Tag: covid

Change, Evolution And Survival

The entities
– businesses, species, other –
that survive
over time
change.
They evolve to shifting conditions.
They adapt to changes
in their environment.

This HAS to happen
or these changing environments
render them obsolete.
They go extinct.

What we’re seeing now
in the world
is more and more
people refusing to change.

They are refusing to adapt
to a changing climate.
They are refusing to
change their behavior
to survive a pandemic.

They are clinging to the past
and, if enough people do that,
humans WILL become extinct.

Business builders like you and I
are actively fighting that.
We are encouraging people
to change a little bit,
to try our new businesses.

And if they change that little bit,
they might change a little bit more.
That might make the difference
between the survival
and the extinction
of our species.

You’re adding value
to the world
with your new business.
Never doubt that.

Sentinel Intelligence

One of the activities
I find extremely interesting
is
looking at trends
in different industries
and places
and demographics
and figuring out
how they might converge.

Many of us
call this
‘connecting the dots’
and it helps us
avoid dangers
(like food supply collapses)
and
recognize opportunities
(like awesome new products
to develop).

Jessica Wildfire
has a more professional term
for this.

She
calls this
sentinel intelligence.

She
shares

“If you have sentinel intelligence,
then your brain can aggregate and sift
through extraordinary amounts
of information
in a very short period of time,
especially when it comes to
seeing latent or hidden dangers.”

(This entire post is gold.
She talks about conspiracy theorists
and also why many people
don’t heed warnings.)

If you’re developing
new products or services,
you NEED someone
with sentinel intelligence
on your team.

You need someone
who can connect the dots.

Is This Working For You?

An online buddy told me yesterday
she had COVID three times
in the past three months,
testing all clear
between those bouts.

She insists
she doesn’t have to
wear a mask.

Maybe not
but she has to do
SOMETHING different
because what she’s doing
right now
isn’t working for her.

I suspect you have processes
or strategies
that aren’t working for you
also.

Evaluate them.
And try something different.

Development Schedules Post COVID

I’ve had one bout of COVID
and it changed my brain.

I saw that immediately
in my writing.
I’d read the previous story
and the story I’m currently writing
and it appeared like
they were written by
two different writers.

They were both great stories.
They merely had different voices,
different styles of writing.

It took me
33% percent longer
(in my case,
an additional month)
to ensure the new story
matched
the older stories.

Because readers
(customers)
would be unhappy
if it didn’t match.

If the people involved
in your product’s development
had COVID,
they don’t have the same brains
they had prior to COVID,
and if they don’t have the same brains,
your final product
is unlikely to be as expected.

Add some room
in the product development schedule
for a quality
or continuity check.

Confirm And Then Re-Confirm ‘Facts’

I post my truths
about business and the world
here.

But they could be
exactly that
– MY truths.

They might not apply
to your business
or your situation.

What I do,
when faced with
someone’s truth,
is ask myself
if my experience is similar.

In my corner of the world,
for example,
COVID is out of control.
It is everywhere.

That might not be the case
in your part of the universe.
Look around you.
Are the pharmacy shelves
holding cold medicines
empty?
When you’re in a crowd,
are people coughing?
Are hospitals full?

‘Truths’ also aren’t constant.
Reality shifts.
We gain more knowledge.
People change.

So I re-confirm my truths
every so often.

Are the hospitals still full?
Are quite a few people
around me
still sick?

I do this with
ALL of the truths
I’m basing my decisions on.

Confirm it is a truth.
Re-confirm it remains
a truth.

Make better decisions.

The Will To Believe

I posted yesterday
about my theory
about why leaders and the media
aren’t being honest with us
about events
like COVID.

They’re worried about liability.

So why does the average person
follow their lead?

We know many people around us
are ill.
We know the hospitals are full.
We go to stores
and see cold medicine shelves are bare.

The reality is…
most people are followers.

They don’t want to take
personal responsibility
for their actions
or lack of actions.
That is too much pressure
for them.

So they shift that task
to leaders
and blindly follow them.

They have zero guilt
if things go wrong
because they didn’t make
any decisions.

(But they DID make a decision
– to blindly follow
that leader.)

And, at this point in the pandemic,
admitting COVID is serious
means also admitting
they’ve made deadly mistakes.
They’ve exposed loved ones
to danger,
a danger that might resurface
at any time in the future.

The average person
NEEDS emotionally to think
COVID is mild.
They NEED
to think their child
or other vulnerable loved one
won’t suffer in the future
from a mistake they’ve already made.

The average person
will continue thinking
COVID is over
or isn’t a danger.

Which means COVID
will cause more harm
and it likely won’t ever end.

Plan for that personally
and for your business.

COVID, Leadership And Liability

You and I know
COVID isn’t over.
We know
it is far more serious
short-term
and especially long-term
than most people believe.

So why aren’t
politicians, business leaders,
the media
talking about this?

I believe
it is because
of liability.

If they admit
they know
COVID is serious,
people will want to know
WHEN they knew that.

We’ll uncover
that someone told them
this information
early in 2020.

And then they
will get their a$$es sued off
because millions of people
have died
based on them withholding
and not acting on that knowledge.

ALL of them
will get sued
– politicians, reporters,
businesses.

Companies didn’t install
better ventilation systems,
for example.
They’ll get sued
for endangering employees.

So everyone is pretending
like they don’t know.
Which means they can’t
relay the seriousness
of the situation.

They’re also telling us
it is our personal responsibility
to keep ourselves safe,
which relieves them
of that duty
and will serve
as one of their defenses
when they do get sued.

This tactic of ‘not knowing’
will be applied
to future pandemics
and likely to climate change
disasters.

We should prepare for this.

For example,
I listen to experts
who aren’t liable.

Doctors who aren’t politicians
or the heads of hospitals
or other businesses
fall into this category.

I watch for what
is truly happening.
Are hospitals full?
Is everyone around me
ill?
Are businesses short staffed?

I make decisions
and take action
on THAT information.

Because leaders
are more concerned
about getting sued
than doing their f*ckin’ jobs.

2023 Goals And Plans

Many of us are thinking about
our 2023 goals and plans
this week.

This is your gentle reminder
that climate change challenges
and pandemic challenges
will remain in 2023.

U.N. Secretary-General
Antonio Guterres
is warning of global food shortages
in 2023.

Much of Europe, the US
and Canada
is currently facing
a triple punch
of COVID,
the flu
and RSV.

AND there are new ‘superbugs’
building in intensity.

What does that mean
for the savvy business builder?

We build these challenges
into our plans.

Our plans shouldn’t be based
on everything going right,
on perfect conditions.
They should be based
on reality.

And since everyone,
including the clients
we normally wine and dine,
needs to eat
AND
we require our customers
to be alive
to sell to them,
these two factors will impact
ALL our plans.

Factor for climate change
and pandemic challenges
in your plans.

During Your Year End Review

This is the time of year
when many of us
look back
and evaluate
what we’ve accomplished.

We note the progress
we’ve made,
the goals we’ve met
or not met,
the difference
we’ve made in
this wonderful world.

When you’re doing this,
note
that we were dealing
with both a pandemic
and climate change
during it.

Those were possible life-ending challenges.
They required mental bandwidth
to survive.

Simply surviving them
was a HUGE accomplishment.

If you accomplished other goals
while doing so,
you did AMAZINGLY.

If you’re reading this,
you accomplished a great feat
– staying alive.

If you’ve done more
than merely stay alive,
you should be
VERY proud of yourself.

Remember that
when you look at your progress.

The Pandemic WILL End

I heard some rumors
that vaccines with the ability
to block COVID completely
are in exciting stages
of development.

Right now, COVID vaccines
mostly just decrease
the severity of COVID.
We still suffer organ damage.
We still risk Long COVID.
We still infect other people.

These new vaccines
will address all those issues.

Which means…
the pandemic WILL end
sometime in the future
(I’d say within a year)
for the vaccinated.

Take that into account
when negotiating supply deals
for things like
masks for your employees.

And please support
mask wearing.

We likely only have
a year of this left.

Let’s ensure
everyone stays alive
and healthy.