An Entirely New Playbook

From the time I was a child, fall has been synonymous with football. If there was a game on, we were watching it. Growing up in the Midwest, we were diehard Kansas City Chiefs (2010 Super Bowl Champions!) and Nebraska Cornhuskers fans. Sitting down to watch a game also meant watching my mother shout spiritedly at the TV especially when a referee would make a call she didn’t agree with (which was often).

Watching the start of the 2020 NFL season — set against a surreal backdrop of empty stadium seats and piped in fan noise — is a sharp realization that our world is not yet as it was, and it might never be again.

It behooves us now to plan for a return to “normal.” There’s no going back to the way things used to be. We can step on to the same field, but it isn’t the same grass. That season is behind us. This is the new gridiron; these are the new rules and we’ll certainly face new opposition.

I’d like to think that one of the good things to come out of this year so far is an intentional adoption of a true growth mindset, and the understanding that your outlook can truly shape your response. Faced against tough circumstances, coaches have to get creative to fight for the win — to pull out of the playbook that trick play. Today, business and IT leaders must do the same.

This year has been a particularly difficult time to be a leader. In a volatile, unpredictable environment it felt like everything was on the line and everyone was looking at you to call the next play.

The best coaching advice I would give any leader right now is to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Now is the best time to self-disrupt. Use your existing resources and lean on the strengths of your team. Apply unorthodox thinking to the rules of the game in order to do something unexpected. Disrupt processes, assumptions and behaviors. Be brave and bold enough to do something entirely different, uncomfortably new and maybe even a little crazy.

In this issue, we’ve done our best to share our own growth mindset with a decidedly positive view of the new normal. Our editorial team got a little scrappy to provide you with guidance to overcome the critical challenges we understand many companies are still facing, and to also deliver inspiring stories, solutions and coach’s advice. We hope this issue will energize you and your teams to embrace these new terms and create a new way forward — to be a gamechanger.

P.S. — Go Chiefs and Go Big Red!