2020: Lessons in Resilience

One of my favorite quotes is from T.S. Eliot’s poem Four Quartets (1944): “we had the experience, but missed the meaning”.

At the end of each year, I find myself less focused on resolutions for the new year, instead reflecting on the past year to take stock of the ups and downs and, most importantly, lessons learned. And 2020 is a year unlike any other. This year has brought to the forefront words and phrases like “unprecedented”, “work from home”, “remote learning”, “social distancing”, and “essential worker”. I’ve heard people refer to this as a “wasted year”, especially when it comes to the educational experiences for our kids. As a mom of a college senior and high school junior, I can understand the concern, but disagree with the conclusion. As an executive transitioning from one global company to another and a board member in higher education, a nonprofit supporting families in need, and a publicly traded financial corporation, this is most definitely not a wasted year, but a year informed by change requiring new organizational muscle to adapt to a post-covid marketplace. 

While certainly a part of our global conversation, these simple words and phrases cannot in their totality fully capture the year. So I offer up my personal lessons learned from this Covid Year:

1.     Rethinking technology’s value: prior to this year, I found myself wondering if technology had truly enabled efficiency in work and life, or had simply made us accessible 24/7, spending less time reading and reflecting and more time reacting to sentiments shared in 280 characters or less. With an overnight shift from corporate offices and business travel to remote work and video conferencing, I see the value of our tech-enabled world. Can you imagine this pandemic year with nothing but a landline? In fact, this year I transitioned from one company to another without physically meeting most of my new team…and yet they’ve been able to get to know me in many ways more personal and authentic as I share my home work environment, pets, family and all. I’m grateful for video-enabled connections with industry colleagues, board members, family and friends. And I have marveled how technology has enabled my team and professional colleagues to fulfill their workplace responsibilities while weathering through the disruptions on the home front.

2.     Social Distancing is only physical distance: when we made our first cross-country move, my mother advised “distance is only geography if we stay connected”. Those words soothed our anxiety, especially moving our kids so far from their grandparents.

Being physically apart forces an intentionality in staying connected.

This phrase has so much more meaning in a year when we’ve been unable to physically visit family and friends. Instead we’ve learned to laugh at teaching family members how to use Zoom, including how to hold the phone to both see and be seen. I was tempted to make our holiday card a collage of screenshots featuring the “year in review” of the many full screen views of my father’s nostrils (smile).

3.     Resilience is failing forward, not standing still: earlier this year I heard people often wishing for a “return to normal” which would imply we needed to simply “white knuckle” our way through the year and hold out for a magical date in the future. For those that have suffered so much loss…jobs, businesses, friends, family, health, freedoms…this feels insensitive. The reality is that there will not be a return to normal. Progress in all things requires us to lean into change, adapt, iterate, and evolve. But to move forward we have to first give ourselves permission to grieve the loss of what was to accept what’s next. When the school year shifted to home, our kids learned to manage their time, to value the moments of in-person learning, and to collaborate with their teachers and professors who have had to pivot at a monumental pace. These are lessons that will serve them well as they go into the world, that may not have been as pronounced without this unusual year.

4.     Leadership isn’t defined by position or title: many of our industries have been changed forever with the closing of beloved restaurants and entertainment venues. Yet we’ve seen many foodservice operations shift to care for community and feeding those in need. At Kellogg we focused on supporting food insecurity, restauranteurs, and school foodservice operations. Within Glanbia, I’ve been impressed to see a focus on supporting our vision to inspire people everywhere to achieve their performance nutrition and active lifestyle goals. This means sports nutrition education, investing in neighborhood sports parks, even helping to fuel healthy athletic performance in schools and on college campuses. Many of these initiatives weren’t initiated at the top of the organization, but through the engagement of our teams, passionate to make an impact in their local communities.

My favorite part of my job is to enable those ideas and initiatives to get recognized and resourced…to enable great ideas to be fueled to scale for impact. 

5.     Everyone deserves grace: this year has impacted all of us, yet the impacts are not equally distributed. Our healthcare workers and our food manufacturing colleagues have worked long hours, putting themselves and their families at risk for the greater good. Leaders of corporations, schools and colleges, and local and state political leaders have had to make decisions with shifting information to balance the safety of individuals with the sustainability of community, business and the economy. One of the best lessons I learned as a student at Luther College, which has played out in my adult life, is the importance of learning how to disagree without being disagreeable. I’ve often advised those I’ve mentored that our reaction to events defines us more than the event itself. And character is speaking up for others when we have nothing personally to gain.

This has been a year that requires putting the whole above the parts…supporting those that may believe differently because, in doing so, we preserve the right to believe differently.

6. Not a moment in time, but a movement: Beyond the pandemic, this year has provided opportunities to truly listen, to understand, to empathize, and to put our words into action. The awareness of social injustice while long overdue became more pronounced. And, as with all pivotal moments in history, we would be remiss if we had the experience, yet missed the meaning.

We must ensure this isn’t a moment but a movement.

As I reflect on T.S. Eliot’s poem, this is a year of experiences that we can endure…or it is a year of meaning that shapes us for the future; that builds muscle, as an individual and a collective; and that informs who we aspire to be and how we inspire others.

I close out 2020 grateful, resilient, inspired and hopeful for the future.