What We Used To Tell Ourselves

Take a look around…

1,600 team members reinvented their entire way of serving customers in less than a week.

Millions of dollars in business are being conducted from kitchen tables each hour of the day.

An entire generation is embracing technology that was foreign to them just a few weeks ago.

Churches and non-profits have expanded their reach nationwide with online video.

Every school in America just became qualified to teach online.

Restaurants have streamlined their kitchens and order delivery systems for unprecedented speed.

Politicians have taken off their partisan gloves and leant each other a helping hand.

Car manufacturers re-tooled their assembly lines to make medical equipment overnight.

Entire companies are pausing their desk work and picking up sewing machines to make masks for hospitals.

Companies of every shape and size are inventing new ways to help their customers online.

I typed the final lines of a 70,000 word book I’ve been struggling to write for two years.

These are just a few of the mesmerizing observations from my world in the recent weeks. 

With seemingly no effort or fear we have taken massive leaps of innovation in every corner of life.  We have busted free from the confines of bureaucracy and tradition, and traded our previous limiting beliefs for a common goal:

Survival.

In the coming weeks the world will open its doors and run back toward status quo. For many, this can’t come soon enough.

But I fear that we will quickly shackle ourselves in the handcuffs of “normal” and throw away the key. We will forget to take these golden lessons forward:

1. We were capable of rapid innovation all along. We just told ourselves the process was complicated.

2. Miraculous things happen when we bend the rules of tradition and bureaucracy. We just told ourselves that we couldn’t bend them.

3. When humans are working for a common goal, we can do remarkable things. We just told ourselves that we were too different to work together.

Will you embrace this time of limitation with me?

Will you carry these lessons forward into tomorrow?

Will you remember to teach your children and grandchildren how remarkably capable we are when we work together?

We’ve learned how to tell ourselves a different story about the world we live in. Let’s not forget it.

Cheers,

BW