LiftOFF

How can your team shake off the challenges of 2020 and lift off in 2021?

Current State

Here is what I am noticing with my clients: many of them are fatigued or still reeling from a typhoon of crises - take your pick - pandemic, economic uncertainty, work-from-home mandates, U.S. election, social unrest, Black Lives Matter, climate change.

I am having a lot of conversations with clients lately about how to shake it off - how to create a lift off for themselves and their teams, particularly as they close out 2020 and look ahead to 2021. How do you plan when you may have so many questions about what is possible and when, given some of the pandemic impacts?

Neuroscience Informed

It can be hard to plan when there are so many unknowns and/or when one is anxious about the future. Here's what we know from neuroscience: it is impossible to be truly creative when the brain is in this state - effectively a fight, flight or freeze mode. The brain can be paralyzed when it experiences too much uncertainty or fear. This is where many people have been this year. It's an understandable state, so no judgment, given all that is going on in the world.

How do you break an orientation that inhibits movement forward? Where do you begin?

Conscious Leadership

A good starting point is to bring conscious leadership and a broader perspective to any situation where one is at best suspect, at worst panicked. Conscious leadership is being fully aware of all that is before you and within you. It's about making conscious choices about what you will pay attention to, why and how.

Recovering & Pivoting

Once you realize you are having a reaction, the question to ask yourself is: How can I quickly reorient myself to be best positioned to respond? What am I learning in this moment of pivoting? Yes, it's as if the word "pivot" was created in, and for 2020. It's a buzzword, but what does it really mean?

Pivoting is about having a cognitive agility to be able to nimbly scan your work horizon and identify opportunities where others see challenge. It's about:

• Proactively shifting your strategy or actions mid-stream as your rapidly changing circumstances require.

• Navigating flexibility and scenario planning on the fly.

• Quickly reorienting, or continually orienting, yourself to the demands of the present situation. 

• Doing this for yourself and your team... and making sure your team(s) are aligned. 

Key questions to consider:

• Where do you need to innovate?

• How can you reimagine your business?

• How well is your team aligned on how you see opportunities or challenges?

• How well is your team prepared for a proactive LiftOFF in 2021?

Action

If you need more team alignment to hit the ground running, please reach out to schedule a strategy consultation here. My team and I are starting to plan strategic kickoff meetings for Q1 2021 and we'd love to help.