Litany against fear

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

― Frank Herbert, Dune

Like so many businesses, our world has been rocked to the core by the coronavirus crisis. We’ve had to make tougher calls and harder decisions than we’ve ever had to make. Our teams have been resized and reshaped. We’ve had to pivot, refocus, reprioritise and reforecast. We’ve faced, and continue to face, existential tests on a daily basis. 2020 has brought with it challenges none of us saw coming, the most humbling of which being that our perceived sense of control over the world around us never really existed in the first place.

But whilst we’ve all grappled with a constantly shifting ‘new normal’ and a fresh understanding of our place in the world, it hasn’t stopped turning. People haven’t stopped wanting to connect, to live well, to surround themselves with safety and security when all around them is anything but safe and secure.

It’s for this reason that I don’t merely want us to weather this storm and come out the other side a survivor. I want us to lean into the discomfort of it, live with it and learn from it. I want us to find ourselves on the other side of it stronger, more resilient and more purpose-driven than ever.

The following is an excerpt from a memo I shared with the Habito senior leadership team which I hope might be of some use to others trying to navigate their own path through a changed world.

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I don’t need to re-state everything the world is facing, but I want to talk about the more granular universe of our individual and collective responses to this crisis. Every leader here is a capable, pragmatic operator, and the speed at which you’ve all adjusted to the changing environment has been extraordinarily impressive. Being practical and moving at pace sometimes means we have to simplify our thought process to be expedient and optimise for short-term focus — so I wanted to lay out a few thoughts on how our response might shape the longer term.

Inertia can be described as the unwillingness of matter to alter its velocity. It is often used as a descriptor for things that are stuck in place, but it is equally as accurate to use it to describe something that cannot slow down. Our culture is in many ways defined by that second type of inertia — we are continually sprinting, constantly crossing ‘chasms of death’ and aware that our agility is one of our core advantages against incumbents. The danger of moving at that pace is it can be the enemy of critical thinking; when our reflex is to do, we sometimes miss the opportunity not to do, or to do something different.

Crises come about on a smaller scale in all of our lives. Break-ups, loss of loved ones, illness… we have all experienced the feeling of the floor disappearing beneath us, and everything we knew to be true suddenly seeming a little less certain. It is often in these nauseating moments, freed from the background noise of everyday existence, that our lives and decisions are illuminated for better or worse. Core beliefs are re-examined, changes are made, new courses are set.

The crisis we are facing as a civilisation is affording us all that moment of self-recognition. My primary concern is that we, as a team capitalise on this momentary interruption to our collective inertia to look at the world through fresh eyes and re-examine our decisions in light of our shared beliefs and passions.

In this spirit, I wanted to suggest four simple ideas that I’d like you all to think about as we experience this shared moment of weightlessness.

1. Let go of the past. Beyond our core purpose and values, everything is up for grabs. Every decision we have ever taken as a business was within a fundamentally different context. There is no shame in reversing historical positions or proposing new paths forward — at the very least; we should be challenging what came before.
2. We are our actions. These are the moments that define relationships and perceptions of people and institutions. Our behaviour now will form the basis of our ‘lived values’ as a company. And to our customers and the world, our actions will be indelibly tied to how we are perceived for years to come. True, empathetic, generous activity in this period will do more than any amount of advertising could hope to.
3. Look for opportunities. We will not profit from this crisis. But we will not be passive either. Lean into the turbulence, no matter how terrifying. Revel in the opportunity to re-consider anything and everything. It is impossible to manufacture this kind of broadening of consciousness — take everything you can from it.
4. Keep your head. One of our strongest assets as humans is the pace at which we adapt to change. People can accept change more easily than they can accept uncertainty. Your teams will be looking for answers that you may not have, but if you are purposeful and honest with them, they will follow you regardless.

I guess the tl;dr is ‘be brave and be focussed’. In the near future, we will all do fewer things and be more focussed on their execution — we must all be brave enough to change our minds about what those things might be.

Dan