The Agile Journey to Your Future

Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds that you plant. – Robert Louis Stevenson

When humans are confronted with fearful circumstances – physical, emotional, or existential — we have three possible spontaneous reactions: Freeze, Fight, or Flight. FFF. Each has its own value – and its own challenges. Covid-19 has brought out some of the responses in most of us. Some lucky folks have had nothing but success through this period. People in the paper goods world (why DO we all want a three-month supply of toilet paper?), sanitizer manufacturers, and grocery businesses are doing disproportionately well. Many more are simply trying to make our lives work, having the kids at home, worrying about our extended families, and starting to get really stir crazy.

It’s enough to cause us to fall into our personal FFF stress trap. Yeah, the F sound works…

Then we hear about ‘normal’; or the ‘new normal,’ or the new future, and that excites or scares us – or a bit of both. It can be so hard to know what to do, how to do it, and what the future will look like. People and markets abhor ambiguity. And today, we seem to have little choice…

…but we do!

Change has been a constant throughout history. ‘Technology’ has sped up change – brought significant progress – at every turn. Think about how harnessing fire must have transformed humankind. Warmth, light, cooking. Or the wheel — we could transport ourselves and our belongings, grind our grains, widen our horizons, amazingly. The printing press changed the world and the sharing of information. The telegraph, radio, telephone, electricity — They all brought wonderment and improvement. They also brought disruption and fear. Fire destroys; wheels bring interlopers to our unreachable lands. Those who sold lighting oils or mail services or newspapers were all disrupted by one or all of the new ‘technologies.’ Digital photography killed Kodak. Streaming killed Blockbuster. And on and on…

Netflix started by delivering DVDs. They pivoted to streaming. IBM sold typewriters and later, computers. Now, they sell Watson and other information services. Amazon sold books, and many expected them to die thousand times over. Right…

Covid-19 has changed our world. We know it. We just don’t know exactly how, and what it might look like going forward. We DO know that virtual working is not going to go away. Why spend the time and money to commute and to house workers, when so much can get done remotely. Believe me, this has disrupted Third Level’s work, totally. Teams need to learn to work as teams without being physically together. We need to learn virtual tools, and no amount of Zoom will replace being in a room together. Waiting for that time of being together to build and bond teams is a vacuum that we cannot allow to stop us. So, we plant seeds. We are doing webinars. We are designing programs differently so that we can learn, coach, and facilitate better in these new and very uncertain times. It’s working…it’s different. And even when times allow us back into the room with our clients, we will have new tools to reach further, faster, and with the joy of helping our clients prosper.

What seeds can you plant? How long can you wait? Let’s explore that, together.

I trust that this helps. Stay safe and well, Stephen

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