Finding a Brighter Future

As we enter the fourth week of a quarantined existence, I remain inspired by what I see around me. Certainly, nothing compares to the courage shown and sacrifices made by our health care professionals, first responders, and other people mission-critical to keeping our essential services running. They are virus warriors fighting for us all on the front lines. This is humanity at its best.

But let’s just be blunt. Millions of people are now without jobs with no clear idea how they are going to make ends meet. And while necessary, self-isolation and sheltering is a lousy experience. Working from home on Zoom is fine, walking the dog is peaceful, video-binging passes the time, and extra exercise brings some sanity. But when it is all said and done, we can’t keep living this way. We must restart the economy to support those in need. Moreover, humanity requires real, face-to-face interaction – a chance to bond beyond the digital bits we send over the wire. As we fight to flatten the curve, we also must think about what is around the corner and how we create a brighter future.

I’m an eternal optimist. I know we can conquer this virus pest and take our cities, states, and the country to new and better places. We can also attack the other issues we were facing before COVID-19 – economic inequity, environmental damage, racism, infrastructure fragility, and many others. Those issues are all still there, festering behind the smoke screen of a pandemic that is ripping the country apart all on its own.

The question we all want answered is “when will things return to normal?” The short answer is that there will be a “new normal” – recognizing that a number of elements will be changed forever. Unfortunately, it is very unclear how we even get to that upgraded status. Winning this fight requires a different mindset. We have to set aside our differences, end the dogmatic tweeting, ignore the noisy fringe groups, and focus on the problems at hand and turn them into opportunities. Three areas will determine the outcome:

1.    Leadership: I’ve been impressed by many governors, county executives, and city leaders. They’ve shown calm under pressure, listened to the best science and medical advice, and made difficult, life-and-death decisions when others would not. But national leadership clearly has been lacking. At first, the virus was dismissed as a hoax, then passed off as nothing more serious than the flu. Then something that would be over by Easter. Even now, with the crisis acknowledged, I don’t see the federal government taking decisive action in obvious areas like testing, national emergency initiatives, or a plan for the future. Secretary Mnuchin and leaders in Congress should be applauded for taking action – but even those pieces of legislation are more about treating the economic symptoms than about building a resilient plan for the future. Americans all need to assess the country’s leadership. Does our current team have the right character, skills, and empathy to move the country to a brighter future? We each must ask if they are the ones best equipped to deal with the crisis – develop a system to safely reopen the economy – and attack the other problems we face?

2.    Strategy: From the outset, our COVID-19 response was haphazard and disorganized. The CDC, FDA, and other organizations were not in sync and precious time was lost allowing the virus to get a firm grip in our country. As Brad Chase points out in his excellent blog post, we still don’t have a well-articulated national strategy, and without that strategy, we can’t move the country beyond the immediacy of the crisis. In an op-ed piece in the Washington Post, Bill Gates laid out three essentials to a near-term strategy: full national shut-down, exhaustive testing, and a data-based approaches to treatments and a vaccine. Beyond that, we need a carefully orchestrated national plan for bringing the economy back online when we are past the peak of the current crisis. To avoid relapses and quicken the pace of recovery, this reboot must be analyzed and evaluated from many angles – we can’t make this a trial-by-error process. Getting the strategy right is the pivot point that will determine whether this is a recoverable recession or a much deeper, more painful depression. Again, do we have the right people doing this work?

3.    Creativity: COVID-19 is a unique, exogenous shock to our economic, social, and political systems. While we should have been better prepared, the fact that it is a novel coronavirus with some very damaging properties has created many challenges. Some traditional techniques, like massive government stimulus, may prove useful as responses. But we must think way outside the box to really wrestle this problem to the ground. That is true in the medical work, in the economic efforts, in the social recovery, and in the political arena. This is an area where Americans and America should shine. Our system is predicated on a diverse population generating a range of novel approaches to problems with the best ideas carrying the day. We are going to need every bit of that ingenuity, openness to new ideas, and willingness to experiment if we hope to turn this tragedy into opportunity. On current course and speed, we will eventually get through this. But if we can develop new approaches to pandemic issues, we can rise above this challenge in a way that leaves us stronger and more unified as a country than we were before.

I know all of this sounds very “high-minded” and perhaps a bit abstract. So let me bring this back to something more concrete. We are in an election year – perhaps the most important election in my adult lifetime. We must all assess which leaders in local, state, and national positions have the skills required to bring a brighter future. Policy ideas certainly matter. However, it is my strong belief that these bigger picture concepts are the pivot points that make the most difference – and will help us answer that question about “returning to normal.”

Great leadership drives teams to do incredible things. Right now we need “amazing.”

Strong strategy leads to tactical plans that are consistent, focused, and effective.

And creative thinking is the secret sauce that moves us from OK…to good…to great.

We can do this, but only if we do it together with a positive mindset, directed passion and leaders committed to a brighter future.