Wrapping Up 2020: Covid-19, Pandemics & Grey Swans, finally…
By: Revi Schlesinger
Tags: Corporate Innovation, Greyswanguild, Covid 19 Crisis, Transformation

How do we navigate the turbulent reality of this world we live in? It helps to have some guiding principles with which to view life.

Often learned in our upbringing, with the support of our mentors, our families, and communities, and through our life experience, these guideposts help us move through life’s many challenging ups and downs, strengthening our capacity to stay creative and persevere.

I Realign Again, and Again, with Possibility.

As an operational designer, global transformation project manager and impact entrepreneur, these ideas are part of what forms the lens through which I look at my work. These foundational constructs of the operating system through which I approach life are particularly useful in creative crisis management, also in the age of grey swans and pandemics.

Open to Possibility

The only thing I know for sure, is that there is absolutely nothing that is absolutely known for sure. As far as I know and can tell, this world may all be a construct of imagination.

What has the potential to be understood is infinite. Humanity has barely scratched the surface of all that can be known.

Energy, never created or destroyed, just morphs and changes into different forms and states, as a defined undefined infinite whole, that everything is part of.

Human beings are biologically predisposed to operate in support of life, survival, and positive sensory feedback.

We are complex beings making the most of our opportunities and our life’s context.

The same principles we apply to our lives, can also be applied to our work, our companies and our projects as we consider our next steps, starting with answering the following questions:

Consider Next Steps

What is the point, now that we know all that we know (and don’t know)?

Who do we want to be in our future vision of what’s possible?

How do we want to show up and move forward through a rapidly shifting and morphing world?

We can only move from where we are, to a vision that we can imagine.

The year is coming to a close, a new decade has started, an age of grey swans, of paradigm shifting and life disrupting changes. It is a perfect time to really ground and connect to where we are and take the opportunity to consider:

Current Context.

What are the core attributes of our foundations?

What can we build upon and grow from?

Where are our opportunities of highest leverage?

How do we navigate from where we are to where we all want to go together?

Afterall, business operates within a context. Everyone of us operates within a context. And the context we live in and move from guides us, providing support and stability as we move forward.

Commitments for a New World

My hope going into 2021 is that each one of us will move forward with a new view of the world, of what’s needed and what’s possible, and take on the following two commitments:

Do No Harm

Appreciate: Give & Receive

While we navigate survival for ourselves, our families, our companies, our businesses, and our world, I invite each of us to look a decade out, as a critical personal planning time horizon.

The 2020 Covid-19 Pandemic compells us to consider, on a personal level, how we will each do our best to assure that life on our precious beautiful planet Earth will persist and evolve positively and joyfully through what promises to be a decade of grey swans.

Set yourself some goals, at home, at work, for your life, and your company:

How and by when will I eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels for electricity, heat, and transportation? What other steps can I take to reduce my impact. How will I avoid waste, and optimize use of resources? What will I do by when to restore balance and equity in my physical environment, community, and scope of impact?

See you in 2021!