Take Your Teams Back... to the Future
We can take our teams back, but not to the past. Not to where we have come from. Instead, we can take our teams Back...to the Future!
Many of us are aware of the devastating and debilitating impacts of post-traumatic stress that occurs after people or groups experience a disruption to their lives. What is less well known is that we can also experience post-traumatic growth. That is, that after disruption, it is possible that we can return to something different and better than before. This happens often and it is an idea that can help your teams right now and as we move towards whatever the new normal is for us.
As various restrictions slowly get lifted, it is becoming apparent that Australia and New Zealand will emerge from this crisis in the foreseeable future - and ahead of many countries elsewhere in the world. What that will mean is that we will once again be able to go back to working as we used to. But it doesn't mean that we have to. As my mate, Juan says "we don't have to go back to where we came from".
Juan is right. There is an opportunity to go back to the office better as a result of the lessons that we are learning through operating as remote teams.
A recent McKinsey article encouraged readers to think about what was, what is and what will be. None of us can change what was - how things were. There are things that we can do to improve what is - in terms of improving the experience of ourselves and our teams right now. The biggest opportunity is in what will be. Post-traumatic growth encourages us to think not only of coming through as survivors who have a level of functioning that is sufficient to continue but is lower than before. It's pretty obvious that most of us don't want our new normal to be worse than before the pandemic. More popular is the idea of resilience - the return to previous function. While this is better than merely surviving (or worse), it's also ignoring a third outcome - coming through the other side stronger and better. The diagram below captures it pretty well (the writing is my overlay).
Image from Jeon, Sang Won & Han, Changsu & Choi, Joonho & Pae, Chi-Un & Chae, Jeong-Ho & Ko, Young-Hoon & Yoon, Ho-Kyoung & Han, Changwoo. (2015). Posttraumatic Growth and Resilience: Assessment and Clinical Implications. Journal of Korean Neuropsychiatric Association. Annotations from me.
I will explore more in the coming weeks about what is involved in this. Naturally, I will do this as a trilogy - just like the movies!
For now, it is sufficient for us to consider how we would like this experience to change us. None of us can change what has happened. Some teams and organisations will use this time to accelerate their progress towards more adaptable, flexible and progressive ways of working. They will walk bravely through doors that are now open - not knowing exactly what's on the other side. It won't be easy, but they would rather be in that camp than with others who are trying to open doors that will never open again or have disappeared.
It starts with embracing the possibility that we can go back to the office and the 'new normal' better as a result of the lessons that we are learning through operating as remote teams, during a global health and economic crisis. We can take our teams back, but not to the past. Not to where we have come from. Instead, we can take our teams Back...to the Future!
Here are questions for you to contemplate this week:
How will your teams need to operate in 2, 5 and 10 years from now?
What is one step that you can take in that direction as we return to a new normal?