Why do you exist?
What is the fundamental value you bring to the table?
Do you matter?
At the end of the day, “crisis” allows us to recalibrate into a “Now Normal” way of living. The now normal is the call to live in the present with a fundamental belief in the future, without necessarily defining or predicting what that is. The very steps of the “now normal” person, are guided by how well they see, hear and feel their reality. And reality is composed of spirit and matter in a crazy dance called life. Everything can change, will change. What you hear is an unconscious riffing, a cultural improvisation. Unfortunately, it unsettles us.
If you are a “leader”, you are called to help people be thankful, hopeful and conscious in the dance. That is not a role for the faint of heart. Your people will be fearful. Their norms are being violated. You must be “whole” before you can truly lead them.
So, if a CEO comes to me today and asks: “What shall I do in this moment in time?”: I would say, take a personal inventory of your foundational values. Then revisit your organizational purpose and the gap that exists between that purpose and your actions. If the purpose and/or execution falls short, create the scaffolding that will allow you and your people to grow. More than ever, people need to be part of something that is meaningful, valuable, and inspirational. That helps them move from “I don’t have” to a thankfulness that overcomes their narrow view of themselves and others, their consuming attention to the crisis of the moment. You are helping them with a trigger that can be used to alter their view of reality.
You are wonderfully and uniquely designed. You matter. You are not here to “survive”. You are here to create. This is your time to look inside and around you and begin the renovation and then the innovation that will define your legacy; personally (who you are), professionally (what you are called to do) and with others (organizationally). You want and need a Path to Value™
*1 “Now Normal” The Atlantic: JULIETTE KAYYEM, quotes Jonathan Walton, the dean of Wake Forest University's School of divinity. Kayyem is a former assistant secretary for homeland security under President Obama, is the faculty chair of the homeland security program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She is the author of Security Mom: An Unclassified Guide to Protecting Our Homeland and Your Home.
*2 Whole and Intentional Leadership Development (WiLD) founded by Dr. Rob McKenna.
*3 The Great Conversation is a roundtable of thought leaders that gather virtually and physically to explore how we design, manage and measure our organizations today, and how we might be disrupted from these best practices and old notions of performance by the innovations of tomorrow. This is a personal and a professional as well as an avocational and vocational journey.