What kind of company culture do you want to build this year? The year 2020 has been the perfect storm—a confluence of events, and deep societal problems that were bubbling under the glossy filters of our Instagram addled lives waiting to explode. And we are now in the eye of the storm. Many of us have questions about what we are going to do after social distancing measures are lifted in our cities. Where will we travel? Which restaurants do we want to try? What will weddings look like? Who do we want to spend time with? But perhaps the single most important question we need to ask ourselves is — Who do we want to be after 2020?
An exercise in mental resilience
To say that people are feeling an inordinate amount of anxiety right now is an understatement. Our resilience is being tested like never before. But for the very first time many of us have been given the gift of time. With daily commutes, unnecessary meetings, and social obligations out of the way, household errands reduced to the minimum, we have an opportunity to finally focus on our mental well-being.
Exercise and meditation are touted as the go-to, to help boost mental well-being, but there is another possibility open to us now that we have time — reconnecting with nature. As American essayist and author Henry David Thoreau said in his most famous work, Walden —“We need the tonic of wildness….At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us. We can never have enough of nature.” It is a long-held and well-known belief that change starts in the mind. What better way to start to reinforce our resilience than by nourishing our minds?
We need the tonic of wildness….At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us. We can never have enough of nature.
Creativity for good
As jobs disappear and companies are forced to lay off workers, many businesses are turning to the gig economy to look for candidates to complete the work that would have been done by full-time permanent employees. Project based work seems to be the way forward. The internet has become a vast hub of resources to learn new skills and pursue passions with online resources and learning communities like Skillshare and Masterclass. For most of us, the gift of time and space from our regular gigs has allowed space to revaluate what we want and how we want to achieve it. Ideas that couldn’t come to us when we were running between meetings, grabbing lunches at our desk and on our phones, now have space to arise and flourish.
We are seeing countless examples of businesses and individuals tapping into their talents and using their creativity for good. HotBlack Coffee a Toronto-based cafe, whose ethos and design thinking centers around human interaction and in-person connection, pivoted their approach on reopening. Instead of having customers in their location, they started making bread in-house and providing local wine, cheese, and soup baskets for curb-side pickup to COVID-weary customers. New York-based millennial cinephiles, Matt Starr and Ellie Sachs created the Long Distance Movie Club, a virtual movie watching club for senior citizens who might be feeling extra isolated during the pandemic. COVID-19 has opened a world of possibility for new types of careers and new ways of contributing.
Examining our values
People all over the world are confronted with the consequences of their ethical, political, and economic choices. The economic devastation to individual households because of COVID-19 is making us rethink our economic values and whether the “old normal” was working. The profit over people model that we have for so long accepted and participated in, is being displaced by the profit for purpose model.
The horrific murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor followed by protests all over the world, are proof of the deep-rooted systemic racism in our society and the urgency with which we need to tackle corruption and prejudice in our institutions. Accountability from leaders, politicians, businesses, and individuals is at an all time high. 2020 has been an exercise in examining our values as individuals and as a society and it is evident, we have come up short. If nothing else, 2020 is the year for us to examine our choices and if they have not worked, to make better ones. It is a year to choose with our wallets and our voices and our words and our votes.
2020 has no doubt been a memorable and meme-able year so far. But it has also been one of the most painful years in memory. @Leslie Dwight wrote a poem that went viral on Instagram. It reads, “What if 2020 isn’t cancelled? What if 2020 is the year we have been waiting for? A year so uncomfortable, so painful, so scary so raw — that it finally forces us to grow. A year that screams so loud, finally awakening us from our ignorant slumber. A year we finally accept the need for change. Declare change. Work for change. Become the change. A year we finally band together, instead of pushing each other further apart. 2020 isn’t cancelled, but rather the most important year of them all.”
So, I ask you — who will you be after 2020?
