Working through Uncertain Times
Some of us don’t have our health, lives. Some of us and our close ones do. This pandemic, we face a taxing uncertainty.
At Forward, our care teams have fought COVID19. They have adapted to help those with other complications; medical and personal. I cannot overstate their contributions.
With them, our operations teams scramble to run trains on time. Our R&D teams contort to build products and automation to enable others. While displaced, we’re open. We’re making progress. Writing about progress has been at least a therapeutic exercise. I’ll keep this focused on work.
To me, it starts with defining the Important, Urgent, Possible.
A crisis like this makes new things important. At Forward, we need COVID19 triage in our care teams, we need new telemedicine products. We have to find our fit. Defining these gives us new direction. It informs our strategy, our actions. Many things are now urgent. Any blocks, real or perceived, to our medicine and viability, inspire strong reactions. We’ve often overdrawn ourselves. But if we don’t push limits, it’s doubtful we’ll succeed.
It’s a delicate balance. These are approaches to work that have helped us find it.
Work with Grit
This comes first. Folks are going through a lot. More than I have seen. We need grit for the failures of our best plans, the inadequacies of our worst, and the chaos of it all.
Work with Intention
The haziness in our new world demands that we work on clear, deliberate things. This requires organizing our thoughts and actions. It requires shaping them with qualities like curiosity, integrity, expressiveness, decisiveness. Seeing this in my peers helps me decide what’s next.
Work with Generosity
We all have gifts that others might need, and are in need of a few. Gifts like listening, ideas, stories, contacts, capital, sweat, critique. I’m thankful I’ve had a manager and colleagues who’ve shared.
Work with Leverage
Leverage is the quality of using something to its best advantage. It maximizes what is possible, with minimal cost. For example, our sales teams have worked on finding good leads efficiently in rough times. Losing leverage is a big outcome of confusing urgency, importance, and possibility. It usually leads to fatigue, which does make cowards of us all.
Work with Consistency
Bill Gates said,
“Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.”
I’m not looking that far ahead, but I believe consistency plays a role there. It compounds what we put in. As an example, our clinicians have improved at fighting COVID19 every week since the outbreak. Several of our members have benefited from this.
Work with Milestones
It’s hard to find closure when we’re all searching for certainty. We’ve found this in (sometimes arbitrary) lines that our teams can cross together. They have breathed, celebrated. They have improved after shifts, weeks, sprints, wins, and losses.
A crisis is a time for change. For all the wrong and harm, it’s better that we work on a meaningful world. And it times it won’t be so. That’s ok. Thanks for reading. Be well.
