The Five Gifts of Uncertainty “How are you doing? How are yo | Idea factory
The Five Gifts of Uncertainty
“How are you doing? How are you handling all this?”
It seems like 90% of conversations these days start with those two sentences.
The connection these questions create is just one of the Gifts of Uncertainty that have been given to us by the pandemic.
I thought about it, started looking for “gifts” in the news and listening for them in conversations with friends and clients, I realized how wise my friend truly was.
1. Necessity of offering a vision
2. Freedom to experiment
3. Ability to change
4. Power of Relationships
5. Business benefit of doing the right thing
Faced with levels of uncertainty we’ve never before experienced, people and businesses are doing things they’ve never imagined having to do and, as a result, are discovering skills and abilities they never knew they had.
Necessity of offering a vision – When we’re facing or doing something new, we don’t have all the answers. But we don’t need all the answers to take action. The people emerging as leaders, in both the political and business realms, are the ones acknowledging this reality by sharing what they do know, offering a vision for the future, laying out a process to achieve it, and admitting the unknowns and the variables that will affect both the plan and the outcome.
Business benefit of doing the right thing – In a perfect world, businesses that consistently operate ethically, fairly, and with the best interests of ALL their stakeholders (not just shareholders) in mind, would be rewarded. We are certainly not in a perfect world, but some businesses are doing the “right thing” and rea being rewarded. Sweetgreen and AllBirds are donating food and shoes, respectively, to healthcare workers. On the other hand, businesses that try to leverage the pandemic to boost their bottom lines are being taken to task.
Before the pandemic, many of these things seemed impossibly hard, even theoretical.
These are gifts to be cherished, remembered and used.
