Author: Santosh Kumar

In a recent article, my colleagues Fran Cherny and Thierry De Beyssac offered some thoughts on Survivor Syndrome; how the present challenges have the potential to create organizational trauma affecting all the dimensions of business and how to better cope with this. They offer in their article a list of actions to help and support your employees as we move through this time together. The first on the list being: “to put things on the table.” What does it mean to “put things on the table?” What can I do differently to help myself and others around me during this difficult time?
What does it mean to “put things on the table?”
The emotions that are triggered in us by a world in constant “VUCA Reloaded Mode” may put us in a place that oscillates between harmful repression and brutal explosion. Anger, for example, permeates openly or simmers under the surface. As we speak to colleagues, friends or family members, it can almost tele-transport itself across remote devices. I like to say that as long as the emotion “has you,” you have no choice. You will do whatever the emotion does, only to regret it later. You will say things that hurt others, make promises that are impossible to deliver… you name it.
I like to offer to my clients the following concept: “the only way out is through.” In order to put things on the table, you must enter a space of higher wisdom and compassion.
 

You do that by:

  1. Taking a few deep breaths of awareness: You separate yourself from the story. It becomes “you have the emotion,” rather than “the emotion has you.” You take perspective of your thoughts. The “I” (the person) that has the thought is NOT the thought. I feel angry, rather than I am angry.
  2. Accepting the emotion unconditionally: Realize that the emotion makes perfect sense, given the story you are telling yourself.
  3. Analyzing the story behind the emotion: Every emotion has an archetypal story. For example, anger or frustration has the story: “something bad is happening and it should not be happening.”
  4. Expressing your thoughts and ideas from a place of tentativeness and humility: As you engage in conversations with your colleagues or leaders about what is going on, you adopt the perspective of good intent from everyone. Even when you don’t understand what is going on, you assume that the people in charge of calling the shots have everyone’s interest at heart.
  5. Inquiring about the thoughts and ideas of others from a place of wanting to learn, of curiosity: The combination of 4 and 5 creates the conversational dance where any topic can be addressed or put on the table.

 

Put things on the table

Working through steps 1-3 are paramount if you would like to have a constructive conversation. Taking these steps will set the conditions for the kind of conversation you want to have. The promise is that you will be better able to understand each other. And then make better and informed decisions, for the good of the business, the team and yourself. Being able to address difficult topics in an open, caring and compassionate way is a powerful way to increase connection among your employees in these difficult times.

Quote from James Anthony Froude "You cannot dream yourself into a character,; you must forge and hammer yourself one." Never let a good crisis go to waste.
In the first post of this series, I shared an anecdote of how I once heard an executive in the US say “Never let a good crisis go to waste”. On the second post, we briefly explored some ideas about how the crisis and how we respond to it might have a long-lasting effect, with downstream effects impacting our character. In this post, I would like to share some thoughts on how a practice of empathy and gratitude can be a character-building ‘workout’.
As the pandemic continues to wreak havoc in our healthcare and economic systems at the macro-level, the downstream impacts it has on our lives are extremely varied. However, it is difficult to keep in mind the different impact ‘modalities’ it has. The conversations, articles, podcasts, news, etc. from the last weeks have gotten me thinking about the different realities people are experiencing – and it’s prompted me both to empathize more and be grateful for my own situation (still working on it!). We can look at some of these different realities through a large number of different ‘lenses’ or perspectives to help with the mental and emotional exercise. Let’s start with the lens of work situation by looking at a very very high level way of grouping different types of work circumstances many of us are facing right now.

Knowledge / remote workers

This is a segment of the population in many countries that has the great fortune of being able to continue their work from home. Some were already doing it before the crisis, but many people in several countries are now full-time remote workers, for the first time. Those who had not worked remotely before might be struggling with the basics: i.e. setting up a proper physical space, improving their setup to have proper internet connectivity (have you been on a videoconference recently where someone is struggling to get good wifi signal inside their house?), proper headset, etc. For some others, the challange might be not only the setup, but also the learning curve to work remotely: I’ve heard from many of our clients how they have struggled to teach their people how to work remotely overnight, with some even paying online courses to teach their workforce how to operate in this environment. There are some others who now struggle to manage a workforce which became a distributed one overnight.
On top of this we can layer other type of complications – a Wall Street firm HR Director recently shared with me a situation they are facing with their younger workers. Many of them might find themselves working out of a densely populated urban area in which they live with roommates in a small space (think NY or San Francisco, for example). In their small apartments, they might not even have a suitable space to camp out with their laptop and take a call, or said space is not enough to have all roommates trying to do it simultaneously. Others might find themselves locked in their house with their kids running around with no school – trying now to double not only as remote workers but as homeschool teachers. I have heard hundreds of variants of this type of situation, but even though it is undeniably disruptive and stressful, it is a great situation to be in, especially if we consider others.

Still with a job, risking it

There are many others who are fortunate enough to still have a job, but it can’t be performed remotely, and it needs to be performed. Thousands of healthcare workers (facing greater risks than anyone), bank branch employees, supermarket employees, essential service provider workers (water, electricity, internet) among many others. They not only have to deal with potentially having their kids at home, but to continue performing their job – and essentially doing it knowing that everyday that passes they risk contagion, with all the uncertainty that comes with it. “Will I get mild symptoms or end in the hospital? Can I pass it on to my kids and or older relatives living with us?” are thoughts we all might have, but I can only imagine the way they are amplified for those having to leave home everyday to go to work.

Now unemployed – and unprotected

Then we have millions who are now (or about to be) unemployed… and depending on which country they are in, and their situation, this can be a downward spiral with potential ramifications worse than the virus’ most common course. A startup CEO in Mexico recently told me “in my country, poverty will kill more people than the virus”. There are billions of people who live either under the poverty line, or who barely surpass it yet require income on a daily or weekly basis to survive. An interruption in income of a few days can mean they can’t pay rent or other essential expenses. Losing employment can mean they lose their medical insurance, whether private or public…

Other lenses

Sickness and death is yet another lens through which we can try to empathize. Both can touch us all – whether we live in the 1% strata or live in poverty, employed or unemployed, no one is immune to this. We’ve heard about infected (and recently dead) royals and celebrities all the way to the mass graves for the less fortunate ones.
There are additional, countless lenses through which we can try to empathize with others during these times: age (i.e. older people seem to have higher mortality rates), having access or not to testing and healthcare if needed, being able to take care of oneself even for basic chores like shopping, the political situation of where you live (those under totalitarian regimes might be on slippery slope to lose even more freedom), etc.
Whatever the lenses we choose to practice empathy, they can be helpful to get some understanding of what others are living during this crisis. If you are reading this, there is a very reasonable chance you are in one of the more fortunate situations: hopefully you have the financial means to weather this storm out, or you still have a job you can do remotely. If this is the case, remember, even if you are experiencing hardships, count your blessings: there are probably millions who would see your current situation as an answer to their prayers, if they could switch places with you today. Realizing that can help put things in perspective – and it’s one of many ways in which we can individually do our work to avoid letting this crisis go to waste.
 
First published in LinkedIn 

Marcus Aurelius quote "It can ruin your life only if it ruins your character. Otherwise, it cannot harm you - inside or out." Never let a good crisis go to waste: Part 2 - Who do you want to become? Crises as opportunities to (re)build our character.

Marcus Aurelius quote "It can ruin your life only if it ruins your character. Otherwise, it cannot harm you - inside or out." Never let a good crisis go to waste: Part 2 - Who do you want to become? Crises as opportunities to (re)build our character.
It can ruin your life only if it ruins your character. Otherwise it cannot harm you — inside or out. Marcus Aurelius
One of the most tangible aspects of a crisis like the one we are living is the material damage it causes: sickness, death, lost jobs, etc. There is, however, a less tangible but also very important dimension: the net balance a crisis has on our character as individuals, and the overall impact on society as a whole stemming from this.
Many phrases such as ‘adversity reveals character’, or variants of it, seem to indicate that a crisis will bring out who we truly are – and in many cases this won’t be a pretty sight. For example, in the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic we can find dozens of stories of people who are taking advantage of the situation for their own benefit.
The flip side to this is seeing others rise to the occasion. Every tragedy brings its host of heroes, even if most of them remain unknown. Think of the first responders during 9/11, firefighters and others helping people out of crumbled buildings during an earthquake, rescue personnel saving people during floods – or, right now, thousands of healthcare workers, law enforcement personnel, food supply chain workers and countless others who are risking their lives for others.

The opportunities

We see responses ranging from the vile to the heroic and everything in between. This, however, does not prove that the type of responses we see is an inevitable result of a crisis ‘revealing the true colors of individuals’. Even under the most dire of circumstances, we all still have a choice. In other words, critical situations highly correlate with individuals showing more of who they are, but it does not invariably cause it. This might seem like word play from someone with nothing better to do than playing semantics, yet the implications are deeply profound.
Circumstances do not force me into acting one way or another (for better or worse) – I still have a choice. And what I choose has an impact on my character, every single time. Given that crises confront us with an abnormally high number of choices to make every day, we are basically on an accelerated path to build or destroy our character – and we do not have the option of choosing not to be on this path. Either by action or inaction we are doing something to our character. We are much better off by becoming aware of this and improving our choices every day.
Let’s look at this at different levels to illustrate:

At a personal level

A crisis is a perfect (and unavoidable) daily practice of how we react in the face of stress. It is an emotional gym that gives us the opportunity to ‘put in our reps’ every day. Pandemic panic shopping is making it increasingly hard to find vital supplies? This is a text-book definition of a situation to be legitimately stressed about: it can kickstart a downward spiral of fear, horror, self-pity, anger.
It’s also an opportunity to practice how to refocus my mind on what I can control and operate in that space, as limited as it might be: first rep of the day. Kids running around the house with no school – while trying to take a conference call? Check, that is very stressing – how am I going to respond to this? Second rep of the day. Sales projections are down? Third rep of the day: practice how I will manage my stress. You get the picture.
The difference with a physical gym is that here we don’t have the alternative to skip it: we are in it, and we will be putting in our reps. They can be reps in which we practice how to get more stressed, angrier, fearful… or they can be reps in which we try to give the best response we humanly can to every prompt. Every choice we make to every one of these prompts, every one of our responses, is a character building block.

At a relationship and / or family level

The lockdown half of the world is currently experiencing has resulted, amongst other things, in an impact to our relationships and / or family life. Young couples who are now living together out of necessity. Families with several generations living under the same roof while weathering out the situation. Couples in the process of getting divorced having to share the same living space, as their separation proceedings slow down or are temporarily halted. Death of loved ones. Families losing the income of one or both parents. Kids homeschooling putting an additional strain on family dynamics. Many of these scenarios can be stressing, depressing, anxiety-inducing, or worse.
If your specific current set of circumstances has made your life more complicated, how are you responding to it? Note that the question is responding to it, not how did you respond to it? This means that you have responded to it, you are still doing it, and more likely you will keep on doing it for the days and weeks and maybe months ahead. Is there a way to respond to it better? Can you address the content of the challenge (tension, grief, whatever it might be) with a better grip on your emotional response? Can you recognize the emotion in the situation, acknowledge it, but not be controlled by it?
The harder our circumstances, the harder choosing to respond to them in a constructive way can be – yet, like most other things in life, practice helps. And every day we have the opportunity to practice a better response. That practice is a way to improve our character. We’re already at the gym: might as well put in the work to come out of this stronger.

Never let a good crisis go to waste

This brings us back to the beginning. Crises bring about painful, tangible consequences. Thousands of us will not survive this pandemic – yet most will. The tragedy and grief that we have and will have for those dying is here and will be here. Let us not add to this tragedy by also losing vast amounts of human quality with the survivors’ characters deterioritating. Instead, let’s honor the departed by becoming a better version of ourselves for now and the times to come. 

Person walking on a beach looking out to a calm sea
First, a bit of context… 12 years ago, we went through a global financial crisis. I remember how we discussed at Axialent the impact of the crisis in organizations, people’s emotions and their effectiveness to give their best at work. At the time, one of my most brilliant mentors, Axialent founder Fred Kofman, said something that stayed with me: People will suffer Survivor Syndrome. He then developed this idea into a short article, and I think now is the time to bring back the “Survival Syndrome” issue to raise our consciousness on what people might be going through these days. Not only might people have lost someone due to the virus, but there is also a feeling of loss whenever we need to let go of the past, of what we were used to. And also when our organization goes through restructuring and we have to let go of colleagues and friends who are part of our community or business family. I call this organizational trauma in times of crisis.
My business partner, Thierry de Beyssac, and I, invite you to read the following article to raise awareness and build effective actions to deal with people’s struggles now. Everyone wants to be at their best, but often unconscious emotional stress gets in the way. We want to help everyone understand some of the hidden and unspoken dynamics we might be facing today and what is it that you can do to dissolve this.
Fran Cherny
————————————————————

The Survivor Syndrome (in times of coronavirus)

Many war veterans realize that their psychological scars are much deeper than any physical pains, and that these will take much longer to heal. The joy and relief of returning home is sooner or later impacted by the things they remember; things they saw, experienced, felt, or feared come home with them. Stories from this past might invade their nightmares for years—perhaps even the rest of their lives. Beyond the happiness of feeling free and back home, the horror and the loss stays.
Psychological studies have found one thing in common in all these great stories of liberations and family reunions: survivor syndrome. One of the biggest emotional weights that those who made it through alive must bear is the guilt of surviving. “Why me and not my friend?” “Why am I alive when so many of my loved ones didn’t make it?” “Do I have the right to live when so many more worthy than me are dead?” Depression and other mental illness, and a great number of suicides are an outcome of not finding a way to deal with these questions.
 

Organizational trauma in times of crisis

Although organizational circumstances are not comparable with any of these extreme life or death situations, at a subconscious level there are some things that our mind starts thinking in a very similar way. For one’s self‐image and ego, the loss of a job has a deep impact in our self-esteem and how we are perceived by others.
When downsizing, many companies invest in psychological and outplacement counseling for those who have been let go. This occurred after the 2008 financial crisis, and we now see this as a common practice in most large organizations. But what about the “survivors”? What about those who now have to carry more responsibilities in a “leaner and meaner” organization? Who helps these people cope with some of the guilt and stress of remaining when some of their colleagues and friends have gone? People are asking: Why did I “survive”?
 

Some real situations

It is easy to think that those who still have a job should feel reassured, consider themselves lucky, and be ready to give the best of themselves. This might be very true for some, but also a bit more complicated for many others. Not facing a possible organizational trauma could prove to be gross negligence for your business.
In the past several weeks we have seen many people in coaching sessions, leadership meetings and virtual training sessions trying to talk about this and finding it hard to find the right words. We have seen a case of a company who decided to cut 40% of their workforce as their industry has been deeply affected. We heard from some of the people still there, who are working double the hours, and still investing a lot of time in connecting with their colleagues who are gone now, checking on them. We know of one employee even offering to give up 50% of their salary so they can offer a 50% job to someone else, as a way to take care of a colleague they valued a lot, which is an amazing gesture of generosity, but that has much more implications when the company does not know how to respond to these initiatives. All this takes time, energy and emotional resilience, and people don’t know how to deal with this.
 

Paying attention to the hidden dynamics

In the midst of the current global crisis, we are seeing a deep impact not only at a health and an economic level, but also at a mental health level. With so many companies of all sizes impacted by the coronavirus confinement and restrictions, and with the high level of uncertainty of the future, it is important to also take these work‐force survivors into consideration and help them to be at their best. Yes, many people have lost their jobs and we should definitely connect with them and support them emotionally and financially. But let’s also be aware that many others have kept their jobs and in a different way, they are struggling to. Yes, people are being supported by their employers to deal with technology issues, how to effectively work from home and many other things that are definitely needed, but we are seeing very little attention being given to the emotional issue created by survivor syndrome.

 
Why do we need to also focus on this when we have so many others issues? Because these are the employees that will carry us through the crisis, and their needs must be met as they face difficult situations, many times expressing symptoms of guilt, stress and fear. And many worry they could be next as there’s no guarantee that layoffs will not continue.
Our invitation is to at least consider it, because this might be a hidden issue affecting your employees’ state of mind and their capacity to be at their best. It is always better to check, to connect with people’s real concerns and fears, than to pretend that nothing is there, creating an “undiscussable” (something we all know exists, but no one really talks about openly, which creates even more tension).
 

Leadership responses will make the difference

We are raising this because with the current context and level of challenge everyone is facing on all levels, we perceive a risk that many managers might use “passive aggressive” or “passive defensive” behaviors, based on how our primal brain works when we are stressed and in really challenging circumstances: the flight or fight response. This could be expressed in various ways, for example by saying “Come on, let’s focus on the future, let’s move on” when others are not ready, or by just not talking to and connecting with colleagues as a way to avoid “rocking the boat”, or by feeling the need to connect emotionally with our own vulnerability and fears.
If these dynamics are happening today, we believe things will get much more difficult soon when we face the expected next phase of “people and business rightsizing“ that many are already calling, maybe too quickly, the “new normal”.
 

Responding to the challenge in a constructive way

So how can we break this vicious circle? How can you help your employees get back to their best and grow the power of adaptability and resilience they, and your organization, need now more than ever?
Axialent has been working with organizational culture change, executive learning and team effectiveness for a long time now. During difficult times and crisis, people usually do not respond as they normally would. There is a layer of emotional challenges that blocks many people’s ability to face reality and to embrace new ways with agility and joy. And unless worked on, it is hard for many people to connect with the opportunity and explore how they can grow, bringing the best of themselves for them, their colleagues and even, for those who are not around in the team anymore.
As a way to start helping you, and leaders in your organization, support your employees to be at their best, we offer below some specific actions. These will help people move on, with resilience, integrating their feelings and refocusing on what they can do to make the situation better for everyone:
1. Put things “on the table”. What remains “under the carpet” or hidden, exists anyway and becomes a source of tension that will add unconscious “weight in people shoulders”. It is critical to create a safe space where people can talk about their feelings, engage in a constructive dialogue and build a collective emotional intelligence.
2. Meet people where they are. With empathy, compassion and non‐judgement, let’s allow everyone to be where they are before we invite them to move on. Don’t ask them to follow and meet you where you are, but walk towards them and let them know you are in it together. Show people it’s ok to feel what they feel. And recognizing our own vulnerability first is a strength that will allow people to move on faster and from a good place.
3. Ask people what they need to be at their best, inviting them to be players and gain control. People are often trapped in their own victimhood and find it hard to connect with what is in their control to make things better. We can gently invite them to connect with that part of themselves. It is always impressive to see how improving self-confidence and self-esteem is one of the most powerful ways to gain the resilience you need to face any crisis.
4. Create a future together. In the current uncertain times, it is critical to create a vision for what we can create together, in a way that strengthens our capacity to adapt. Building scenarios together, and adjusting them based on new information, is an exercise that helps people share possibilities and start working based on them. This helps everyone feel that they are contributing to solving things in each of the three dimensions of sustainable success: business KPIs, the way we work together building trust, and how each of us feel as individuals are aligned to our core values.
5. Gather information about how all this evolves and then act fast. The number one need that both employees and managers have been expressing is to be actively listened to. In today’s world you can leverage technology to gather data (even every day) about what your employees think and feel, and what their general mood is (always using it in a responsible and open way with the people from whom you are collecting the data from). Don’t miss this opportunity to know how your people are doing, and design actions that can meet their emotional needs.
Only from a place of awareness, we can choose how to best respond to each situation. This is the time to help everyone be at their best and each of us can play a key role in making this happen.
 
First published by Thierry de Beyssac and Fran Cherny in LinkedIn

Viktor Frankl quote “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
A couple of years ago, I joined a team facilitating an executive development session at a US company. During that meeting, a defense contractor executive shared an anecdote of a big crisis they had faced, and he said “Never let a good crisis go to waste”. That phrase stuck with me and during the last week I’ve been thinking about the current SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus crisis. The crisis is here, government officials, scientists, healthcare workers and many others are actively working to slow it down. The rest of us have been impacted in more than one way. There is now no scenario in which what is happening is not a crisis. Hence I have been pondering, how do we prevent this crisis from going to waste? In other words, what can we do to at least get some form of benefit to go with the hardships that are here, and that will inevitably come in the upcoming weeks and months. The answers to such a question are wide ranging – from a macro level of learning how to better prepare for this type of events in the future, all the way down to a very intimate level, like how do we cope in these critical times. I hope that this article can spark actionable ideas of how to get something of value in the midst of the inevitable.
I would like to share something that is more philosophical in nature. For some this might mean it’s only theoretical (and thus with little to no value in real life), but in reality it’s the cornerstone, or least a foundational piece, to equip ourselves to respond to this crisis. Let me start with an anecdote.
When I was 17 years old I was going through a rough patch of my life. A teacher at the time recommended that I read Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search For Meaning”. I found it very valuable at the time, yet I was (and still am) far from fully comprehending the depths of the lessons there. Fast forward to 2020 and we are in the middle of a global pandemic. As bad as things are as of April 1st, we are still in a moment in which we find people at very different places of understanding the situation. There’s a range that goes from completely ignoring the gravity of the situation (i.e. spring breakers in the US, or visitors enjoying the cherry trees blossom in Japan) to losing a loved one – and in some cases not even being able to give them a proper funeral, and everything in between. It does seem to me that as days progress more and more people are moving in this range towards the realization that we are in the midst of an unfolding catastrophe. As more and more cities enforce lockdowns to varying degrees (i.e. self-shelter or even curfews enforced by police or military personnel), we start seeing the control measures take their toll on society: work places closed, people losing jobs, kids home from school, overwhelmed healthcare workers risking their lives without enough supplies, you name it – and it is bad.
In the midst of this chaos, I have found it helpful to remember one of Viktor Frankl’s most famous quotes: “The last of the human freedoms: to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” This might be easy to dismiss if it was coming from a Psychiatrist sitting in a posh office somewhere, just coming up with a nice phrase. However, in case you are not familiar with his story, Frankl had this and many other insights as a result of his observations when interned in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. His accounts of the experiences in this space are harrowing to say the least – yet suffice it to say that they are of a much graver nature than what the vast majority of us are experiencing during this crisis. So, wherever we find ourselves in the stress-spectrum, whether it’s in one end of being oblivious to it (or being in denial), or in the end of downright grief as tragedy has already struck us, we all keep the last of our human freedoms – choosing our attitude in our given set of circumstances. Such a deceivingly simple phrase merits being looked at in more depth – much more than what I would dare to attempt to cover. However, there are a couple of ideas I would like to put forward to take one step ahead in looking at the choice we can make with this last of our human freedoms:
-This is an internal choice, in which we are choosing how we respond to our circumstances. It allows us to at least being able to choose that attitude when we are in a situation in which we can’t choose most (or any) of our circumstances – whether you are locked up working from home during the epidemic, feeling stressed, taking your last breaths on a respirator – or in a concentration camp in WWII.
-This choice has to be renewed, as Frankl says, every day, every hour. Talking with colleagues, friends and family something I consistently hear is “I can’t believe it’s been only x weeks, it feels like months”. The toll of going about every day with the hardships we are facing is not a minor thing. Thus, we have to renew our choice every day, every hour: what is my attitude in light of these circumstances going to be? And to emphasize the point, circumstances do matter, they have a tremendous impact in us, but they do not inevitably condemn us to being and feeling in a certain way. According to Frankl’s work, even in the concentration camps, in which everyone was equally subjected to some of the worst horrors we’ve seen in history, there were differences in the attitude choices that some made. As Frankl says,  “It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand toward the conditions.” 
Paying attention to this last of our human freedoms might seem inconsequential when compared to the scale of questions leaders, scientists and many others are working on answering: can we find a cure? If so, can we do it before the scale of this pandemic increases? Before the economy collapses? For the rest of us, most of these decisions are out of our reach. Our questions might be how do I pay rent? How do I keep food on the table and a roof on our heads? How do I manage the stress of …? In either case, having the weight of the world on our shoulders, or the weight of our families, or just of our own emotions, let’s focus on what we can control, or at least get a grip on: our attitude is a great place to start. If we all take care of this, we will at least collectively be in a much better mental and emotional space to make better choices, execute them and live with the consequences to come for the weeks and months ahead.
 

 
 

The moment of truth - image of a sun set

 

 

 

 

The opportunity

This is not an article written with the intention to judge what is good or bad, right or wrong. I am writing this to challenge us all on how we and the people around us, even our team and organization, are responding to the current situation. I think now is the time to move away from practical advice and take this to a deeper level of individual reflection and collective consciousness. Because we either all get out from this together and united, or many people and businesses will go under, creating a huge impact that will probably take years to recover from.
Many of the leaders I work with think that the time to “work on” culture, and how to better live according to our declared values, is “when we have time for it”. Let me tell you, loudly and clearly: there is no better time to move your culture towards your declared values, than a challenging situation or crisis! People are watching you now more than ever at a deep subconscious level. Culture is not only what you say at corporate events and in official emails, but what you do, and above all what you do in difficult circumstances. Culture is built through the messages you send every day to show people what you really value.

This is the moment of truth

Yes, this is the time. Not when things are going as expected. How you respond will show your values and culture in action. This is the moment to take action and be aligned with the best version of yourself, your team and your organization. This is the time to raise your hand and bring consciousness and positive actions to any ecosystem to which you belong.
In the past few days, I’ve seen many ways in which people, organizations and governments are responding to the Covid-19 situation. I’ve seen great examples of responses; where organizations and governments are trying to create solutions for the people they are responsible for. From public funds being provided to support the most impacted people, to companies creating new policies to deal with never before seen challenges for their customers, and there have also been many individual demonstrations of support. This is great!
On the other hand, I’ve also seen many others becoming, from my point of view, more “self-protecting”. They are only focusing on the impact on them. Even if we believe we are doing great, we run the risk of becoming unconscious of the bigger picture. Sometimes we become disconnected from what we have stated and shared; we start functioning more and more on autopilot. I see people in organizations doing things because “I was told to” without challenging whether those requests are aligned or not with who we want to be and our declared values.

In the last decade or so, organizations have been talking more and more about being conscious of their impact on the environment (which is not just being “greener”!). They have been talking about the need for true “partnerships” and stakeholder integration (taking care of all their value chain, not just shareholders). Organizations have been sharing in the media, and with their employees, values like “empathy”, “responsibility”, “innovation”. The news has been full of statements from CEOs with one or more of these words. Will they leverage this crisis to show how they really do this? Will they be able to look at the bigger picture beyond themselves?
We, as individuals, have been sharing with friends and colleagues what our values are. We all declare things like empathy, respect, freedom of choice, love, among others. If you think of yours something similar, virtuous and positive will come up for sure.
So, the question now is, how are we acting in accordance to these values in the current situation? And let me share once more, the intention of this article is to challenge us to pause and reflect on where we are not living in alignment, and how this could be contributing to possible future problems. This is an invitation to us all to learn new ways in which we can show up as our “best version”, as individuals, through the team we belong to or lead, and through the organization we work at. Will each of us be able to look at the bigger picture beyond ourselves?

Creating alignment

I hope that if you are still reading, you may already have some ideas on how to challenge yourselves to do this. In case it helps, I want to share some of the things that come to my mind as critical actions to take that can help all of us grow as a community.

1. Accept

It might help to start with acknowledging, observing ourselves, becoming aware of any emotions this situation may trigger in us. Fear? Victimization? Opportunity? Only by accepting what is happening, and how we feel about it, can we find a way forward. And if we all do it from a place of gratitude for what we have, if we can focus on how we can respond to make this the best possible situation and what we can learn, I can assure you it will be much easier.

2. Go back to our desired culture and value statements

Take some time with yourself to write down what your values are. How you would like to be seen and recognized by others. This reminds each of us who we are as our “best self”.
If you lead a team (or as a member of it), it’s the time to do the same exercise with your people. Think what are our values as a team and as an organization, and what we should stand for. This is the time to show the way and change the culture for the good.
Create a time to discuss and align on concrete actions to start doing as a team, and what should be stopped.

3. Speak up

Can you help step-up the conversation by raising the difficult topics and inconsistencies? In the last few years, many people and organizations have put “courage” at the core of their behavioral needs, to be more innovative, to test and learn new ways of doing things. This is the best time to practice! What if everyone practiced having the courage to challenge the status quo?
How can we create the time, space and the psychological safety for people to speak up and share the things we might not be seeing that we can do better? What if we all use this situation to practice at each family dinner, in each team meeting, in each small online chat; what we can do differently?
This is a great opportunity to make “courage” and “innovation” part of our culture, and not to wait for the “good times” to do so. That could be too late.

4. Solidarity!

Even if it’s not written as one of your declared values, this is the only way out: Solidarity! Angela Merkel shared this word last week and it got me thinking. Most governments were trying to avoid shutting down activities because of the enormous impact on the economy in general, and mainly on the small and medium businesses where the majority of people work.  But now, with the actions that have been decided for public health reasons, there is no way to avoid the huge impact this will have. The big question now is whether small and medium businesses can be resilient and stay afloat, with the impact of this outcome affecting millions of workers and all the value chains associated.
If you have tickets for a concert (as I do, for at least 2 in the next 2 months) and you ask the organizers to reimburse you instead of waiting and allowing them to reschedule for a later date, you might be contributing to a financial crisis that will impact people around the globe. Yes, every action generates a domino effect in a global economy. And this is the time for us to think beyond ourselves. We will find a way forward, together, and those who do not honor our trust will be impacted in the future. The most important monetary exchange we have is not money, but trust.
In my years working at NGOs, I learned that solidarity is not giving away what we don’t need anymore, but sharing what we have, whatever that is. Solidarity in difficult times is the main asset we have to gain trust and support.
Don’t we have a moral and ethical responsibility in difficult times to use our strength and power to support those in our community who are most vulnerable? What would we do at home for our family in a natural disaster situation? We would take care of the kids and the elderly first, those who need it most. We are in one of those situations now.
So, will you ask for your money back from the theatre? How will you support your employees? And people who might have had temporary work with you for a peak season that will now not happen? Will you ask that little hotel you were going to stay at on vacation or where you were going to hold an event for a full refund, or there is any way in which you can keep the reservation for a later date? There are hotels that have an outlook of only 5% occupancy for weeks or even months, artists who will not perform in a theater for a while, and these are just a few examples of something that is reality in many different industries and will affect all their value chain. So, what can we do to be part of the solution?

The moment of truth

I don’t have the answers and I don’t know what is possible for each of us and each business. What I do know is that we either take care of each other or we are contributing to the economy collapsing.
One great outcome of starting to think and act this way is that we become more connected. Yes, we are still only one phone call away, and sometimes just reaching out and asking “How are you dealing with all this?”, “Can I help you in any way?” and really engaging in these conversations and taking some small but still significant actions, is a way to share that you really matter to me. You. Your loved ones. Your business. Our togetherness.
This is a great opportunity, in times in which we could find excuses to be more isolated and disengaged from each other, to connect with our humanity and the best versions of ourselves.
Are you up for the challenge? This is the moment of truth.

This article originally appeared in LinkedIn.

In recent weeks we have found ourselves in situations unlike anything we have ever experienced. It’s difficult to know what to do, how to act, or what advice to follow, but one thing is clear, our world has changed and continues to change on a daily, if not hourly, basis. For that, we crave some kind of stability and a way to understand this new world we find ourselves in. I would like to share some of the best ways I have found to deal with our new reality and make the best of it.

1. Choose how to respond!

Many of us feel like we are stuck at home. Events are being postponed, people are being asked to work from home, and there is a need to change consumption habits and more.
Now the question is, how will each of us respond to this situation? How fast can we adapt and learn new ways of engaging? How can we adjust to working from home? And what if our families are also requested to stay at home? How do we deal with that complexity? How can we still deliver the content needed for people who were attending an event that has been postponed or cancelled?
Small but important adjustments in our ways of thinking and acting can create a huge impact.

2. Acceptance and next steps…

Let’s make a bold and smart move: accept that this is happening.
Once we have accepted our new reality, we are able to assess whether we need to change anything or ask for support to be as productive as possible in this new situation.
Last week when I realized I would be working from home, I took the opportunity to reorganize my home office.
Do you have everything you need to create an “office at home”? What can you do to make it work best for you? Can you ask your company for anything that would make it easier for you to be productive?

3. Home office: Setting boundaries: speak up and share

Many issues can and will arise with this new situation; and these are things that we all need to learn how to respond to.
Kids at home? Sharing a room to work in? Are there people around who are not clear about your availability? Colleagues who don’t know your situation?
Here are some ideas on how to deal with this and still be productive.

4. Generate connection while working virtually

What can you do to stay connected to your colleagues and clients, and increase effectiveness while working in a virtual environment?

  • For meetings, having your camera on, and asking others to do so too, can help everyone feel more connected and present.
  • “Checking-in” at the start of meetings with how we are doing and what we are expecting from the meeting not only makes sure there is alignment on the intention, but can also be used to open up a space for a quick personal connection.
  • How about instituting a once a week sharing of “best practices” with your team about this topic? This can help you connect as a team while at the same time increase your effectiveness and productivity.

5. Get moving!

Considering the limitations of our new situation, I think it’s important to do all we can to stay fit and healthy, both physically and mentally. The way to do it might vary for each of us based on what we like and the restrictions we have, but the need to do something to take care of ourselves remains.
The other day I went for a run outside and realized how much I needed it. There are alternative ways to stay active (and avoid the gym or crowded public places). Here I’m sharing some links to activities that I enjoy and find boost my productivity (and can be done from home!).
Quick yoga to give you a boost:

Stretching at your desk:

6. Take time to calm your mind and release tension


What is happening, is happening. Let’s just accept it. Even unconsciously, the constant stream of news and messages are increasing and generating fear and paranoia which blocks our ability to be rational and effective.
How can we connect to our best selves under the current circumstances, lower our anxiety and connect to great positive energy?
Perhaps you could stop looking at your cell phone and news so frequently? Why not put all our attention on reading a book? Or a movie we can debate afterwards? Fixing that thing at home that has been broken for a while now? Practice meditation and breathing to free up our minds? And what about seeing what you can cook with what you have available?
What we focus on expands and can completely change our mood and energy.
Let´s try to connect 100% with things that help us stay grounded, a few times every day!

7. Let’s focus on the opportunities

How can we make the most of these times where many of us are working from home? One thing that we gain is no commuting time!
This could mean more time to sleep or starting work earlier. Or this could be an opportunity to leverage the time to be with your family, meditate or do some exercise. Whatever you choose, is up to you, but the most important thing is to realize that we do have a choice.
What are you going to choose to do this week during your “commute”? What can you choose to do that takes care of your physical or mental health, and helps you to say grounded?

I’m curious, you are a year or so into this digital transformation/culture change initiative… how’s it going?

Here’s a line of questioning you can use to check on the awareness, urgency, and the alignment of the executive team involved in both the big “T” and little “t” imperatives:

1- Goals. What is the business reason/goal for this transformation? What are the key metrics used to measure degrees of success in the execution of this transformation?
2- Progress. How’s it going? What are you most excited about? What are you most concerned about? How are you feeling about the transformation? Where are you now, compared to your baseline measures?
3- Consequences. What are the business consequences of not transforming successfully? On a scale of 1 to 10, how important/urgent is this? What if you don’t intervene and people just do (think, relate, act) as they have been doing to date? Specifically, if you don’t shift the culture, what is the impact on the two business units that generate the highest revenue/margin?
4- Ideal State. Do the executives who make up the leadership team have clarity about the ideal culture (vision) you are transforming to? Imagine if you woke up a year from now and found that the vision has come true and your goals have been accomplished. What does that look like? When culture change has taken hold, it makes it a lot easier and more likely to achieve your industry-leading/pioneering performance-level goals. How can you tell? What is different? What are some key habits and areas of mastery that you are excited about? What are people inside and outside your company saying about it?
5- Current State. Compared to this ideal, what is missing in the current situation? Do these executives have clarity about the current culture and where you are now? Do you have individual and collective diagnostic tools? From your perspective, how do people need to perform differently in the next X years in order to transform?
6- Culture Plan. Do the executives agree on the gap to close? Do they agree on the plan, priority, and sequence to close it? What have you done already? What is keeping you from closing the gap and shifting to the ideal culture? What are the identified blockers/obstacles?
7- Personal Impact. Why did you raise your hand for this? What matters the most to you? Why? What happens to you if you don’t accomplish the vision? Will you get fired? Will you be disappointed and want to quit?
8- Understanding. Does the leadership team have clarity, shared language, and understanding about how culture evolves and the impact of history on the current state? Have they identified causal factors (e.g., systems, structures) that are part of the work climate? Do they understand how they reinforce and shape the current culture and what may be levers for change in improvement plans?
9- Shared Learning. How well does the leadership team embody the ideal cultural attributes? How are they being supported? Are they first going to create a shared learning environment for both the technical and human dimensions of change?
10- Organizational Impact. How many people in the organization, beyond the leadership team, are being impacted by the transformation?
 

In addition to questions like these, leaders need a reliable, MRI level of detailed visibility into the invisible components of culture (and a simple model) to understand and discuss where you are currently as a culture — and where you want to be in the near future. You need to see clearly where you have anomalies of ideal culture success and current culture gaps. To have an effective culture strategy, you can’t afford to use anecdotes or guess about the gap to be closed. Culture isn’t declarative; it’s interrogative.

CXO, you got this.

Most executive teams I’ve worked with are genuinely convinced of the need to make culture change happen. They all want to be more flexible, ‘agile’, and customer-focused in order to grow and innovate in today’s uncertain and rapidly changing environment. Moreover, and perhaps most importantly, most leaders recognize that mindset change is key to being successful in this transformation.
However, and despite sincere enthusiasm from leaders and executives, in most organizations cultural change hardly ever materializes as intended. It rarely happens at the pace and depth leaders had hoped for when they started the process. So the question is, why is this?
After more than ten years’ experience facilitating and advising on culture transformation programs, I have identified three common pitfalls that trap most executives during the change process. My purpose in this article is to discuss how these pitfalls emerge and suggest three concrete solutions that could help to avoid them.
The first pitfall is following trending topics instead of making them “trending habits”.
Culture and mindset change are current trends. And I really love this! But trends can also create a problem. Whenever I teach the Victim-Player mindsets, everyone recognizes the need to become more of a Player; to focus more on solutions rather than on limiting factors. When I explain how to operate in a Growth Mindset and focus on our never-ending capacity to do better, executive teams are usually instantly willing to embrace it. The benefits are evident to all.
However, if we only become enamored with the concept, we can easily fall into the trap of missing the factor that is key to making these new mindsets work in practice.
When mindsets are taught without creating the context for them to blossom and an activity system that translates them into habits, they will easily dilute. Instead of loving doing it, you will only love the concept.
For instance, I can perfectly teach the Victim-Player mindset, conceptually and with some practice, in a two-hour slot (and even in a 10-minute slot!). However, the learning process is far from complete if we don’t understand –and then practice– how to translate these concepts into our daily routines.
How do we become the person who naturally brings this mindset alive? To make this happen I find it key to focus on the one thing that occurs in organizations all the time: conversations (with others and with ourselves). What do we do every day? We think, discuss, negotiate, commit and deliver something. We are in meetings, writing emails or exchanging instant messages all day, and when we are not talking to someone, we are talking to ourselves. The quality of these conversations and the way in which they happen are an asset or a liability to how corporate culture is built.
Culture change programs must always include the introduction of concrete habits that apply the new mindsets to conversations and meetings as a key artifact where we express how we do things. For example, changing the way we set the agenda of a meeting can be a simple but powerful tool to improve coordination and make commitments and responsibilities more transparent. Processing together at the end of a meeting how we could have done better can be, for instance, an effective way of applying the Learner Mindset. Thus avoiding the unhealthy habit of judging the quality of the meeting in the hallway, a common vice that boycotts the learning process of the group and feeds the ‘inner Knower’ in ourselves.
In short, in order to make change happen, we need to make a mindset a habit, and a habit a mindset. Creating this virtuous cycle is key to helping new mindsets take root and making culture transformation a powerful lubricant for business growth and innovation.
The second pitfall is not the design of change programs, but the behaviors of those that lead them.
The problem is as follows: A manager or an organization implements a program to equip a team with a new mindset, yet the program is led by people that still operate with an old one.
Let me offer an example. A leader wants to create a pilot to train an executive group to be more innovative and agile, adopting a Player and Learner mindset. The process will encounter a number of setbacks, which is to be expected with most new programs. While this is not a problem per se, what I have observed many times is that the leader quickly focuses on who created the setback, who is to blame, and even considers canceling the program if people don’t fully “like it” or get on board. This is the opposite of what being innovative and a Player and Learner is all about.
By adopting these defensive attitudes, executives and leaders miss a great opportunity to start changing culture “on the job” by assuming responsibility and taking corrective action. Or even better, by acknowledging that they might not know how to solve some of the issues and share the problem with the group to search for solutions in a process of collective learning and cooperation.
In short, leading change from the old mindset can never really work. In any change program the process itself must be the ‘spearhead’ to break into the new mindset. In order to lead a culture change, we as the leaders need to be a few steps ahead in embodying the new values and so send the right signals and symbols that will inspire everyone else to follow.
The third pitfall is based on an interesting paradox: ‘in order to move fast we need to start slow.’
Some of the most common phrases I hear from leaders in organizations that want to embark on culture change programs start something like this: “We need to change corporate culture; it is critical for the business.” “It is one of our top 3 priorities.” “Changing culture is key to our future success.” And right after saying this they complement it with one or both of the following: “We have a very limited budget and have just one shot to make it happen.” “We need this urgently!”
I suspect that many people reading might not only have heard something like this before but might also have said something similar.
How does this urgency translate then into the implementation of change processes? I will illustrate the problem with an example: Recently, I was hired to implement a pilot to help a team adopt a Learner Mindset that was critical to becoming more customer-centric. Yet, at the end of the process, the leadership team wanted to assess the success of the program by measuring specific business outcomes, even when we were just piloting to learn. They were exclusively focused on whether a certain ‘result’ was actually achieved rather than on the experience of adopting a Learner Mindset, on really creating the capability that will enable this mindset to flourish and be multiplied.
Both Learner and Growth Mindsets are about creating experiences that motivate teams to continue learning in an ever-evolving process. Yet, leaders seem to be more interested in cutting the program short and grasping a tangible fixed result as soon as they can. This not only goes against the essence of the mindsets they are trying to teach, but also erodes the capacity to create the change they want with so much urgency in the first place.
The result of such behaviors is usually a series of never-ending pilots, recurrent change of consulting firms in search of a ‘magic pill’, and many other attempts that fail to produce real change in corporate culture. Executives find themselves ‘running in circles’ and ultimately the organization spends much more money, time, and energy than what is actually required to make a change program successful.
Applying the Player, Learner and Growth Mindsets to this article
I invite you, reading this, not to challenge my words by finding what is not fully true for you, but try to find situations in which this might have happened, to you, your team or your organization, and how you can think of a different way to respond to the challenge. Is there any new thought or idea worth trying? Let me give you some advice, stop thinking of others and just start with yourself!
Now that we have identified the basic problem, a natural question arises: is there a way to get out of these pitfalls? My answer is yes, and summarized below are my three fundamental recommendations:
 

  • Acknowledge your Biases and Limitations: This is perhaps the most important and fundamental of all considerations. As I already explained above, one of the main pitfalls that prevent real change from happening is that programs that train teams to adopt new mindsets are led by people that still operate with an old one. In order to avoid this problem, it is essential for executives to recognize that, in many cases, they might not be ready to lead the process.
  • Look for support! Whenever you are getting into territory you haven’t navigated before, it is always a good idea to have someone around to guide, support or advice you (or all 3 together). Someone who has no other agenda than making things happen with you.
  • Train a Pioneering Team: Before starting the implementation of a company-wide program, is very important to first train a small team within the company that fully adopts the new mindsets and that is respected by others. Once this team is attuned, the program can then be extended to other groups, maintaining a commitment to follow the pioneers. In short, before sharing and deploying a big and ambitious change program, make sure that at least a small group is one step ahead to lead the way.

 
In my next article, I will elaborate further on these three recommendations, and especially in this latter point, which I consider the most fundamental step to becoming truly successful change leaders.

In my previous article, I described how I understand disruption and the three main challenges I see organizations face when dealing with accelerated change. Regardless of the kind of industry, size of business or location, our experience shows us that disruption impacts individuals and organizations in the way you live, the way you engage with others, and the way you do business. Here I will outline the three antidotes to face disruption.
The three challenges, or “viruses” I spoke about were:
• Lack of responsibility or ownership to respond and the speed with which we act. We call this the “victim” mindset.
• Lack of curiosity, openness and acceptance of the status quo. We call this the “knower” (or “fixed”) mindset.
• The dangers of multitasking and not valuing the power of focus on a single task at a time. We call this the “multitasker.”
 

The “antidotes” or mindsets to “fight” these “viruses”

The player mindset focuses on your capacity to respond when facing a challenging situation, your “response-ability” — the shift in focus from what is out of your control to what you can control. It is present and future focused, while “victims” are often stuck in the past and attached to “this is how we’ve always done it.” The intent is to solve the problem at hand with agility and speed instead of pondering the past and looking for blame, which is counterproductive.
The learner mindset is the capacity to acknowledge that what we see and interpret is hinged on what we are capable of seeing based on our own story, beliefs and how we make meaning of the world around us. There are many different perspectives and a wide range of opportunities that arise once we open up with a humble attitude that allows us to learn new things. That way we can detach from the stories we tell ourselves and don’t believe them as if they were the ultimate truth. When you stop trying to prove others wrong, opportunities will appear for you to find an effective solution. The aim is to find a solution for the organization to be as effective as possible, not trying to be right.
Focus and presence is the art of paying kind attention to what is really going on. Although many people seem to think that being able to do many things at the same time is a great gift, I dare challenge that idea. I believe that it is really hard to see what is going on and embrace what is really happening unless you are fully present. There is research that shows how multitasking effectiveness is a myth because you are doing a little bit for each of the things you are working on instead of doing a lot and being fully focused on one task at a time. You cannot react fast if you don’t see the opportunities around you. I have experienced multiple leaders ask me, “How the hell didn’t I see this coming?” But deep down they knew the issue was always there. When we lose focus, we miss what leaders are supposed to see, what others don’t. Practicing our capacity of staying in the present moment seems easy, but it is not simple. I would take the risk of saying that once you try it, you’ll realize how much richness and clarity it brings.

So how can you start applying and making this happen?

  • Speak in the first person, own your opinions and emotions (and reactions to ideas), and recognize that you are the one who owns what you think and feel.
  • Invite others to express what they think and feel, and find what is right in it. “Make people right before you make them wrong.”
  • Make sure that you put in leadership meeting agendas a section on “what we might be missing” and “what can go wrong.” Allow people to brainstorm about this and see what emerges.
  • If after reading this you still think multitasking is useful and it is better than focusing on a single situation at a time, I invite you to watch this two-minute video and check if this doesn’t happen to you. Unless you start thinking in this way, it would be hard to create any change.
  • You need to develop these skills, as we have often learned the opposite. Incorporate a “pause” from time to time throughout the day, especially before important meetings. Did you ever try the power of one-moment meditations? Try this and see how effective “the power of pause” could be.

As you can see, building a more agile, disruptive and innovative organization requires us to challenge our mindsets and practice new skills we might not have developed yet. But if you want to see the change happening, you would need to take the first step. Are you up for it?