Wonderland 2021: Our Top 5 Takeaways
A year ago, in one of our posts, SmarterWisdom enjoyed describing 2020 as an exceptional year. We have since been toying with how to label 2021—and Alice in Wonderland came to mind: topsy turvy, a croquet field where the balls are live hedgehogs? Definitely. Through the Looking Glass, with a grinning Cheshire Cat! For sure. So here we go: the crazy journey of the year behind us…
1. Down the Rabbit Hole: Yep, while leaders continued to attempt to balance the day-to-day ravages and uncertainty brought along by the pandemic, they also had to make sense of how best to manage during a time when many staff members decided to quit. A November piece in the Washington Post cites that 4.4 million Americans (3% of the workforce) quit their jobs in September 2021. The reasons given: rising Coronavirus cases, shortage of child care availability and better wages elsewhere.
2. Mad as a Hatter: While our world appeared every now and then to shift into a more familiar mode and the economy seemed stronger, just as quickly it all veered off-kilter again and our markers of success disappeared. In fact, understandably, many of our clients embarked once again with gusto on their strategic planning work, bringing their vision for growth to the fore, only to be slapped back into day-to-day problem-solving as an exigent event reared its ugly head yet again. While at times the need to shift approaches and re-focus seemed insane and impossible, occasionally, leaders were able to grab the new problem by the horns and wrestle their plan back on course—or, even better, realize there was a new and more flexible approach to take that might reap more benefits.
3. Off With Their Heads: In Lewis Carroll’s great story of Alice and her world, the Queen of Hearts had a great solution to any problem: Off with their heads! We saw incredible frustration and hand-wringing on a regular basis with our clients. Team-members turned inward rather than embracing the need to work more effectively within their group, others hit out and refused to play along with what seemed necessary. We did see that some members of the workforce who chose to leave were often the ones who tended to bring negativity, and while heads did not always roll, leaders frequently welcomed the ways in which tired and often unproductive workers were replaced by new, creative people.
4. “I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date”: The uneven playing field of work frequently meant that deadlines were hard to keep. In the non-profit world, we saw a tension between boards and executive directors as carefully laid out strategic plans seemed to fall by the wayside and due dates were missed. We saw that the experienced EDs, with thoughtful board leadership, slowed down and analyzed both what was important, and why and when it was needed. It made no sense to plow forward thoughtlessly when the culture and climate of the workplace was being untended and employees felt stressed and unable to do their core jobs.
5. Curiouser and curiouser: When Alice ate the cake she began to grow ridiculously tall; she could hardly see her feet. Her grasp of the English language slipped away, and she chose to accept the curious world in which she found herself. She had no choice! In this time of uncertainty and change, how many times have we said: Let’s accept where we are and plan to move forward? What have we learned here about what we don’t need? Indeed, that very moment of stopping, reflecting and saying the word “curious” is a good thing. It gives us all that chance to name what is happening, to understand it more deeply and, perhaps, to see how we might capitalize on the upheaval in the new reality before us.
If 2020 was an exceptional year, then perhaps 2021 has heralded a massive time of ongoing change, a wonderland in fact, that we cannot even begin to embrace, yet. In the croquet game in Alice in Wonderland, Alice’s chief difficulty was managing her flamingo (the mallet). Just as she got the neck straightened out and was about to take a swipe at the ball (hedgehog), the flamingo would turn around and give her a puzzled look and Alice had difficulty refraining from laughing. We certainly wish you a year ahead with a few more predictable outcomes, and perhaps more laughing than crying—in addition, we urge you to embrace the chaos and curiosity of our new reality!