With that, I say one last goodbye to the year 2020. I am very thankful and blessed to have survived intact, but I will NOT miss you.
-Onward