Confronting the New Abnormal: How Do You Find The Answers You Need When Things are Wildly Uncertain and Everyone is Suffering in Isolation?

Literally everyone I know is experiencing some level of stress and anxiety due to the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. My family and friends, my neighbors, my clients and my colleagues around the world – have all had our lives dramatically interrupted and in many ways altered – even without having been infected with the virus. This isn’t the new normal – as we likened the world emerging from the great recession a decade ago. It is the new abnormal.

The degree of human suffering and the sheer number of lives lost is staggering. But the human race is rugged and will absorb all of this just as we have the wars and pandemics of the past.

This New Abnormal is different in how it is defined by self-restraint and isolation.

While we have the now common science-fiction-like graphic images of the virus transmitted into our minds through all matter of media, the actual enemy remains invisible, pernicious and formidable.

The soldiers fighting for our lives are the first responders, hospital workers, nurses and medical providers on the front-lines. The front lines are supported by the workers manning the essential services we need – while the world's top scientists work feverishly to find vaccines, treatments and solutions to the volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity of the problems we currently face.

There are no boundaries to be drawn, no hills to hold and no treaties that will disarm the incursion of COVID-19. It is not a war, in that we cannot be in a war with nature. Nor is nature at war with the human race. In fact the metaphors of war may actually be an unfortunate and poor choice.

The fight is not about overwhelming the enemy – but about making ourselves better. We need to be more creative in our thinking. We need to be more resilient in coping with the threat. We need to be more unified in recognizing that this pandemic views every person in every corner of the earth as an equal opportunity – and we must collectively work together and collaborate to not just contain the threat – but protect ourselves from the next one. And the one after that. As Fredrich Nietzsche noted, “that which does not kill us makes us stronger.” Is this the opportunity in front of us?

The answer is, it all depends. How prepared are we to recognize, as Pogo noted, that “ we have met the enemy, and it is us”? How capable are we of learning what we need to understand and currently do not? Or that we in many cases do not know what we do not know.

How successful we are as we move forward will depend less on what we think we know – and more on how curious we are willing to allow ourselves to be.

The imposed isolation and social distancing that has become the necessary strategy for creating resilience to the spread of the novel corona virus impacts people in different ways. There are the obvious functional challenges and concerns and the far-less obvious emotional ones.

The toll in terms of economic value is so enormous and complex that it is hard to calculate much less fully fathom. But the emotional toll may well have consequences that will impact our lives well beyond whatever point we recover from the economic impact. There is a very real potential for this pandemic to permanently change us as individuals, as organizations – and perhaps as a society.

Whether this pandemic poses an opportunity for things to change for the better is a matter of the choices we make.

Human Growth Rarely Occurs in The Absence of Discomfort

Why do some people, when facing challenges, seem to naturally gravitate towards things that take them out of their own comfort zones, while others retreat and hide where they imagine they might avoid discomfort altogether? Is it all about courage? Or is it a matter of habits?

The current pandemic has quickly divided people into two groups: the knowing beings who feel they must have (pretend that they do have) the answers. And the learning beings – who are seeking better and better questions. In times of crisis, when there are no known correct answers, we must rely on the people with the right questions.

The problem with suggesting that we resist reaching for certainty – is that being truly curious is a function of being somewhat uncomfortable. Most people have been taught that it is eminently safer to have the right answer the problems we are given. To remain curious in the face of great uncertainty requires that you get comfortable with the idea of being uncomfortable. Reaching for certainty is a good way of seeking comfort, but it is also dangerous when there are no clear answers.

Grasping at false certainties eliminates the likelihood of finding real solutions.

The COVID-19 Pandemic is making most people at least a little uncomfortable. For some people the level of hardship amounts to a significant inconvenience as they deal with this New Abnormal. Families are juggling working from home, schooling from home and having to prioritize as they juggle the resources needed to do so. Some are just staying home and managing their boredom. College students are dealing with the disruption of their education, while parents are learning how to begin formally educating their younger children at home. Meaningful life events have been postponed or cancelled altogether.

For a great many people it is far more than a minor inconvenience. Millions of people are currently jobless with many unable to make basic ends meet. The impact on businesses will mean the loss of jobs and the possible failure of an unimaginable number of businesses. And this is all beyond the tragedy of those actually infected with the virus who are fighting, and in far too many instances, loosing the battle to survive.

The New Abnormal and The Old Enigma of Isolation

Some suggest that it is lonely at the top, meaning those who must make tough decisions that have a significant impact on the lives of other ultimately have sole responsibility for the consequences. Times like these, where critical decision need to be made without clear guidance or certainty tend to heighten that sense of isolation. 

In the New Abnormal – it is lonely everywhere.

The reality that people struggling to remain alive on ventilators in hospital intensive care units – fully separated from their loved ones is the stark reminder of how the loneliness of isolation is equally devastating to those we are isolated from. People separated from their parents in nursing homes now seems as cruel as the images of children separated from parents by US Border Patrol Agents, only the virus works without questions of morality or partisan politics and without weapons or at the disposal of any bureaucracies.

For typically strident rebelliousness of youth, the dire warnings that have foisted upon them the imposition of social restrictions may ring a bit hollow. This is partially because the virus was initially purported to spare the young and healthy, and moreover because young people are naturally more resistant to challenges to their mortality. The social impact is also somewhat muted due to having already normalized physical isolation by creating virtual relationship realities through online experiences and social media.

The New Abnormal for many millennials has been somewhat preconditioned into their current state of normal.

For the older generations, the isolation of the New Abnormal is painful and difficult. The social construct of neighborhoods, workplaces, shopping malls, theaters and arenas – have served as a source of group identification and comfort. Placing all this on pause has exposed the discomfort that lay buried beneath the social distractions that also fuel a significant portion of the modern economy. Travel and leisure, dining and entertainment have defined our modern culture much as hunting and gathering defined our primitive ancestors.

For the CEOs and other leaders I work with, like their millennial offspring, the isolation is also somewhat normalized. The “loneliness at the top” is real. It is not caused by physical distancing, but by the necessity to maintain organizational separation in order to make clear-eyed decisions during difficult circumstances. And under the extreme circumstances we all face right now – that sense of isolation is especially extreme, and can be extremely stressful.

The problem with stress is a function of adrenaline. The human stress response is actually a cocktail of three chemicals or hormones released by the adrenal glands: adrenaline, cortisol and norepinephrine. The heightened energy, arousal and focus are essential for organizing your actions in response to an immediate threat, but challenges your ability to be creative.

Creativity is essential in dealing with VUCA conditions ( defined by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) – where reactive tendencies tend to be clumsy and less effective. Your adrenaline response is more suited for reactive action, which has historically been the foundation of command-and-control leadership styles.

 To the extent that isolation adds to the stress you already suffer from – the added stress of this pandemic suggests that the New Abnormal must lead us towards two distinct post-pandemic realities: things that should revert to the old normal – and things that will define a new normal.

Continuing on in this New Abnormal is not an option.

Beyond the decline in economic productivity, the social nature of human beings will not allow us to continue with voluntary isolation and the needed self-restraint. We must and will restore most of the social norms – with some likely new awareness. Less lethal diseases can be better controlled by improving simple measures of personal hygiene – such as frequently and more thoroughly washing our hands. Perhaps we will continue to view some greater isolation and self-restraint when we feel unwell. And how much might we choose to invest in better public health policy and practices?

For the business leader, the old normal would be reopening stores and restaurants, ramping-up production and restoring many aspects of “business as usual.”

But there are likely to be enormous opportunities in what we can accomplish by what we will have learned through this New Abnormal. CEOs and business leaders will be challenged to not just restore the status quo, but choose to be inspired to elevate performance to higher levels of potential than were acceptable before.

You can use this pause to reflect upon what you have chosen to tolerate and reset your expectations. For example:

• You can decide what you are no longer going to tolerate living with, and what you are no longer willing to tolerate living without
• You can set performance expectations that are defined by the aspirational potential of your people and your organization – and work to elevate peoples competence in performing their roles
• You can redefine your own capacity to lead others, by learning to be a more creative and less reactive leader
• You can develop yourself and a more effective leader by connecting to your sense of purpose and what really matters most – and elevating your affective empathy while increasing your cognitive empathy and emotional intelligence
• You can shed waste and increase not just the efficiency of how you operate – but enhance the efficacy of what you do
• You can strive to be a high-performance organization – by doing what you do better than anyone else – and continuously learning how adapt better and faster to the volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity that has defined the modern global marketplace
• You can learn to embrace uncertainty by making yourself fully competent as a leader and as a human being – by learning to allow yourself to be insatiably curious, by exploring and defining the noble sense of purpose that drives the best contributions you can make to the world
• And you can help others become competent – to use their competencies to accomplish things that are meaningful, significant and positive – and by doing so – bring the joy of real satisfaction in their contributions – to enhance their lives – and stem the dysfunction in the world.

Confronting the New Abnormal is about creating a better tomorrow. It is about really learning from the experiences of the crisis we are dealing with today, not so that we come out the other side having or even searching for the right answers, but in knowing that the future will be shaped by embracing the uncertainty that is inherent in all change, and getting comfortable enough with our own discomfort to instead seek the right questions.