Bridging Vision to Reality
Reading time: 3 mins
The pandemic has turned our idea of work upside down. No one really knows what the future workforce, workplace or workday will be like.
In answer, we are bombarded with streams of ideals, concepts and words which are supposed to help us stay on top of things.
Kaizen, Agile HR, future-proofing, pivoting, re-inventing, new normal, and that over-used word: Transformation, which implies that the change is supposed to be positive and life-changing.
But bridging the crevasse between vision and reality is far from easy. Especially today.
No bandwidth for Big Visions?
We hardly have the time to go beyond reading all the ideas and putting them aside before turning to the day-to-day fighting of the next work fire. This may involve existential questions like – “How do we engage our workforce virtually? How do we measure productivity when we never see our workers? How can we keep our business afloat?”
And this is on top of keeping ourselves afloat.
Mental health is deteriorating. In the US, about 4 in 10 adults have reported symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorder.
Organisational and business leaders may not be doing much better. A survey of 12,347 global respondents found that more than half of C-Suite executives (53%) and a similar percentage of HR leaders (52%) were suffering from mental health issues, compared to 45% of their employees who reported so.
Matthew Cooper, co-founder of a Silicon Valley fintech start-up called EarnUp, is one of the rare leaders who openly shared that the pandemic made his existing struggles with mental health issues more intense.
“I went from being in a pretty good place to pretty deep anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation in a matter of days,” said Cooper, a leader who derived energy from being around other people. He stepped down from his job.
It is a difficult journey with no clear solution.
Walking with you
But it is this understanding – that there is no tried-and-tested remedy to this challenging journey - which will inform the upcoming insights and articles we put up, relating to how to get the best of the people in an organisation.
Rather than add to the information overload, we hope to walk alongside those who are grappling with managing people and teams during these challenging times, and share some useful ideas and tools which might help to bridge the crevasse. To go “From Vision to Reality”.
We would like to create articles which explain and de-mystify nebulous concepts in simple language, playbooks that share “How-To”, and personal insights from leaders which spotlight actual anecdotes and experiences.
Some of our upcoming themes have to do with building flexibility into the organisation, technology, engaging workers remotely, and leadership.
“ This is a journey which we all have to undertake. While it is challenging, perhaps walking together and sharing insights and experience would make it a little easier for all of us to make the vision real. The ability to execute well is under-rated.”
Coming up: Look out for our upcoming series of articles which demystify Agile HR and how your organisation can adopt it!
REFERENCES
53% of C-Suite execs and 52% of HR leaders surveyed have dealt with mental health issues recently
I’m stepping down as CEO due to my mental health—and I want to talk about it
The Implications of COVID-19 for Mental Health and Substance Use
