Plans are great, but as 2020 has reminded us, “Oops” moments in life are inevitable. In fact, it’s precisely when things don’t go according to plan that the real litmus tests for leadership and business strategy come to light. As Mike Tyson famously said, “Everyone has a plan until I hit them in the face.”

Leading during and through a crisis is one thing, but what happens in the aftermath? Let me be clear, the pandemic is not over yet, and none of us know when it will be. What we do know is that COVID-19 has contributed to systemic shifts that will likely be enduring. It has changed how we look at business, and this is a good thing. Here are three focus points that will help you lean in to what’s next, and how you can set up your business and those you lead for success in a post-pandemic world.

01  Reality Check 

As tragic as COVID has been on both a human and macro-economic level, in some respects, it did a favor for smart businesses: It served as Tyson’s proverbial punch in the face. Fact: Fueled by the optimism of riding the wave of the strongest economy in modern history, virtually every business carried unnecessary bloat into 2020. Businesses were people, processes, facilities, and debt heavy. They were also cash, talent, and innovation light. The good news is that for businesses agile and resilient enough to course-correct and make the necessary pivots, the future has been amplified and accelerated. The fastest path to the future is rooted in being brutally honest about present state dominant logic, institutional thinking, organizational faults, cultural disconnects, and talent deficits. 

02 Going Back to Work: Wrong Goal

The best leaders are not thinking about going back, but instead are thinking about going forward. Leaders looking to restore the past instead of ushering in the future are trying to live in a world that’s already passed them by. Innovation is no longer a nice to have, but a need to have. If you are not innovating in real-time, increasing velocity around the rate of change, and amplifying new business model design, you are ceding opportunity to those who are. There has never been a greater opportunity to reframe, reimagine, and reinvent. The question is, will you cling to the past or embrace the future? 

03 It’s the Talent, Stupid

I’ve never been impressed with leaders who cite the size of their workforce as a success metric. Bigger isn’t better – better is better. Here’s the thing: Low switching costs and the evisceration of other barriers to talent movement have changed workforce dynamics forever, and in my opinion, for the better. Companies that are blind to what intrigues and engages the best talent won’t be able to attract or retain them. Legacy-based operating models will always provide a safe harbor for mediocrity. Still, if you want to beat your competition to the future, it will only happen by engaging next-level talent. Up-skilling is table stakes – it’s code used by legacy-based companies for playing catch-up. The goal should never be to level the playing field but to tilt it to your advantage. Future skilling is the game-changer. 

The buzz phrase “war for talent” has been redefined in real-time. It’s not whether the talent exists – it does, and it’s abundant. The question is whether you recognize real talent and can successfully compete for it. The organizations with the smartest, most creative, and most diverse talent wins. Everything else is noise. When companies stop trying to put people in boxes and realize the goal is to free them from the boxes, they will take quantum leaps forward. The first step to better leadership is to stop playing big-brother. Stop checking-on people to make sure they’re working, and care enough to check-in on people to better support them. Organizations that don’t understand how to create self-led teams will die a slow, painful death. n

Why does it seem as if everyone has lost control? Research has shown that people with higher self-control levels are more successful, have better social skills, are happier, and are more trusted. So, what has happened?

Believe it or not, marshmallows at one time were thought to predict a person’s success! In the 1960s and 1970s, Dr. Mischel tested hundreds of children between the ages of three and five on their ability to wait for a greater reward even if something less desirable was available immediately. The test went like this: the children sat at a desk, and the researcher left the room. If the children waited 15 minutes, they would be rewarded with two marshmallows. If they couldn’t wait, they could ring a bell, but they would only get one marshmallow. Less than a third of the kids could wait the fifteen minutes; most lasted five minutes! Dr. Mischel reconnected with these kids once they had taken the SATs. The kids who waited the full fifteen minutes on average scored 200 points higher on their SATs.

Further research conducted by Dr. Mischel and others found that trusting the system, maturation in willpower, and socio-economic status all played a role in people ultimately being successful. Nevertheless, marshmallows did garner a lot of attention for a while!

So, what is self-control? In my book, Science and the Leader-Follower Relationship, I define self-control as: control thoughts, regulate emotions, and inhibit impulses. It’s a lot for us to handle. In fact, researchers have found that self-control is like a muscle. It can become tired, therefore, making it difficult to have self-control in two sequential events. As indicated above, there are many self-control types, but they all use the same brain processes. The good news is that the muscle analogy also means that you can strengthen your ability to have self-control.

Self-control enables people to do jobs requiring a lot of work to get trained and highly valued by society. For example, doctors are socially rewarded with higher salaries, respect, and status. Interestingly, many people value others’ self-control more than their own. There’s a popular misconception that people want to maximize their enjoyment while minimizing their pain. However, Matthew Lieberman propounds in his book Social: Why our brains are wired to connect states: “In reality, we are actually built to overcome our own pleasure and increase our pain in the service of following society’s norms.”

How does this happen? The brain is wired to be social and to keep in line with social norms — whatever the norms are for the culture in which we mature. Simply the idea that we would be observed to be breaking these norms and then be evaluated and judged keeps most people in line with social expectations. We have survived as a species because we are members of social groups. In order to maintain social order, individual impulses have to be managed and controlled. Lieberman provides an example of an honesty box in a corporate breakroom, where you put money in a box for drinks. A poster that had eyes on it versus one with flowers yielded a 276% increase in donations. If we believe that we are being watched, we toe the line!

A key to our ability to build and maintain positive relationships is self-control. Self-control ensures that we harmonize with those around us. It makes us more likable and agreeable to others. So, what are some ways to improve your self-control? Overall, having some sort of regimen, such as meditation, exercise, or personal improvement, helps you to be centered and grounded, as well as confident in your own self-worth and being.

I earlier defined self-control as the control of thoughts, regulation of emotions, and inhibition of impulses. For each of these, there are additional practices, such as the following, to help strengthen that self-control muscle.

1. Control thoughts: This is a tough one. Ask anyone who meditates, as the goal is not to think. Try it for 30 seconds! For how long were you able to do it? Many of us fail after ten seconds. But don’t give up! It’s training your mind and training your attention. It’s catching yourself as you spiral out of control in the drama of a situation, or as you obsess about something, like talking about the same thing to anyone and everyone who will listen to you. Once again, reframing the situation, sitting quietly, and focusing your mind using a mantra will help control your thoughts.

2. Regulate emotions: This is also commonly referred to as emotional intelligence. Even though there are many definitions, the one that I prefer is the ability to control my strong emotions and reactions to others’ strong emotions.

Managing yourself can be tough if you regard yourself as the “victim” or feel like someone is continuously targeting you. A big step in dealing with this is reframing. For example, I may feel as if a colleague has betrayed me by trash-talking my latest project. I could go into “victim mode,” hating the competition and politics of the organization. Or, I could reframe and see it as an opportunity to get feedback from this person to find out where they think I have made mistakes. I could say to them: I am confused, as I thought we were all excited about this project. Help me understand what you see as the problems right now.

A way of managing another person’s strong emotions is to listen to them — ACTIVE LISTENING. By that, I mean paraphrasing, reflecting feelings, and even parroting if the other person is very upset. They won’t notice parroting if you do it well until they calm down. If they calm down, you have succeeded in listening. If they get more wound up, you’re not listening!

3. Inhibit impulses: This is about doing what needs to get done versus what you would really like to do. As a simple example: Do you have an exercise regimen that you stick to? Or do you crumble at the first chocolate bar? We all have tasks that we may find tiresome, but again, reframe and enjoy every task that you do – no matter how mundane. Just get it done, and be happy while you’re doing it! Having a daily regimen supports your self-control, and you will find that the world will respond more positively to your new-found self-control.

The last year has forced all of us to adapt swiftly to a world turned upside down. Almost overnight, we had little choice but to adopt new ways of working, connecting, collaborating, and leading.

It’s why the concept of unlearning and relearning has never been more relevant. As the futurist Alvin Toffler wrote: “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

So if you’re wondering what you might need to unlearn right now, consider these approaches.  

Challenge your mental maps

What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, a book title by Marshall Goldsmith, speaks to the deep need to continually upgrade the assumptions underpinning the mental maps in our heads. Sure, highly scripted memos from the CEO’s office may once have been effective ways of communicating, but that doesn’t mean they still are. Nowadays, leaders who hide behind over-curated, over-sanitized communications edited and re-edited by risk-averse handlers are considered inauthentic. In contrast, those willing to do a Facebook livestream are lauded.

Only by continually challenging your own best thinking — inviting others to play devil’s advocate on your assumptions and interrogate your thinking — can you do the requisite unlearning and relearning to make smarter decisions as you navigate unchartered ground ahead. Assumptions kill possibilities. So ask yourself, do you need to:

• Unlearn how you manage, motivate and lead people remotely?
• Unlearn how you make decisions and executive projects?
• Unlearn how you communicate to customers about your brand? 
• Unlearn your target market and what they value?
• Unlearn the skills you previously thought were sufficient to advance?

Trade cleverness for curiosity

We came into the world brimming with curiosity and open to learning. Yet, rigid educational systems that rewarded test scores over creativity sucked the joy out of learning for many. More’s the pity, because in today’s world, learning isn’t an exercise we finish in school. It’s imperative for flourishing in life. It’s how we improve ourselves, expand future possibilities and improve the status quo.

Our learning is capped to the extent of our questions. Most of us live with answers to questions we’ve never thought or bothered to ask. So as you consider the problems around, start asking more questions. How do we know this is the best approach? Since we’re all wired with confirmation bias, we must proactively seek out information to contradict our assumptions. 

Be humble

Ever met someone who was too full of their own brilliance? Of course, you have. They abound. Yet IQ is not the strongest predictor of success. Likewise, the best solutions can only be found when we are brave enough to admit we don’t have a monopoly on knowledge and humble enough to listen to others whose perspectives could broaden our own.  

In recounting a conversation he had with President Eisenhower as a boy and later with President G.W. Bush, Bill Marriott, Chairman of Marriott Hotels, shared with me that leadership requires humility. “If you think you’re the smartest person in the room, pretty soon you’ll be the only guy in the room.”

So if you like to think you’d qualify for Mensa, be extra vigilant. Those who believe they are the smartest in the room risk walking through life with blinkers, unaware of their own blind spots and closed off to ideas that would improve their own. 

Consult your future self

Think of a challenge or opportunity you’re currently facing and imagine you are looking at it for the very first time. Or step into the shoes of Doc from Back to the Future to imagine it’s 2050, and you’re looking back thirty years at the situation you are in today. How do you see it differently?

In 1899, Charles Duel, Director of the US patents office, said, “Everything that can be invented already has been invented.”  Yes, it’s easy to laugh at the ridiculousness of that comment now but ten, much less thirty years from now, we will look back on this time and see with greater clarity how we were stuck in obsolete paradigms that constricted our own approaches. 

Embrace discomfort

Given the choice to press cut+paste or moving clumsily through the learning curve, copy+paste holds appeal. It’s less mentally and emotionally taxing. At least in the short term.

We are creatures of comfort, and venturing into new unexplored territory, trying out new ideas, innovating new products, and re-engineering old systems will always meet with resistance. Conscious or unconscious.

Yet while sticking to ‘how things are done around here’ can spare psychological discomfort, it puts you at risk of losing your place in a world marching, charging, rapidly forward. All of this will ultimately put you in a lot less comfortable position down the track.

What do you need to unlearn and relearn? 

The leaders and companies seizing the opportunities that the cascading crisis of the Covid-19 pandemic holds will not be using yesterday’s rules, rubrics, or reasoning. They’ll be deeply engaged in ongoing learning, unlearning, and relearning.

Remember, unlearning and relearning is not a means to an end. It’s an end in itself. As such, the key to unlearning doesn’t lie in the teacher. It lies in the student. In you. In your openness to being challenged — to letting go of what you think you know, so you can relearn what you need to know.

Employee engagement has become the standard for understanding how employees feel about working at your organization. Organizational alignment is the next step in evolution beyond engagement.  

Organizational alignment and employee engagement both have their place. But if you want to see increases in performance and metrics, you want to look at measures that are organizationally focused, not employee focused.  

The differences add up 

Here are specific areas in which organizational alignment differs from employee engagement — and can affect the bottom line. 

Organizational alignment adds purpose 

Organizational alignment takes employee engagement and adds a layer of purpose.  
 
Employees may like what they do, but are their roles deeply connected to the reason the organization exists? To take an extreme example, say you hire someone to take nails out of boards to repurpose the wood. If they spend their days enthusiastically driving more nails into the boards, they may be highly engaged, but they are not serving the organization’s purpose. 
 
Clearly defining the role that your team has in making the mission and vision of the organization live and breathe takes everything to the next level. 

Organizational alignment is more relevant to your primary
business concerns 

Most of the questions you ask about your business are actually central to organizational alignment, not employee engagement, even if that doesn’t seem apparent at first glance. 
 
For example, employee turnover is a significant concern for most organizations. It’s well known that most people leave their jobs because of their bosses. They may say that their boss was a micromanager, didn’t respect them, or didn’t have a clue. However, in the thousands of surveys we’ve conducted, we’ve seen that there’s a massive gap in the communication of mission and vision from second- to third-level leadership and below. And connecting the organization’s mission and vision to the daily execution of work tasks is what keeps people engaged in, excited about, and committed to their work. These “bad bosses” are actually not getting the support they need.

This is an organizational alignment problem, not an employee engagement problem. 

Organizational alignment better connects departments and
functions in a common purpose 

Employee engagement only examines whether the individual is excited about and connected to his or her work. It does not address how to drive better cross-team performance and connection.  
 
Organizational alignment, on the other hand, focuses on mission and vision. It brings a common thread, a common frequency, and a common purpose to all functions and departments.  
 
When the top managers lead, communicate, and create in accordance with a shared mission and vision, the destructive conflict lower down in the organization is drastically reduced. 

Organizational alignment better relates to metrics and key
performance indicators 

Organization leaders commonly perform employee engagement surveys. However, they are often unable to connect changes in employee engagement to changes in performance. There’s only a sense of faith that employee engagement will lead to greater performance.  
 
Organizational alignment ties much more directly to issues that apply to the organization as a whole. Therefore, it connects much more clearly to operational metrics that measure organizational success.  

Key takeaways 

To add purpose to your employee engagement, look holistically at the questions and problems you’re trying to address. Connect departments and functions with a shared mission and vision. Then tie it all to the operational metrics that you care about — metrics that matter. That’s powerful stuff. 
 
Use these strategic approaches and ask relevant questions to take employee engagement up a notch so that it strengthens your organizational alignment: 

1. Better utilize employee surveys. If you do conduct employee engagement surveys, think about how you actually use them to change your leadership style and the way your team interacts with other teams. What is the process like for you in that? Do you see any substantive changes as a result of these surveys? 
2. Share results to promote a common purpose. If you’ve done employee engagement surveys, what’s been the process between you and your boss, or between you and HR, to put together conclusions that can be shared throughout the entire organization with a common language?  
3. Learn from your data. When you look at some of your key performance indicators, especially those that involve working with other teams, what can you learn by digging more deeply into these numbers and the true reasons behind them? 

Art Johnson’s new book is The Art of Alignment: A Data-Driven Approach to Lead Aligned Organizations.

On New Year’s Eve 1999, as the clock was about to strike on Y2K, I set a goal to complete a list of 50 challenges in the first decade of the new millennium. In 2009, I found myself staring down at the very last item on that list: Run the New York City Marathon.

At the time, I wasn’t much of a runner. In fact, I could barely squeak out a 5k. But I had always been someone who set big goals. So over the course of 2009, I put my head down and I did the work. I found a training plan and I raised the money to obtain a charity entry to the New York City Marathon. And on the eve of the expiration of my bucket list, I crossed the finish line of the 40th New York City Marathon.

The hard work paid off, and I was hooked. Between 2009 and 2016, I went on to run 14 more marathons all over the world.

To this day, I’ve been surprised by just how impactful marathon running has been in my life. It’s given me purpose and meaning and has even brought me closer to family. But one area that surprised me the most was how much marathon running has affected my professional life.

It may seem ludicrous to make a connection between running and business, but the two run closer than you might think. I last crossed a marathon finish line in 2016. But the discipline I learned from running continues to influence me in my career today, especially as it concerns my long-term goal setting. 

You’ll work harder for something you love.

Running is hard. If you don’t find any enjoyment in it, you’re not going to be any good at it. I’m not saying you have to fall in love with running after your first attempt (if I’m being honest, not many people do). You’ll have good days and bad days. But for some, if you keep at it, you’ll eventually find those “finish line moments” that make running so worthwhile.

Success in marathon running requires long term planning to build up mileage. One doesn’t simply get off the couch and start with 26.2. But if you keep with it for weeks, months, or years and still resent it, then running just isn’t meant for you. And if you have zero passion for an activity, you’ll have zero motivation to get better at it. Can’t the same be said about your career?

If you don’t have a passion for (or at least believe in) your career or industry, you won’t feel that there’s any value in setting long-term goals for yourself. Why would you? If your heart isn’t in something, you aren’t going to care if you get better at it. You’ll accept stagnancy because challenging yourself to grow in your role and industry will feel like more work than would be worth the reward. The things you love don’t always love you back.

People often believe that consistent training, getting enough sleep, eating right, and stretching before a run are enough for a good performance. But really, you can still tear muscles, get winded, and even break bones — no matter how seasoned of a runner you are. The same is true in business. Projects you work on will flop. A colleague will let you down. Your manager will set expectations that may feel impossible to meet. Hardships will happen. If you don’t believe in what you do, you won’t be motivated to push yourself to succeed.

Success is a solo journey, but a team effort.

One of the things that attracted me to running the most was how it’s a combination of individual purpose and team effort. You are solely responsible for achieving your long-term goals. That doesn’t mean you have to be alone in your efforts, but no one can cross that finish line for you.

Every marathon runner shares similar goals of working on shaving minutes off of their time or gradually increasing their mileage. Because these are shared goals among marathon runners, you’ll eventually establish your own tight-knit support system of runners. It’s this group that will encourage you to push your limits. They will be there to console you when you fail, and they’ll be there to celebrate you when you accomplish a goal. And you’ll do the same for them. 

The only way to become a better runner is to pound the pavement every day (figuratively and literally). I couldn’t imagine how much harder this would have been without a great support system behind me. From the friends and mentors I ran with daily, to the folks who paced me on the marathon course, to the cheerleaders who showed up at every race.  

This is a mirror image of your career. Whether you’re an executive, manager, or brand-new employee, your entire company is all working towards the same goal of achieving organizational excellence. While you’re all in lockstep carrying out the strategic plans you set, each individual person has their part to play in meeting the business’s overall goals. But even though you have your own course to follow, deadlines to meet, and to-do list to complete, you also have the support and encouragement of your colleagues when things get tough.

If you fail, reorient yourself and try again.

There is no one-size-fits-all strategy to become a better marathon runner. What works for one person won’t necessarily work for you and your running goals. The way we often discover what works best for us is through failure. Don’t let this failure beat you down, but rather, turn it into an opportunity for improvement. 

Have you ever run a race and hit the dreaded “wall”? There’s a reason why it felt like your body was going to give out on you. Maybe you didn’t pace yourself like you should have, or perhaps you forgot to hydrate yourself appropriately. Recognizing the “why” of failure will help you avoid the same mistakes in the future.

Now think back to your career. Every professional will make mistakes that may put their work in jeopardy. If you own up to these mistakes and analyze every misstep that led you to this moment, you can take a step back, adjust your plan of action, and learn from what went wrong. 

In marathon running and in business, there is nothing more satisfying than that “finish line moment.” Setting big goals and having big dreams are both important. But crossing that finish line is unlikely unless you have the right discipline in place to get you there.

The last nine months have taken a toll on most of us. In your organization, chances are many employees are feeling more anxious than this time a year ago. Uncertainty and disruption do that. 

It’s why now more than ever, as people are forced to meet from behind screens without access to the regular tough points with colleagues, a chief role of leaders is to allay people’s fears and fuel their courage. This requires being extra intentional about the psychological barriers that keep people from collaborating across remote teams and bringing their boldest thinking to the challenges at hand. After all, it’s not where people are working that matters most. It’s how they’re working. 

Fostering a ‘culture of courage’ is mission-critical. Here are seven ways to do just that.

1. Lead by example… try to get it right, not be right 

When asked what courageous leadership looks like, Kate Johnson, (pictured above) President of $45 billion business Microsoft US, says, “When you see a person trying to get it right, instead of trying to be right.” As a leader, you are like an emotional barometer in your organization, providing ‘cues’ to everyone on how to respond and behave. If you show up as anxious, you’ll only stoke anxiety in others. So before you focus on strategies and processes, get your head and heart in the right space, and ground yourself in the values you want to define yourself as a leader. Employees understand that there’s a lot outside your control. Still, if they can see that you’re at least in control of yourself, it provides a form of psychological safety net that encourages them to be that bit braver than they might otherwise. 

Remember, your way of being speaks more loudly than your words. You lead by virtue of who you are, not what you do or say. Work to try to get it right, not be right. 

2. Reward non-conformity… make it safe for loyal dissent 

Research shows that high-performing teams are those where people feel safe to speak up – to challenge ‘how we do it around it and raise sensitive issues. Yet when weighing the pros and cons of dissenting from the consensus, people are wired for caution. If they fear the risk of social humiliation, much less being professionally penalized, they’ll almost certainly play it safe.  

Leaders who reward ‘loyal dissenters’ – those with the courage to ‘stick their neck out’ for the greater good – reduce collective fear and build the psychological safety needed for others to report, share and discuss what’s not working. After all, it’s the conversations that are not happening that often incur the steepest hidden tax on every measure that matters. 

3. Show you care… connect from the heart to the heart 

People do their best work when they feel appreciated for who they are, not just what they do. Not feeling that their boss doesn’t care about them is the number one reason good employees leave. 

Amid this challenging time, practicing empathy for what employees are dealing with is even more crucial. Prioritize regular one-on-one check-ins. Send them a personal message to acknowledge how hard people are working. Take the time to enquire how things are at home. Then listen. No agenda.  

Emotions drive behavior, not logic. Leaders need to be highly attuned to their organization’s emotional landscape if they’re to harness the ‘positive emotional contagion’ within their ranks. 

4. Destigmatize failure… and harness the value of ‘miss-steps’ 

No one starts out to fail. Yet unless people feel safe enough to risk making a mistake, they’ll only make small incremental changes, cautiously iterating on what’s already in place. This stifles innovation and deprives everyone of the learning required to build and retain an edge. 

A study at the University of Exeter Business School found that leaders who back employees to back themselves build stronger performing teams. Removing the stigma of failure is essential to optimizing growth and adapting to change (pretty crucial right now.) So talk about failure, including your own, in ways that normalize it as necessary for meaningful progress. At weekly meetings, ask everyone to share how they’ve failed in the last week and what they learned in the process. Then celebrate the learning and talk about how you can apply it to other projects. 

5. Nurture belonging… ensure everyone feels valued

We all want to feel part of a tribe, valued and celebrated. As people have been forced to connect remotely, it’s left many feeling disconnected. So be deliberate in fostering a sense of inclusion. Invite everyone for their input. Ask open-ended questions. Nurture discussion. Then actively listen and acknowledge the value of what every-one has to share, particularly those who may feel most marginalized. Making people feel valued for who they are, not what they do, will build the psychological safety that is a key predictor of the highest performing teams. 

6. Delegate decision making… treat people as trust-worthy

People rise to the level of expectation others have of them. When you treat employees as trust-worthy – by extending decision-making authority or simply letting them get on with the job – most will go the extra mile to prove you right. On the flip side, when you micromanage or undermine decisions, you do the opposite. 

As you set priorities, manage accountability, allocate resources or communicate expectations, consider how you’d feel if your boss went about it as you are.  

Of course, when trust is broken, hold people to account. Nothing demoralizes a great employee faster than watching you tolerate a poor one. 

7. Rally your team… get behind a compelling mission 

In the midst of crisis, leaders have an opportunity to activate the ‘rally effect’ and build a shared sense of mission and solidarity. Don’t squander that opportunity. Ensure everyone is clear about what lies at stake if they don’t all pull together and what is possible if they do. Continually communicate your vision, share plans and ensure everyone knows their specific role in the larger scheme of your business and why their part matters.  

People are the number one asset in your company right now. Unlocking their full potential requires working every day to nurture the conditions for them to engage in courageous conversations, make better decisions, and do their best work. Small actions can make a bigger impact than grand gestures. Don’t underestimate them. 

A Global pandemic. Civil Unrest. Economic turmoil. 2020 taught us just how susceptible we are to surprise and disruption. With as much uncertainty as we experienced last year, it was nearly impossible to complete the year without a core realization: We should not focus on predicting the future but instead become resilient to anything that might happen. 

The antidote to the uncertainty that 2021 will bring is resilience – three levels of pliability that are must-haves for navigating this year and beyond. It is useful to have any one of these but to thrive and prosper; you need all three. Scenario planning is the process through which you and your executive team can approach resilience collectively, deliberately, and systematically.

Let’s explore the three levels of resilience since we know that “set it and forget it” will not work as a strategy. Then, see how scenario planning offers immunity to the negative impacts of the unknown while creating the conditions for success.  

First, there is strategic resilience. You’ve got to make decisive choices, create new options, and have flexible strategies that respond to the full range of uncertainties. To do that, you need a clear view of the context surrounding your business and industry and a structured way to understand the forces you could potentially face. Those companies that planned for multiple scenarios for how the pandemic would unfold thrived in 2020 – the businesses that supported virtual working, the restaurants that pivoted to take-out, and the healthcare providers that turned their focus to COVID responses. Companies that did not adjust their strategies failed as quickly as those who only cut costs without pivoting strategically. Scenario planning provides you and your leaders a framework to understand what could happen, coupled with clear strategies for how you would respond under different conditions. 

The second is relational resilience. You have to operate as a team, as a partner, as a vendor, in new contexts. How do relationships change when the context shifts so dramatically? Companies that prosper determine how to meet customers’ emerging needs, and those who re-configure relationships with vendors get their supply chains filled. And it’s the companies that maintain relationships and connections with their teams that bring on new talent and maintain high-quality strategic dialogue, even while “Zooming” from their living rooms, home offices, and bedrooms. Scenario planning helps leaders cultivate strategic dialogue, forward momentum, and connection despite the ambiguity.

And finally, there is emotional resilience. At any moment in 2020, we felt hope, spaciousness, and connection while also feeling fearful, anxious, and outraged. Those who have an emotional resilience practice and an ability to look inside can adapt to conditions while not being overly reactive. You and your leaders need a systematic way to de-personalize highly emotional issues so that decision making can be made clearly and cleanly. So constant pivots don’t lead to burn-out and wasted resources.

Scenario planning is a helpful tool for cultivating all three levels of resilience. The primary use case for scenario planning is to identify futures that your company should plan for. It provides a structured framework for navigating the unknown and is an alternative to prediction and forecasting what could be, rather than what will be. Because scenario planning is done in teams, it inherently allows for building and nurturing relationships and a shared awareness through structured strategic dialogue. And finally, scenario planning gives the team a sense of comfort because it allows them to grapple with the unknown rather than bury it and pretend it’s not there. In short, scenario planning brings harmony to the age-old conflict between fighting with and fleeing from reality.

Companies that leveraged Trium’s scenario planning toolkit in 2020 were able to develop short-term strategies to navigate the global pandemic. Now is the time to turn to the longer-term strategies, structural forces, and bigger choices businesses face as the pandemic, civil unrest, and economic turmoil continue. As you prepare for 2021 and beyond, instead of trying to predict a single future, and instead of trying to pretend that the future will look something like it does today, why not look at the full range of possibilities? Roleplay and imagine what it will take to win – and then create the conditions for success.

Scenario planning fits into almost any strategic planning process and can be done relatively quickly. The outcomes are revolutionary and fundamentally different from any other strategy process because it targets all three resilience levels. Scenario planning creates the possibility for leadership teams to win no matter what conditions they face. And along the way, it helps people feel connected to one another, connected to the future, and to see new opportunities they otherwise wouldn’t have.

2021 kicked off with a lot of promise for change. But Instead, there has been a devastating roller coaster of emotions as we watched violence at our Capitol and the President’s impeachment vote. Recent events in the news have captivated us, keeping us monitoring our devices almost constantly. This has been difficult for many adults to comprehend and even more troubling to explain to children.

The current news cycle is a continually varying schedule, and you never know when the new burst of emotionally-charged information will come. As B.F. Skinner theorized in introductory psychology this intermittent varying schedule creates the dopamine bursts in our brain, which creates the most intense change in our behavior, constantly checking our phone/news with emotional reactions.  

This whole Trump-Biden transition news cycle has us neurochemically swinging from up to down and left to right. And our children are watching our reactions. I have two daughters who are 8 and 10 years old. When they saw me shocked and angry, I did not dismiss my feelings. Instead, I said:

 “Yes, I am upset right now! Emotions can be like a storm, but I am the anchor on the bottom of the sea. Emotions go up and down, but they will pass. You don’t need to worry about me, as I am an adult that can understand that some people can make bad choices. I believe in this country and its power to heal.”  

My oldest daughter asked why our own President would tell people to do bad things when she learned about the storming of the Capitol. It’s vital for me to tell her how violence is never the answer and that a democracy depends on voters and their decisions. I like to put it into perspectives that children can understand—for example, learning how to accept defeat. This can be compared to things that happen in school, losing in sports, or getting a bad grade. It’s about learning to make the best out of losing. Bottom line: Peaceful transitions of power are necessary to democracies, and the people who stormed the Capitol were wrong.

It’s important we model good behavior for our children and not become consumed with the news. I always recommend teaching different lessons, depending on the comprehension and emotional maturity of the child. 

So, what are ways parents can help children process political events?

●     Disconnecting and using this time to educate will be beneficial. Explain our legal system. The rioters involved in the violence displayed at the Capitol have consequences and will be held accountable in the eyes of the law. Their actions went against the law and put other people in danger, and law enforcement was called to put their lives on the line to protect them. Parents can show how using violence is not the answer, goes against your family values, and is less effective than communication. 

●     Starting at a young age, you can explain the importance of communication skills. Approaching uncomfortable situations or topics can be difficult, but it helps to do so in a calm manner. Showing an example using “I think” and “I feel” statements and avoiding the use of “you,” which can direct blame. This will help children see how critical thinking can diffuse a heated discussion and be more effective than resorting to violence when there is a difference of opinions.

●     Living in a democracy means that we vote in elected officials based on our values and candidates that represent our desired goals for our country. This system has two parties, which means that sometimes a candidate we do not vote for is elected. It is still important to respect the system and try to focus on the positive. We live in a country with a democracy, which means that there are systems in place to protect the people’s choices. This also means that there should be a peaceful transition of power when a new candidate is officially elected. 

Children learn by watching their parents, so it is pivotal that we lead by example and model positive behaviors and values. We have the opportunity to educate youth that violence does not solve problems. Always spin things to the positive with children- this is the key to a happy life. There is a lot of hope for the new administration. This year will include the first female Vice President of the United States. What an incredible role model for my girls. My children learned a hard lesson about when leaders fail us. We often learn the most poignant lessons from defeat and mistakes, and for my children and our country, this is no exception.