The world was already in crisis and the current pandemic only deepens it. Like the climate crisis, its effects are uneven and, in many cases, cruelly unjust, exacerbating the gulf of inequality within and between countries. Most functioning governments around the world have thankfully leapt into action, choosing their strategies, defining a roadmap in the chaos, doing the best that they can in a situation in which the usual solutions no longer apply. Some companies have contributed admirably, putting the We ahead of the I.
Then there are us, the individuals. If you are suffering in whatever way, my heart goes out to you. If you are going out to take care of those who are sick or vulnerable, to do something that means that the rest of us have clean water, electricity, internet, our rubbish removed and food to eat, thank you.
I don’t fall into either one of those categories. And now that my frustration is mostly under control, I’ve felt something else surfacing.
Guilt.
Guilt that I’m so fortunate. That, so far, the effects of the pandemic for me and my family are at worst an inconvenience. That, therefore, I have a responsibility to do more. But what? I have no skill that they require right now on the front line. I’m doing what I can locally and with the nonprofits I work with. But it hardly seems enough.
The word crisis is mostly used these days to indicate a critical situation. Leaders in organisations worldwide are rightly focusing on solving the immediate problem. Others are focusing on an equally important issue: keeping it from happening again. I can’t help feeling, though, that there’s also a huge opportunity to actually make things better. This fits somewhat with the original meaning of crisis: the turning point at which a sick patient either recovers or doesn’t. Can we dare to take it further, beyond ‘just’ recovery? In the same way that some people experience post-traumatic growth, might it be possible for us as a society to grow through this crisis?
This might seem like a nice-to-have, in the midst of the tragedy and the suffering, the urgency of it all. And yet everyone jumping in to solve the urgent problem is often counterproductive. Can we not manage chaos and innovation in parallel? Assigning different roles to different people, according to their strengths, making use of all the creativity and goodwill we have available to us?
The COVID-19 crisis is already generating innovations every day, big and small. There are the technical innovations, as we rush to produce enough quality masks and ventilators, as researchers collaborate to understand the virus, how it might mutate, to develop treatment and vaccines. There are the organisational innovations, as we learn to communicate differently with our teams and our clients, as we implement tweaks to improve online learning for our children. And then there are the less tangible learnings. We’re realising that things we thought were important, actually aren’t. We’re seeing how jobs and sectors we thought weren’t important, really are. We’re beginning to truly grasp just how interdependent we are on each other.
I’m giving myself permission to not feel guilty. To not feel guilty that I’m not feeling guilty. And instead to leverage one of my strengths: hope. To search proactively for the tiny tweaks that I can make, whether in myself, my family or in the organisations that I work with, capturing innovations generated by the crisis to build a better us.
What innovations will you take through to the other side?