#CopeWithCovid journey journal: learn, innovate, lead and thrive in addressing the injustices of inequities

Blog series (07/11/2020). My open peer-reviewed, sense-making learning journal is updated regularly based after discussions with others. Happy to chat with you if curious. This iterative work-in-progress invites you to join a learning journey about addressing the Covid crisis and the 21st century mega-problems from a long term perspective. If inspired, make a comment and share.

Blog warning: Allow time for slow thinking and deep self-reflective learning. Book mark blog to read and re-read the sections. This blog series will stretch your imagination in what you can learn, explore and discover together in communion with others in addressing complex problems. Click on hyperlinks to learn more about key concepts. Make notes in response to any questions that you feel called to discuss.

Read the covid revelations, netinar, network power  and leadership failure blogs first to understand the rational for making journey journals. Sense-making netinars prepare and enable learners to understand the vulnerabilities, volatilities, uncertainties, complexities and ambiguities (V2UCA) of addressing mega-problems.

__________________________

Blog map for your learning journey

This blog takes you further along your sense-making journal by writing notes in responses to the bolded questions posed in each section. Write to the questions that you feel called to respond to.

• Frame transformational leadership questions
• Begin with the meta-view
• Ask evocative questions about shaping the future
• Document your own innovation storyline for journey journal
• Create learning networks to build a sense-making movement

Make journal notes in response to the questions that speak to you. Write about what you feel called to speak about. As you read this blog, what do you react strongly for and against? What do these reactions say about you, in relation to a particular trigger? Use your notes in group discussions or in a netinar (online interactive discussions) as described in the first blog.

Self-reflection about a particular trigger allows more time to think more slowly about your reaction and gives you an opportunity to respond differently to that trigger. It will enhance your experience of deep learning about understanding your own mindset in relationship to others.

1. Frame transformational leadership questions

The #CopeWithCovid Netinar series is about taking a step back from the crisis response mode and mindset of responding to the short-term problems of dealing with the viral pandemic. We are walking up the mountain to get beyond the pinnacle of the crisis and move on to the new normal that includes enhanced pandemic preparedness for future events.

Visionary leaders anticipate the far-reaching and long-term implications of Covid crisis before reaching the top of the mountain, anticipate future trends, and design for the best scenarios and prepare for worst case scenarios. This slow thinking and self-reflective process calls for creating a new vision of a sustainable and equitable future for all.

This meta-challenge requires intersectoral collaboration to transform our political , educational, health and healthcares systems. The Covid crisis (a black swan) has tested and exposed the fragility of our disease care systems and the abysmal failures of deficient health and healthcare policies, such our defunct food policies, just to name one domain. Paradoxically, our political systems and policies are designed much more for disease production than for health promotion. In many countries, health care systems are based more on hospital-centricity than on community health improvement and advanced integrated primary care.

The best example of a flawed and foundational-less system is the USA, where fragmented and disintegrated healthcare is built top-down from hospital and specialist care. This fragility approach is metaphorically described as "concave lenses": specialist, elitist and "downstream" approaches based on hierarchical power.

Most politicians, policy-makers, health care leaders, bureaucrats and administrators are unaware of how they predominantly use concave lenses. Their reductionist and closed-minded approach of fragility accounts for the systemic prejudice and structural discrimination against community and primary care. It is one major reason why fragile systems swoon with "black swans" (rare adverse events).

Nature is naturally a diverse, integrated, non-hierarchical and ecological system. We have not learned from the lessons of nature. We have not built health and healthcare systems based on the anti-fragility nature of nature.

Anti-fragility approaches are metaphorically described as "convex lenses": a generalist, egalitarian and upstream approach based on distributive power. Many people are naturally inclined and are dissuaded from using their convex lens without full awareness. They are unable see the origins for why they are marginalized and stigmatized with implicit and explicit bias by concave lenses.

The holistic approach and open-minded approach puts people and the planet at the center of care. Anti-fragility is the mindset antidote to the systemic prejudice and structural discrimination against community and primary care. Anti-fragility systems evolve stronger with encounters of "black swans."

Heroic leaders have the vulnerability and courage to acknowledge that they are complicit in perpetuating flawed and fragile systems. They are more open to become more aware of how systemic prejudice, structural discrimination and implicit and explicit biases perpetuate inequities. They are willing to go the extra mile to address the implications of these questions.

How can we:

• Develop meta-strategies to implement Health-in-all-policies needed to reverse inequities?
• Align leadership mindsets to transform our disease care systems into health and healthcare systems by building from the bottom-up a foundation of community care, health promotion and advanced integrated primary care?

Taking a meta-view, servant leaders can overcome their psychological naivety about the complexities of moving fragile political and cultural entanglements beyond resilience to anti-fragility. Servant leaders design anti-fragile systems and movements within and across networks, organizations and communities using scalable social innovations, such as netinars.

2. Begin with meta-view

Taking the meta-view is an inquiry-driven process that is based on asking different kinds of questions. These questions aim to enlighten ignorance, heal suffering, elevate hope and the joy of life. Collaborating and sharing our responses to these questions with others, we will learn how to thrive with vulnerabilities, volatilities, uncertainties, complexities and ambiguities (V2UCA) and develop anti-fragility skills.

But on the dark side, hidden nefarious forces manipulate people into loyal groupthink mindsets and cults without their awareness. People are behaviorally programmed to regurgitate talking points of the fake patriot playbook, like a Greek chorus of political puppets.

Remember the fish in water metaphor. How does a fish discover water (political and cultural entanglements)?

The paradox of liberal democracies is that many leaders and people have "enslaved" minds with false delusions that they think that they are free-thinkers. They are unaware of their indoctrination by a confluence of entangled forces.

Political and religious domains

• Manufactured consent by mainstream mass media propaganda machines,
• Asymmetrical dysfunctional polarizations driving the USA toward alt-right extremism
• Deep state of fake patriotism and the Divided States of America
• Fake patriotic personality disorders and the Fake patriot playbook
• Political complicity
• Religious evangelical fundamentalism preaching the hate doctrine of us versus them
• Flawed political storylines about needing a common enemy to unite people in making transformations

Economic domain

• Technocratic neoliberal orthodoxy
• Unbridled corporate capitalism with accelerated wealth inequalities
• Linear economies manufacturing waste and trashing the planet
• Rigged systems servicing the ruling elites that enhance inequities

Civic consequences

• Political, racial, social, gender, economic, environmental and legal injustices that threaten human rights
• Fragmented three-sector compact that splits governments, corporations and civic societies
• Systems failing to educate people about how to implement the Anti-corruption Act and unrig the system to end political corruption
• Intersectionality
• Militarization of the police

Fragility and anti-fragility are complexity concepts about the nature of systems and networks. Fragile system are susceptible to catastrophic collapse when stressed by V2UCA. In contrast, anti-fragile system need V2UCA to grow, thrive and innovate.

Servant leaders who are psychological naive about the interactional linkages of these entangled forces will not fully understand the flawed unethical fragility of political and cultural entanglements. For example, neoliberal linear economies mass-produce waste without regard to the negative effects on planetary health and the environment. The economies largely ignores stakeholders' investment in developing high-functioning triadic relationships among governments, corporations and civic societies.

The so-called "third sector" should really be the lead sector in redesigning the future of work and amplifying social capital to create regenerative and circular economies. Governments and corporations should serve, we the people, in the green circular economy. This calls for a seismic power paradigm shift of third-order change to transforms our meta-principles or simple rules for governing systemic relationships, such as "put civic society and planetary health first."

On the other hand, servant leaders who are aware of dysfunctional entanglements will use their responses to the questions below to design anti-fragile systems for a sustainable future. They will understand the polarity dynamics of entanglements between fragility and anti-fragility systems.

Enlightened leaders develop more effective meta-strategies to facilitate personal and systemic transformations to develop a new kind of collaborative civilization based on Gaia. They inspire us to unleash the healing power of hope, new possibilities, innovation and social entrepreneurship.

How can we:

• Manage the polarity more effectively between ascending the upward spiral toward virtues, open-mindedness and empowerment versus descending the downward vortex toward character flaws, closed-minded fundamentalism and self-righteousness authoritarianism?
• Become aware of, and change the unseen forces that manipulate our mindsets, shape our behaviors and influence our heroes' journeys between good and evil, for better or worse?
• Become free-thinkers liberated from the political and cultural entanglements that prevent us from assuring that virtues, equity and good governance triumph over the evils of character flaws, systemic discrimination and political corruption?
• What are the other simple rules of third-order change to support the power paradigm shift of putting civic society and planetary health first?

We must "unite the divide with truth, justice, equity and freedom for all" (? second rule). To do this, we must "optimize the polarities between individual and social values to maximize their upsides and minimize their downsides (? third rule).

Taking the meta-view is a spiritual journey of cultivating virtues and taking actions for the greater good of all. This sense-making process involves creating new purpose and meaning in life from a holistic perspective of personal, population and planetary health improvement.

The deep root problems in failing to address these meta-questions are ignorance, closed mindsets, and educational inequities. We need innovative solutions to redress these forces.

One idea is to develop scalable social learning innovations, such as netinars. Netinars (see definition below) have the educational potential of building the leadership capabilities and capacities to generate the network power needed to mobilize a sense-making transformational movement.

3. Ask evocative questions about shaping the future

One way or another, the Covid crisis has revealed, triggered and exacerbated political, racial, social, gender, economic, environmental and legal injustices on a grand scale. From a complexity perspective, all of these injustices are interconnected and are linked to rigged political and legal systems. Focusing on one injustice without thinking of the whole or the deep roots of injustice will not create a just, fair and equitable society.

How can we:

• Create the network power to imagine a shared vision of much better futures, guided by truth, justice, equity and freedom?
• Build ecosystems of servant leadership development to make third-order transformational change happen?

The Covid crisis is our wake-up call to the mega-problems and meta-challenges of the 21st century.

• How can we advocate for and promote healthy well-being for all, restore the environment and regenerate our planet?

Our answers to these pivotal questions will paint a new vision of our future, our lives and our work. Developing consensus about our responses will provide the backdrop of our solidarity upon which we can all work, individually and collectively, at local, regional, national and international levels. Think globally, act locally. It is about how we can align ourselves to improve personal, population and planetary health (IP3H) concurrently.

This blog series is for aspiring futurists and sympathizers (end users) who seek to design public policies to build learning networks, platforms, systems, organizations and communities that create a sustainable future in a post-growth world.

Futurists cannot predict the future; they create and live the future by observing current trends and anticipating the best and worst future scenarios. Anyone can become a futurist, and every one can play a role in creating a new future. But we need new ideas and scalable social innovations to shape our future.

4. Document your own innovation storyline

On March 16th, I read the WHO report mental health considerations of the Covid crisis. I wrote a brief reaction to this document with one question in a post. What is the number 1 tip to keep covid stress and anxiety under control? This individually focused and reductionist question struck a chord with 468 views within 24 hours.

This question tapped into the emotional pulse at that time. The rapid response rate to this short post made me realize how the hook of this quick-fix question defeated the wider purpose of how we #CopeWithCovid more effectively together. Of course, there is no number 1 tip, but the question does focus the mind on setting priorities. This brief post triggered me to write the blog journal series.

Subsequent professional story. I am a family doctor who was laid off on March 23rd because of Covid-19 reducing patient volumes in primary care. With the blessings of an unemployment sabbatical, I begin exploring the far-reaching implications and complexities of coping with Covid more effectively and looking to create a much better future.

Sabbatical purpose: My unique value proposition is in using the leadership framework of "what, how and why" to explore the failures of political and scientific stewardship in handling complex problems and serving the greater good. This is particularly poignant in liberal democracies where individual values are valued higher than social values, such as the Divided States of America. Not surprisingly, the USA lacks an overall comprehensive, coordinated and cohesive federal pandemic strategy for this public health emergency.

In the digital age of democratizing information, we need to educate as many people as possible to search evidence-based online resources, like the Tripdatabase and to develop the cognitive and interpretative skills needed to understand scientific evidence about responding to Covid-19 crisis. Such education helps to minimize emotional and political biases against making rational decisions based on the evolving scientific evidence.

However, public trust in science has eroded. The amplification of mis-information and disinformation on social media has enabled the development of unscientific movements, such as the anti-vaxxers, whose belief systems distort perceptions of risks and benefits to the detriments of public health and the common good.

Shelter-in-place, contact tracing and vaccinations are standard public health measures. Communicating content (the "what") is the easiest leadership task of the three-legged stool. This blog series explores the "why and how" process of ethical, scientific and political leadership. This challenge calls on us to develop new learning methods, so that we can design digital ecosystems of servant leadership development needed to restore planetary health and our humanity to act for the greater good.

Questions to stimulate your innovation storyline

• What have you been your learning lessons from the Covid crisis?
• What do you see as creative opportunities for transformational change?
• What is your "why, how and what" servant leadership?
• What are your ideas for creating a much better future for all?
• What will you do differently (calls-to-action)?

Your responses to these questions become the seeds for your own innovation storyline.

5. Create learning networks to build a sense-making movement

We need to develop innovative platforms, collaborative processes and trans-disciplinary practices to cultivate dynamic agile learning networks, organizations and communities to enhance their capabilities and capacities in addressing complexity. 

Using this blog series, you are invited to initiate a sense-making process of keeping a journal in response to self-reflective learning questions and using your journal notes in group discussions. This learner-centered approach empowers you to discover and create your own learning objectives, outcomes and calls-to-action. Discover what you are called to do. Follow your bliss in collaboration with others. Your ethical lifelong journey is an ongoing virtuous, educational and political process toward sustainable development for the greater good in a post-growth world. 

During our dystopian era of disinformation and dysfunctional polarizations, we need inspiration, creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship to overcome the stresses and challenges associated with this viral pandemic and its economic and psychosocial aftermath.

To go from where we are now to where we want to be is our heroes' journey, in the plural. There is no messiah or "sage-on-the-sage" to get us out of this mess. Charismatic "I" movements can help us, but they are insufficient solutions. To ascend into the upward spiral toward sustainable development, we need to unite the "We" global and "we" national movements to act for the greater good of all humanity.

In contrast, "i' movements are based on the demagogy of narcissism, megalomania and sociopathy. We descend into the downward dystopian spiral toward the amoral catastrophic abyss.

To make the large-scale transformation possible, we must build "We" story movements that call for each and every one of us to:

• Recognize the dire state that we are in now
• Imagine a better future to save ourselves from our own political and planetary self-destruction
• Generate heroic 7.0 network power (described in Blog 3) to make large-scale transformation happen

To initiate this process, we have to replace the old stories of fake patriotism with developing new stories of true patriotism (see blog orientation). To transform the narrative (blog 2), we need to cultivate ecosystems of servant leaders at all levels and in all spheres of life, who act as guides-on-sides in helping us build story movements that move us to take aligned actions for the greater good of all.

How can we:

• Engage and activate people to invest, thrive and take ownership in building a better future for all?
• Learn from the power of religion and music to engage, activate and align new followers and fans to fully experience the benefits of netinars?

_______________________

The next blog is about further exploring the macro-perspective of the relevance of macro-level issues to your learning journey of innovation and your pilgrimage of collaborative sense-making.

Read blog series: Covid revelations, netinar, leadership failures, journey journal, macro-perspective blogs 1, 2, 3 and 4.

________________________

Candor and feedback appreciated about #CopewithCovid netinars. Any ideas about leads, connections or organizations to host netinars appreciated. Happy to chat too with kindred spirits. Contact via Linked-in. Pro-bono exchange offer.

________________________

Big ask: I am now looking for social entrepreneurs, collaborators, funders and organizations to launch this sense-making netinar series. Ideas and connections for testing this prototype appreciated.

________________________