Dolphins & Pigs: 2 images that will stick with me as learning from 2020

As this extraordinary year comes to a close it is great to see many reflecting on the lessons and perspectives from a year that has brought disruption and sadness to many. While I relate to a lot of the reflection that has been shared about distributed work, family-time, self-care, mental health, social well-being, digital transformation etc. 2020 leaves me with 2 striking images that I am sure to carry into the future. Like many of you, images imprinted on my mind tend to serve me longer than information or data. 

Dolphins

The first image is of Dolphins. It could actually have been an image of any number of animals we saw in 2020, the Dolphin story just happened to be the first to catch my attention. The image is from around April-2020 when stories started to emerge of nature and wildlife reclaiming space and enjoying the moments of respite from the decades of human onslaught on habitats and species. Here is a collection of images from a BBC article titled "Coronavirus: Wild animals enjoy freedom of a quieter world". To see this story was heart-warming and guilt-ridden at the same time. As someone who has been close to animals and nature all my life, these images nearly brought me to tears. I was moved and filled with the same emotions as when we would watch a movie about children returning to their war-torn homes. Except, this was real-life and I am part of the species that has been at war with Nature for decades. 2020 made those not-so-absolutely-necessary short business trips in the corporate world of the past look like not such a bright idea. It showed us we can be just as productive and have just as much impact at work if not more by clocking less than 5000 kms/year on our cars instead of the 25,000 kms/year. Sure, work-from-home is not possible for every profession and no-doubt everyone needs physical human interaction. And also the technology (Zoom et. al) has only just caught-up to make virtual collaboration more effective. I am by no means hinting at switching permanently to the extremes we saw this year, but 2020 showed us there is probably a golden middle between carbon-fueled human progress and compassion-filled nature conservation that might be a future-worthy way of work and life.

Many governments and corporations (including the one I happen to be working for) are making bold commitments towards climate change and I hope others join soon. But we as individuals have the power to make an impact too, 2020 has showed us just how much we can achieve when we believe in Science and work together to fight a common threat and climate-change is the biggest threat to us and our planet - by far. As David Attenborough says in the Netflix documentary - David Attenborough: A life on Our Planet - "it isn't just about the planet, it is about us"

While we as humans have long talked about being in harmony with nature, 2020 reminded me that we are part of nature and only one part of it. This year showed me how we can reinvent our role in nature and make more conscious choices - consumption choices, commuting choices, commitment choices etc. I have learnt to pause and think more before making my choices.

 Pigs

The second image is that of Pigs, more accurately the underlying idea behind Piggy-banks. 2020 brought to the fore an important discussion about "Reserves / Buffers" as argued in this April/2020 Financial Times article titled "Companies should shift from 'just in time' to 'just in case'". For as long as I have engaged in issues of business and economy since my B-School days the ideas of lean, leverage and brute efficiency have been sought with much enthusiasm by corporations, start-ups, governments and even individuals in their personal investment and expenditure strategies. 2020, while being a reminder of the importance of robustness and resilience for some, has also sadly been a rude awakening for many.

Thinking back about March/2020 at the start of a 'Black-Swan' event (as Nassim Nicholas Taleb would call it) with a lot of uncertainty; governments, companies and many individuals had to dig deep into their pockets to see how much reserves they had and what their cash-burn rate was, to assess their robustness to survive what the future might bring. Suddenly in 2020, the German government's much debated habit of maintaining balanced budgets and running fiscal surplus for many years didn't seem like such a bad idea. In developing economies like India where I come from the Government took the right steps to go into a lock-down relatively early compared to many other countries only to realize it was probably too early as the country reached its peak infection-rate only in late autumn by when most of the limited reserves at all levels from individuals to the state-coffers had run thin. And in the absence of a robust and wide social security net many individuals in the organized and unorganized sectors were exposed to the harsh reality of lives v/s livelihoods.

While I personally do not believe we are going to see the end of the 'lean' management or the pursuit of efficiency, just like in the case of physical v/s virtual, here too we might do well to seek the golden middle between shorter-term efficiency and longer-term resilience. Just what that looks like, is for each one of us to figure-out. I am certainly taking the image of those cute little pigs into the future as I make decisions about my family, my teams and my work.

What image does 2020 leave you with?

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this post are mine and do not necessarily represent those of the Organizations / Individuals I am associated with currently or in the past. I currently work for Novartis, but the views expressed here are my own and I do not speak for Novartis.

References & interesting related content

1. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/08/covid-lockdown-offers-insight-into-human-wildlife-interactions/
2. https://www.gatesnotes.com/Podcast/Is-it-too-late-to-stop-climate-change
3. https://www.netflix.com/de-en/title/80216393
4. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-52459487
5. https://hbr.org/2020/09/global-supply-chains-in-a-post-pandemic-world
6. https://www.ft.com/content/606d1460-83c6-11ea-b555-37a289098206