It’s Time For A New Vision: A Message For Community-Facing Organizations In The Midst of Covid-19

The initial moment for triage is slowly transforming into something else. A few weeks ago, your organization was walking along, thinking that it understood the major challenges and opportunities that it faced. And while you knew there were dramatic and not-so-dramatic variables you were unprepared for, you had enough of a sense of certainty to make plans, set a vision, raise needed revenue, chart a programmatic course, and gather the requisite collaborators and confidants. Then, the trail you were walking on fell out from under you and your companions, dropping you violently to some landing place, the nature of which is completely new.

So you’ve done what you could to survive. You’ve made evaluations based on short-term needs and the hope of mid- to long-term return to something like it was. You have not had time to bury those you lost or heal from your own wounds. You’re still getting word from people on other trails that lost their lives or ways forward, and you’re getting mixed signals as to how long you’ll be in this deeply precarious position.

Some people are talking about helicopters that may be able to rescue those lost in the wilderness, and others remind that the sacrifices of this moment are said to be temporary. But you also hear the muffled voices of experts who question the likelihood of ever walking on the old trail again. Those without an interest in being re-elected or without fortunes to protect are speaking truths so radical that they are hard to sit with. So you search for radio signals from prognosticators of coming relief and restoration. Meanwhile, the magnitude of your situation grows with or without your attention.

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I’ve been impressed by so many of my friends and colleagues who have found creative ways to protect the people and missions to which they have dedicated their lives. They have found new temporary ways to deliver services and build communities that try to limit the stress and burden placed upon the vulnerable in their contexts. They have rekindled existing and created new sources that fuel the fires of life together. They have said to one another, rightly, we will get through this. 

But the time has come for a new set of priorities to be undertaken, all the while giving the life-saving emergent care to which they are committed. It is time for community-facing organizations to cast new visions for the next two to three years. Why? Because it will take us at least that long to travel through the devastating economic and public health realities that the Covid-19 crisis has unleashed.

If you listen to the experts who have actually modeled out the requirements to A) survive this pandemic until it is under some form of reasonable control, and B) limit and repair the economic damage that the first requires, you will not hear anything that makes you believe that we are weeks or months away from returning to previous business models. The conversations being had nationally and regionally are vitally important policy debates that are going to be determinate in the collective scope of who is able to survive this. You should pay attention, make your voice heard, lobby your lawmakers, and participate in democratic processes like voting.

But more important to your organization is what you do in the next 60-90 days to reimagine an organizational model that can function within the current and plausibly worse constraints over the course of two-three years. (To be clear, it’s incredibly unlikely that things in 2-3 years are at all like they were in February 2020, but by then you’ll know a lot more than we do now.)

There is so much unknown, so much ambiguity that the temptation is to plan according to optimistic assumptions. But doing so is likely too risky given the size of the economic depression that is unfolding and the absolute lack of a long-term, large-scale plan for achieving acceptable public health conditions. It is wise to assume that you will need to function sustainably in the midst of something like our current conditions. Here are just a few of the assumptions you should engage in serious depth, dependent on the extent that they do now or could in the future affect your group:

1) Assume that you cannot (or should not) physically convene the general public in groups of 10 or more until the majority of people are immune. 

2) Assume that the health of vulnerable populations will be especially compromised until a vaccine has been developed (which has never been accomplished in fewer than 18 months).

3) Assume that the amount of funding available to you will fluctuate, but likely be significantly less for 2 to 3 years at a minimum.

4) Perhaps most importantly, assume that you and your stakeholders have the requisite creativity to deliver your mission under great stress, and that you’ll need every bit of it.

5) Assume that stakeholders will give of their various forms of capital in generous ways, but need to be asked and communicated with consistently over time.

6) Assume that you will meet fearful resistance, cynicism masquerading as realism, old patterns of unhealthy relationships, and seasons of waning and waxing as it relates to energy, enthusiasm, creativity, and solidarity.

7) Assume that some organizations that have been good and needed and worthy of celebration may be at their end. Hospice is an honorable path that should not be dismissed.

8) Assume that what you do in the next few months matters for the future of your organization, whatever mystery and ambiguity clouds your view. Resignation is an action, especially during a crisis.

9) Assume you are now and not yet enough to accomplish all that needs to be done. Some of what you’ll need you have now, and some of what you’ll need will come later; and, some of who you’ll need to be you are now, and some of who you’ll need to be you will become in time.

If you’re willing to accept these assumptions, here’s what you can do this week.

A) Craft your question. If you’re reading this and agreeing, you may be in a different place than your community. But there is a way, contextual to your community, to pose a question about the mid- to long-term that does not overwhelm or deflate current work. How do you ask a difficult question in a way that recruits collaborators rather than conjuring dissenters?

B) Consider your early-adopters. Some folks are going to be helpful in this moment while others are not. Who those folks are will depend, again, on context, personal situation, capacity, and so on. You need people who can create robust vision under stressful circumstances. Who comes to mind?

C) Meditate on essential values. Crisis and transition are two of the biggest excuses used to gloss over values that challenge a group. Now is when commitment to ways of being and doing are sacrificed to survive perceived threats. But values are not anchors on our ships; they are the sails by which we move. What is essential and what can be held loosely?

D) List gifts and limitations. There will be work ahead of you that goes beyond your current collection of gifts. And, there will be challenges ahead of you that make you question your giftedness as a group. Holding those gifts and limits with equal amounts of reverence will help you navigate a potentially radical time in the life history of your organization. What is within your capacity and what is not?

Finding responses to these questions will help give you the “who” and “what” to get started. Then it is a matter of convening thought-partnership on the assumptions listed above. If you need help because such partnership is a limitation, find one of us who are gifted in such facilitation. 

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I wish there were better news. I wish that the momentum you may have felt a month or two ago were not disrupted. I wish the suffering that is ravaging so many would relent immediately. I wish that those who were so tired could have the full rest that they so deserve and need. But the time for rest is both here and not yet here. In some cases, we who work for the common good will have to work among the bodies of our sick and dead friends and family. Still, that has always been true.

To those who feel that for now they can only do the next right thing, I applaud you. You are wonderful and beautiful and I cheer you on. 

And to those who feel that the next right thing is to think about the next ten right things, I offer you these assumptions as possible scaffolding for conjuring a new vision. May these right things bring about better days.

This article was originally published via https://www.patreon.com/bjornpeterson