Virus, Systems and Human Growth

I think the pandemic took the worst out of many of us. For sure it had a very bad impact on our cultural and national systems.

I remember very well what happened a bit more than 1 year ago, when it seemed that the Italians were the ones spreading the virus in the European Continent. I remember being in the UK and suspected of carrying contagion across the Channel. But I also remember several Countries closing their borders for the fear of the “Italian virus”, like Austria or France.

How ironic this resonates today, after having my own family suffering for being infected by the British Variant, a few weeks ago!

I also remember, just a few weeks later, the so-called “Frugal Countries” fighting for not helping too much the economies that were suffering an unprecedented disruption and crisis.

The first reaction I can remember, even before fear, is closeness. And accusation. Pointing the finger at someone and putting yourself in some kind of “upper” position seemed the most logical thing to do. Especially at a Country or cultural level.

The second reaction I can remember is confusion. An uncontrolled flow of actions, mistakes, delays, miscommunication, … and much more. It’s too easy to remember the discussion about “Herd Immunity”, but I can remember the delays in activating the lockdown, the number of contradicting messages and actions, until we saw the lines of trucks full of corpses…

The third reaction was stupidity. In literal terms. How can you call deniers, or the crowds of young boys and girls we saw on the buses or outside the closed bars, without wearing a mask, nor keeping any distancing measure? And I don’t want to open the topic about haters and social networks.

Many of us repeatedly said that this tragedy is also a tremendous opportunity for growth, for rediscovering our inner self, our closest relationships. I still believe it’s true. But, if I am honest, it seems that this opportunity has been largely wasted.

Especially now, when it seems the fight against the virus is almost won and we all are looking forward for going back to our lives (or starting new ones?).

I would like, however, to take a closer look at what happened and what might happen with this regard, starting from my own experience.

March 2020 was the most travel-planned month in my life. I had planned and booked trips in several parts of Europe, UK, US (east and west coast), South Africa, Middle East. I was expected to take an intercontinental flight every 2–3 days. And everything was so important, life-changing and urgent. Don’t get me wrong: I am not saying it was just a useless habit or so. It really seemed and was relevant. My plans were consistent and there were several people in agreement with me about this.

But of course, nothing happened. I was stuck with a broken tyre on the top of a mountain when the lockdown came in and I had to be literally rescued by my wife, after 3 days. All of my flights and travel plans were canceled, and I emerged from my home office only several weeks later.

I learnt at my own expense how to have a different approach to planning, to time management, to the attempt of working smarter, and not only harder.

But I think this disruption, that came in and broke all of our ideas and plans, was also an amazing lesson about systems thinking, in many ways:

We are not self-sufficient beings. It is not enough to think about my own health, my survival, because:

1. The actions of others, their free decisions have a direct impact on me. For example, if I stand by a denier or someone who just went out of a crowd, I might be impacted hardly;
2. Vice-versa, what I do for my own health, my protection, is not only due for myself, but it’s also a direct and clear responsibility towards the others;
3. As a consequence, if I ask something (eg to respect the rules), I am not asking that just for myself. I am asking it for any other individual or, better, for the whole community.
4. These very basic concepts are true not only for individuals, but also, collectively, for groups, organizations, nations, etc…

The old, traditional tools, solutions and approaches are simply not working. They were all forged in a linear way-of-thinking. You cannot address a systemically complex thing like the pandemic with simple, stereotyped linear receipts. The chaotic situation connected with the outbreak was and is connected with an amount of broken, fragmented instructions like: “don’t get infected”, “get infected soon , so that you can get immunity”, “the virus does not exist”, “vaccines are dangerous”, and many many more,.. We are trying to use the weapons of our ancestors for fighting against the threats of the future.

Being forced to change our life is, by itself, the greatest learning opportunity we might have.

For example: in which sense all the things you were aiming at last year were really relevant? What is the core of your purpose? What is really important and what can be avoided or delayed? Or changed?

Under this point of view, I had the gift of observing the whole system shifting and therefore radically changing my perspective on life. I would have never had the capability and capacity of thinking about this change, simply because I was and I am fully inside this system, and it’s way too complex for me to reconsider the whole system inside out.

At this point, if you are still reading, I think something about this way of seeing things is resonating with you. What really surprises me, every time, is how simple and evident are these things, and yet completely disregarded. Think about point A, above: how may times I have been into a discussion with someone who said “I am responsible for myself. If I want to take a risk, I will pay the consequences! I cannot stay at home: my friends are waiting for me outside,…”.

Yes, this is a gift. A terrible, hard gift. But an extremely precious one. And we must beware of the obstacles; we must address the risk of not exploiting it.

In a sense, I believe that we are the hardest obstacle to ourselves. I think that our adaptation capability, our reactions, our natural attempts to keep our track, our automatic response trying to make me move on in the same direction is the obstacle to learning.

Of course this is a life-saving, low-level mechanism that tries to keep us alive and resilient. But at the same time, if we follow this instinct too closely, we might miss the big picture, the large system shift. We might be pushed to ignore very large portions of change, just trying to go back to normal as soon as possible.

Vaccines are a light from the other side of the tunnel, for sure, but this is a crucial moment for us, as individuals, groups and organizations. It is crucial for our health, for our economies, but also for our minds.

It is clear that we need different capabilities form the ones we used in the past. We don’t even know very well which ones will be required, nor we know how to acquire them.

While we are changing our minds, our work is changing its nature. Everything seems to be melted, accelerated, more intense. Think about the “New Ways of Working” that we are experimenting: what are the boundaries between work and private life? Are we trying to transpose the “Old” into the “New” way of working, or is it a real redesign? And how conscious this transformation is?

In every aspect of our life we run the same risk: to apply old and obsolete categories to brand new situations, issues and opportunities. If we will follow our conservation instinct, we will stay in our comfort zones and we will be smashed by this disruption, trying to force the new world into the old framework.

For example, we can try to address the need for skills with more training (maybe digital, but still training); we can continue to think that remote working necessarily means lack of productivity, and we can continue focusing of cost cutting as a way for gaining competitiveness.

But luckily, that’s not the only option.

If we will recognize the fact that the change is not linear and we will embrace the system, we will be experimenting a quantum leap in our individual and collective lives.

There is a new option. Now, simple, extremely practical.

But we must think in terms of systems.

For example: In order to think about myself, I must think about the others. And vice versa. It is not ideology. It is not compliance, it is not “educated-thinking”. It is the lesson we have been taught. It’s called sustainability and it’s rooted into our daily lives.

It is simple, if we just change our perspective.

The complexity of systems, which is the topic we are dealing with, is not something abstract or conceptual.

It is, at the end of the day the awareness of being part of an ecosystem which is inter-connected. A system we cannot control hierarchically, but that we can influence and guide.

The main capability that this new world requires is, in this sense, a new type of leadership. Together with some amazing, incredibly brilliant and smart-minded colleagues in PwC, we have developed this concept of the “Six Paradoxes of Leadership”.

The key concept is that in this complex, systemic world, leadership cannot be rigid or one-sided. In order to exploit this gift, to learn, to influence the system, to change the world, you must embrace its complexity and be able to stay within these paradoxes.

For example, it is important to be a “Strategic Executor”, or an “Humble Hero”. Thinking about my last year’s travel plan, I will try to be some kind of agile planner…!

I am concluding repeating that, once you have shifted the perspective, it’s simple!

Simplicity does not mean cutting out what we do not understand, or ignoring what we do not like! It is not about avoiding what is hard. On the contrary, simplicity is accepting the paradoxes, the contradiction of our inner life and the fact that the systems we live in are always larger than ourselves.

This is the way, at the end: stay there, make things compatible without compromises, make things happen without perfection.

Paradoxes are, after all, good news: we can grow out of the difficulties. We do have a chance, if we just do not ignore it.

This is the secret ingredient. There is nothing magic, but a lot of work, with the right perspective. That’s why, after all, I love so much this consulting work that I do: because it’s all about this!