In your business as a leader (and it is our contention that everyone has a role as leader) and as a human being – how are you? How is the reality of life for you right now? Is it time for a ‘Re-set’? Jill Whittington writes…

Despite all that was theorised, anticipated and written about ‘getting back to normal’ or ‘post Covid,’ ‘post Brexit,’ events have taken yet another plot twist. Few anticipated we would be feeling the effects of war and experiencing such extreme global energy, climate and financial crises. Without undermining the seriousness of the pandemic, it did provide us with time. Time for our families, time for organisations and time for ourselves to stop and re-think. Time for reflection. Now the reality of a new way of being is kicking in.

How is it for you – frustration, disappointment and stress or can you see a new and exciting opportunity?  Either way our team at The Change Maker Group are creating a series we call Reset to help you – I’ll explain more.

The Challenges keep on coming

If your organisation has survived the pandemic you may be feeling confident you could now face almost anything and/or are looking forward to a new relative stability, bringing new positive outcomes.  The reality however is strategic investment is being pulled to meet raising costs especially energy bills and the greatly empowered workforce has created agency in their own hybrid working as well as spearheading the ‘Great Resignation’– all of which means more challenges.

One leader confided:

‘I felt so awful having to put a new project on hold, everyone was so fired up for it, but we just can’t cope with the rising energy costs. I’m just hoping we don’t have to do more to reduce costs’

Does any of this sound familiar to you?

The Best Laid Plans

Robert Burns’ poem in 1785 comes to mind ‘To a Mouse…’

But Mouse, you are not alone,

In proving foresight may be vain:

The best-laid schemes of mice and men

Go oft awry,

And leave us nothing but grief and pain,

For promised joy!

Plans are always just that. Plans made at a time with a certain set of assumptions and based on that reality. The big difference with the current scenario is that the extremes of chaos and uncertainty are for most, unprecedented.

Much has been written about ‘agile working’ and building resilience, including us! In fact, I could share every article we have written over the past two years. They ALL remain relevant. Here is a quote from Nicky Carew in her article from Jan 2021! The Value of Resilient Agile Organisations

One of the signature attributes of resilient agile organisations is the presence of an agile mindset. Fundamentally, the ability to reflect, share experiences and, be curious and embrace other experiences enables learning from failures too.

Is it time for you or your business to Re-Set?

On ‘re-setting’ my alarm clock for the weekend, I pondered what ‘re-set’ means. Next day I did the tried and tested habit of looking it up!  Here’s what I found:

‘set again or differently.’ – as in I must reset the alarm” (I must admit I chuckled at this!)

‘the thermostat is now set to 20 – you can make it warmer or colder by ‘resetting’ it to a different value’

 ‘Production stops’ works by simply ‘re-setting’ the end time to a different value (but not to the default one)’

Then I came across a comment which resonated:

I would suggest that you can avoid the confusion by using the word “change” or “update” ….. which would convey your meaning while sounding more natural.

So, are we simply talking about ongoing ‘change’?

Before I left the search page, the following stood out as equally relevant:

‘A spiritual reset is the most important in setting and maintaining goals…….you should remember to hit your spiritual reset button anytime during the day when you feel that your “bin” is full. Just stop, break the chain of routine…………….and then get back into your task.’

In fact, the idea of stopping in this last example, regardless of any interpretation of ‘spiritual’ is critical.

STOP and re-set

I am not alone about writing along these lines.

In his article  The Human Deal – Redesigning Employee ExperienceMalcolm Follos writes about ‘The Human Deal’ citing the key ingredients for a more holistic employee experience inviting employers to re-think.

The McKinsey article Global Economics Intelligence executive summary, March 2022 asserts that each sector, industry, and function will have to reinvent itself to achieve maximum growth and sustainability with procurement leaders facing one of the toughest market environments of their careers.

In Vanda North’s latest article Rewire Your Brain in 8 Minutes a Day she explores ‘Re’ from the angle of Re-connecting and informs us that the prefix RE is from the Latin ‘wre’ meaning ‘again’

The purpose of my article is not to provide any solutions or reach any conclusions, since your guess would be as good as mine as to what will happen next. More it is to share what I am seeing, hearing and reading; and what is getting us thinking to see if it rings true for you.

If it does to encourage you to STOP, I further urge you to not just stop but to stop with purpose and intent.

Re-set with purpose and intent

In support of this aim, we will be providing a series of e-books, articles, videos and events throughout the year, to help you structure your own or business ‘Re-set’ with purpose.

Subjects range from personal resilience through to diversity and inclusion. We know that every topic may require a ‘re-set.’

The Details

Follow our LinkedIn page to keep in touch with our Re-set series and how it will help you and your organisation.  As people are at the heart of all things we are starting with Re-set for Resilience.

Come and join our series of 15-minute broadcasts on our LinkedIn page. Find out more here.