STORIES

While many of us hide behind our digital devices, we also tend to hide behind the idea that we are powerful leaders. Usually this means maintaining authority by directing, controlling, keeping it together and always having the answers. This may seem to check all the boxes of a good leader but when we lead in uncertain times it can actually cause issues.

David Brooks, author and columnist, talks a great deal about a moral ecology in the world. Specifically, he believes that the conscious ideas and values are what shape us. Whether it be the rewards we seek or the peers we hang out with, much of who we are is based on the narrative of the environment rather than something deep within us.

I am a little concerned that we’ve lost ourselves. Or maybe it is better put that we have buried ourselves so that nobody sees who we truly are. What I am trying to say is that we tend to view success largely based on superficial stuff and on-the-surface measurements. Money and fame and any other detail that is the narrative of society at large seems to be our focus. As time passes, I can’t help but think that real success is more about the inner mind, our unconscious reality, our intuitions and our character.

The Pareto principle—or 80/20 rule—asserts that a small amount of input or effort leads to the majority of results. So, most companies understand that 80% of their profits or revenue are generated by 20% of their clients. It also holds that a smaller amount of employees carry the larger burden for progress. The moral to the story for any business, organization or team would be to nurture and mimic the few—The Twenty—that get it right and then try to share it with others and multiply the effect.

Ignorance is not always blissful. I, for one, think that we could use a healthy dose of ignorance. I don’t subscribe to the need to know every little thing that happens in the world at a moment’s notice. In fact, if you turned off all of the digital noise for a couple of days, I suspect you would still know if anything really important occurred. Since when did it become everybody’s business to know everybody else’s business? It just seems like we simply know too much . And yet it is possible that we are more ignorant than we have ever been.

We are hearing a great deal about cancel culture these days. I hate that people are trying to cancel others. And while there may be some legitimate reasons in some cases, my hope is that kindness becomes the new order of the day. The world may have changed forever due to this pandemic and we really don’t have a clear picture of how things will look. We can, however, choose to see things in a more creative way.