These last few months have seen innovation and adaptation on a grand scale. Who would have thought, in those hazy days B.C. (before Covid), back at the very start of the year, what changes we might see?
In just six months, companies have evolved in ways perhaps not previously conceived: who would have thought that getting whole or even partial workforces operating remotely might have been possible? Or moving a whole business online to allow it to continue to trade? Or hosting entire conferences on Zoom? Or diversifying a product to meet the needs of people and society: I’m thinking, for example, of those manufactures who switched up their production to deliver much needed ventilators.
Wherever we go, we can see evidence of this ability to adapt. The screens, the sanitiser, the signage, the posters, those brilliant domes that allow people to dine outside in pods.
And then there’s us as individuals. The mask-wearing, the distance-keeping, the virtual-socialising, the reaching-out with care and support. People have been doing incredible things during these last few months to support each other, delivering efforts that have made a difference for family, for neighbours, for communities.
What these last few months have reminded us is that people are amazing. Not just in our ability to respond and adapt to the slings and arrows that life has hurled at us, but in our capacity to withstand such like. We are innovative, we are resilient.
And yet, if we had been asked if we could do all the things we’ve done a year ago, even less, our answer, I suspect, might have been very different. ‘It’s not possible.’ ‘We can’t do that.’
But we can do that. Circumstance has forced us to be creative, to find solutions, to make changes – wholesale in some cases. And look at what we have achieved.
And so, when I think about what we take forward from this time, I fervently hope that it is self-belief. I hope that we have come to realise the true extent of our capacity and our abilities and that when we focus on our goal, we really can achieve it. I hope too that we come to see the barriers that might have held us back from pursuing new ways of working, of progressing, of developing are there to be removed.
Because one day this will be over and I hope that what is left behind is that belief in ourselves which will provide the catalyst for so much more creativity and innovation. As the saying goes: believe in yourself and you’ll be unstoppable.