Now that's what I call agile - 2020

Throughout life, and often in work, you are thrown curve balls (I have always assumed that this is some kind of baseball reference but seeing as my baseball knowledge was mainly garnered from Charlie Brown cartoons I'm not 100% sure). They can range from serious relationship changes, illness or family issues right down to the inconvenience of traffic jams, indigestion or the coffee machine not working. All of them need dealing with at the time and, more often than not, you need to change your plans. Being agile is just a normal human behaviour, although if you have been involved in any digital projects or courses in the past few years, you might believe that it had been invented by Silicon Valley circa 2010.

I don't know what a super curve ball would look like. I have no idea if there is a proper word for 'the mother of all curve balls' but that is exactly what the whole world is collectively going through right now. For the first time in the history of the world, every person on the planet is facing the same challenge (even WW2 was skillfully swerved by some countries). And it is bringing out the best in us.

It's hard not to look back and chuckle about the countless management meetings that I have been in over the past 22 years when, faced with potentially missing sales targets by 1%, the words catastrophe and disaster have been bandied around along with the usual wailing and gnashing of teeth. Want a real disaster? , then Covid-19 is your man. And yet the reaction to the smallest inconvenience and the intense adversity we are facing now is largely the same. What we are currently seeing is agile behaviour in it's truest form. It's not about just working from home or doing more conference calls. It's about having to completely change the way we view our lives, work and careers.

Imagine telling someone on Christmas Day that, by Easter, the world would be in long term physical lock down, the economy as we know it would be destroyed beyond recognition and we would stop talking about Brexit. At best they might have warned you to go easy on the sherry. It would have been inconceivable and impossible to comprehend. But here we are and guess what? - we're not doing badly.

The government has stepped up to the challenge by changing it's 2020 strategic vision from 'slow and steady recovery from austerity' to 'borrow like there's no tomorrow'. Our amazing NHS staff are re-purposing their entire roles to meet the tsunami of C-19 patients expected to flood hospitals in the next few weeks and businesses have quickly adapted where possible. Dyson are making ventilators, hotels are becoming refuges for the homeless and my local Indian Restaurant has gone delivery only!

I honestly don't want to make light of this situation. A lot of people are going to lose their loved ones and many will lose their businesses and livelihoods. Despite the unprecedented measures introduced by Boris and Rishi, we are all going to lose out financially in some way. But as global disasters go, it could be a lot worse. I spent most of my childhood facing the chilling and realistic prospect of nuclear war. The veterans of World War 2 may well ask what all the fuss is about, none of us are going to be blown up in our own beds tonight. We will get through this at some point and we can start to rebuild in 2021.

This might even prove to be the making of the world. A chance to see that we are stronger working together and realise that we are more resilient and agile than we ever believed. At the very least we will all be smiling wryly in future board room pow wows when the FD talks about challenging times!

From a personal point of view, my job search has gone to hell in a handcart. LinkedIn have resorted to repeating the same jobs that they posted in February and calling them 'new' and any recruiter I have pestered in the past couple of weeks has just responded with manic laughter. So I have no choice but to abandon that strategy, do the agile thing and immediately slip into my new roles as Head Teacher to my 12 year old daughter and NHS volunteer. I hope that by the time you read this blog I'll be whizzing round the streets of Essex delivering medical supplies - now that's a career change and a half.

I doubt I'll have much time for blogging so I wish you all the very best, stay well, stay safe and I'll see you on the other side.