The only one constant

Quite naturally, I follow with keen interest the on-goings of what is happening around us. It effects our lives, both personal and professional. As a parent and husband, I want to ensure the well-being and safety of my family. As a professional I want to ensure the longevity and success of my career. As a human being I want to be inspired, I want to learn, I want to be emotionally alive, I want to keep positive....I want to remain the same person I was before all of this started.

It is a surreal time, difficult to understand and to come to terms with – redundantly said, and beyond any shadow of doubt. The situation has enveloped organisations and individuals alike in stringent conditions that have evolved into plots seemingly coming straight out of blockbuster movies.  

The collapse of what was a familiar stronghold, and the consequential total irrelevance to past data points that nurtured such familiarity, has left everything and everyone to come to terms with the so called unstable ‘new normality’. It has affected everyone on the face of this planet, both prince and pauper, albeit not to the same extent, and we are constantly experiencing a general sense of loss around us. Institutions, organisations, structures and even nations at times seem to be dissolving. A nostalgic sense of the good old days when everything was better has become more and more felt in the last few months.

Amidst all this chaos, and in all the attempted initiatives at restraining regression and kick starting comeback, one core pivotal element is belted down on this supersonic roller coaster ride – people - their individual stories and their contribution to the collective. Whether we accept it or not it was always about people, and will always be about people – about individuals, about teams, about families, about people whose singular lives shape that of those around them and the times to come. It is about stories that sometimes are sadly tragic, others unbelievable, with a few unexpectedly joyous, shattered dreams and lost opportunities, and others evidently amazing and inspiring. All clearly mark and point at who is at the centre of it all – not the organisation, not the institution, not the structure but ultimately, the individual.

Entities and institutions, in whatever form or magnitude, and what they idealistically should represent, are faced with the daunting task of ensuring their survivability. Their legacy needs to persist through time in a highly volatile environment. The conditions in normal times imposed a rigorous aggressive pace to be maintained to keep up with the necessities – indoctrinating all within and close to them to follow their own way towards success. This is no longer applicable in a significant number of cases. If not all, a lot has to be redefined and rescoped. Longevity and projections have assumed a different definition as well as the understanding of markets, supply and demand. Socio-economic strains have brought down already creaking and week structures. Unexpected volumes and lack of demand has brought the near collapse of some of the major industries.

Instinctively one must act. Redefinition is essential. Rescoping is a must. Reshaping and resizing is an opportunity to redeem from past blunders and adapt to what could be a future reality. But painfully it seems that the dispensable common currency is the human capital. I am not condemning nor blaming – far from it; solely and heartedly recognising that in these times the courage to dare, risk and to invest in people is in times of this duress considered a superfluous luxury.

I am more than convinced in my belief, that one thing that must never change is the blind and complete faith in the human capability and capacity to overcome this situation. The total assertion in any organisation’s or entity’s asset – its people. I have worked and come across too many institutions in my brief career that flaunt principles, preach ideals or formulate objectives that do not encapsulate their people at the centre of any project. I have had the privilege to work with some brilliant selfless humans, and the luck to learn from failures of other self-professed leaders, who have ultimately all contributed to affirm my conviction that people concoct the success of any organisation and nothing else – it is people living and working for people.

A simple principle which most of the times, quite amazingly, seems to escape us all. We seem to forget that what people build through their dedication, geniality and fervour outranks its own creators and consumers. It becomes an entity bigger than the lives themselves that have laboured passionately and emotionally in creating something outstanding. And in times such as these we all tend to forget what it involved in getting to this stage – the histories, the success, the failures, the joys and the tears that got us to this stage. Instinctively we tend to be radical and tactical in saving what we have strived for so long and to ensure that there is a future. Just as a body without a soul, an organisation is just a vessel. People are its soul and essence, and in the absence of which, it will be eventually outclassed by those organisations that have taken the patience, the sacrifice and the humanity to invest strongly in its founding asset.

I am a persistent believer and advocate of people, no matter how many times I have been let down. I believe that people should be engaged and shown the respect that they deserve. I believe that people should be involved and own a dream. I believe that people should be empowered and given the necessary means with which they can express their sense of being. I believe that is the true essence of a leader and that is the legacy we leave behind in every chapter of our lives.