How will you recount the year of 2020?
By: Josh Nuttall
Tags: Opportunity, Reflection, Learning, Year In Review

Picture courtesy of Lalage Nuttall

“Are we there yet?” — a famous movie and a line that is often associated with road trips and children in the back seat of a car who can’t wait to reach the destination.

Where to begin when recounting 2020, it’s has been a tough yet good year. One that I certainly didn’t expect to have so soon in my journey through life and a reminder of how adaptable human beings can be when we are working together.

Sitting down to write this and reflecting over the last couple of days on the year, something that I try to do towards the end of each year, I was drawn to the phrase collectiveness. We can always do things better or differently (hindsight is wonderful), but as humans when we act collectively and put our minds to something, we can work magic. One of the things that I think 2020 will be remembered for is the different styles of leadership that were shown, we didn’t have all the answers when the world went into lock down in March and we were all called on to be responsible in respect to the way we acted and to recognise that your actions may impact on the rest of humanity.

Technology allowed us to move quickly to share the digital sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 with medical research labs around the world which mean that work on a vaccine could be started before the physical sequencing of the virus arrived. Technology also allowed us to stay connected with one another, to continue working, and to mobilise responses. While the impact of the virus on our mental health should not be under estimated, technology certainly helped to keep us connect.

Here are a few of my biggest take-aways from the year we have had:

Collective mobility — it’s possible. The way the world responded to combat the virus showed us that if we join forces and collectively respond to a threat.

Definite versus infinite thinking — one of my biggest fears is that as humanity we are too siloed in our thinking. Many people think only about the here and now, not concerned with what they are creating or how it will play out over time. We can all leader more from adopting infinite thinking and being more concerned about how our decisions will impact others around us, as well as future generations.

What are we creating and why is it relevant? If you are familiar with Simon Sinek and his book “Start with why” or have practising design thinking, you may have asked yourself some of these questions. Working with and for start-ups, I find myself asking many “Why” questions which help me to think deeper about what it is that we are creating and the areas that it is addressing. The bottom line? Don’t just do things for the sake of…

Learning from experience and making decisions — we have the internet at our finger tips which provides a phenomenal opportunity to learn from thinkers, people, and experiences without leaving your home. Let’s make use of this and draw on the knowledge from people more experienced than ourselves. We also have the space in which to link diverse ideas and concepts that at first glance may not make sense in how they have been linked.

Identification — take a step back, look at the challenge through a different lens and ask yourself if there are any biases that you may be approaching this with. Often we find ourselves identifying a challenge, but miss the broader context/influence.

Saying yes — on my journey so far, I have simply said yes to some of the opportunities that I have been given. I haven’t always known or had the exact skill set to execute the role, but I have given myself the space to learn. Often a different way of thinking about things can add value and you will be surprised by how quickly you can learn something when you are thrown into the deep end.

Working with and in the start-up environment it would be remise of me to say that it is always smooth sailing. There are daily challenges, but this is part of the reason why I value this space so highly. Very few days are the same, you are constantly on your toes and looking to link concepts to one another (some easier than others). We can all learn something from an entrepreneurial mindset.

So, while we continue to navigate and come to grips with the consequences of a global pandemic, I encourage us to think broader and to be more inclusive in the future that we seek to build. Our siloed thinking and the decisions of the past may have been the best choice at the time considering the circumstance, but they will not help us build the change we need. Let us learn from the experiences of others and recognise the challenges that we face, collectively we will do better.

While the year may have turned out a little differently to the one many, including me, imagined in early January 2020 there have been some encouraging success stories. It’s been a different and that’s alright, change after all helps us to be better. Perhaps it’s the reminder we needed as humanity to check our thinking and to recognise our interconnectedness on a global scale.

The journey through life is the destination — something I remind myself of when the going gets tough.

Strength and good wishes for 2021, we have a big journey ahead of us.