Doorway of No Return

Like the rest of the world, I’ve been watching daily as COVID-19 installs itself in our lives. Scientists, healthcare workers, politicians, and the media try to make sense of information while we filter news through our own experience, creating alternate universes simultaneously. The virus is more or less real depending on if you or someone you know has been infected, if you have a job, a home, or any number of other factors that make this time especially difficult and complex. 

We have entered one of those times where we can’t go back. Arundhati Roy, the much lauded Indian novelist, describes the pandemic as a portal. Politicians, responsible for managing the pandemic, describe our efforts to combat and control the virus as a war. In business, executives and employees are being challenged to rethink how they get work done — reconsidering priorities, redefining strategies, and figuring out how best to stay engaged with their customers. 

How have you been describing these unprecedented times?

It is times like this that we need new and imaginative stories the most. Humans have always used stories to make sense of a chaotic world. For over 35,000 years, storytelling has been one of our original technologies for sharing, communicating, and sensemaking. 

All of the reflections about our current crisis remind me of a metaphor that author and writing coach James Scott Bell uses when crafting stories. In order to establish clear narrative structure, he evokes a suspension bridge with two pillars. 

The first pillar is what he calls the doorway of no return. “The beginning of a novel tells us who the main characters are and introduces the situation at hand (the story world). It sets the tone and the stakes. But the novel does not take off or become ‘the story’ until that first pillar is passed. Think of it as a doorway of no return. The feeling must be that your lead character, once she passes through, cannot go home again until the major problem of the plot is solved... There is no way back to the old, comfortable world.” (Writer’s Digest)

Sound familiar?

This doorway seems like an apt way to mark this moment we have all been confronting. But now that we’ve passed through it and there’s no going back, how do we deal with what lies ahead? What story will we write to cross the bridge to the other side?

Which decisions are you confronting and what choices will you make about how to move forward?

We created a simple diagram, in the form of a timeline, for thinking about the journey ahead. Once you pass the COVID-19 doorway, it’s divided into three parts.

The first period is what we like to call “Hair on Fire.” It is the time after we learned about the quickly spreading virus and government officials started issuing stay-at-home orders. (Ironically, we all moved through the doorway together, but didn’t get any further than the front steps of our home). Many are still grappling with the early fallout. There is grief on all sides, whether related to loved ones lost or simply the loss of movement. Having passed through the doorway, questions abound in the aftermath. In the context of business, many organizations have had to ask basic questions about their operations, their workforce, and their customers. The old stories are no longer relevant in a context that few of us have had to confront on this scale, and in our lifetimes.

After assessments and taking early actions, the next phase is the “Middle Period”: the time before critical vaccines are developed. Nobody knows exactly how long this period will last — it could be 12–18 months at best , but possibly longer. Even vaccines, we have learned, may not provide the silver bullet solution we imagined.

For those longing to go back to the way things were, this period will feel especially long and especially uncertain; many people will try to recreate how things were done in the pre-COVID-19 era. But this middle period also provides the perfect context for experimentation and creative problem-solving. Those who can respond swiftly, work iteratively, and rethink strategies will find their way forward. In the process, we will be creating the bridge into tomorrow. The new processes, platforms, and ways of interacting, connecting, and working will help rewrite the stories about the future  and shape the later stages of the “New Normal,” the third period of the timeline . The process of getting to this new normal will not be linear, and we don’t know for sure when we will get there.

In the meantime, there is much work to be done. Over the next few months we at Collective Future will be organizing roundtable conversations, teaching virtual workshops, facilitating rapid sprints, and sharing powerful tools that respond to these unprecedented times. We are offering free thirty-minute consultations if you would like to talk through a business problem or learn more about our approach.

We all have stories to tell.

How are you building your bridge and with who? What stories will you write?