Unite

Unite is a gateway to the wisdom shared during the extraordinary VID19 conference. Over 19 days, 172 leading thinkers and experts from around the world generously shared their best ideas. This book brings together thirteen of those courageous leadership messages, artfully curated by VID19’s creator and host Julia Steel.

Positive, powerful and practical, the insights shared are a beacon to help you navigate the way ahead. 

I was thrilled to be the opening speaker of the event and my keynote is edited by and presented in the book with my illustrations. My topic was "The 12 Elements of Adaptability". 

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Who engages first

In a meeting or conversation, who goes first? 

Should I be actively engaged, in anticipation that you may or may not be engaging? 

Or should you be so engaging that you capture and hold my attention? 

Or can we both pay just enough attention to get by? 

So who’s job is engagement? 

The crowd says, “it’s everyones job!”, yet we still kind of suck at it. Engagement levels continue to remain low in Organisations the world over. 

Paying attention is one thing; being interested and connected to a topic, project, people or idea over a period of time is something else.

It takes work, energy and ongoing attention. 

How do we engage with people more effectively? 

Some say 
- Tell more stories
- Show more empathy 
- Have more conversations
- Ask more questions
- Focus on what’s in it for them. 

And what else?

What’s your tip - how can we be more engaging in these times?

The combination of knowing and doing

There’s a time-saving acceleration we gain when we learn a new skill, a professional insight or a pro tip. 

It’s a big benefit of learning. 

Whatever the skill, knowing some valuable and impactful techniques lifts our game. We gain efficiencies and reduce waste. 


- Otherwise we’re in WASTEFUL practice: we don’t know and we don’t do, bumbling along. 

- When we don’t know but do the best we can, there’s a kind of INTUITIVE practice. Perhaps we’re going with our gut. There is opportunity for learning and validation of what you’re doing; formalizing a skill. 

- When we know a skill, but don’t do what we know, we can be locked in a kind of HABITUAL practice. The opportunity here is to modernize and bring new practices to our toolkit. 


So where to aim for? 

Ideally, where you know a skill or technique and you use it: DELIBERATE practice. 

Skills have been learned, and they’re being applied. 

Little waste and great effects! 

Plot what you know - and what you’re doing with it. 

'What the hell do we do now'?

The sh*t hit the fan, a pandemic struck and the world shifted! 

As things changed, we had to change. At each turn there was a new set of choices, options ... and often there were opportunities too. 

We kept asking, ‘what the hell do we do now?’ 

And the changes and challenges keep coming! 

Over the past few months, I’ve collaborated with 17 other authors to write the aptly titled 'What The Hell Do We Do Now', an enterprise guide to COVID-19.

I contributed the chapter ‘Adapt’ and share some of the examples of different intensities of adaptation. 

Adapt - it’s what we need to do when we’re faced with changing conditions. 

 
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The back cover reads: 

2020 has been a year of significant disruption to organisations all around the world. By the end of February, bushfires, protests, riots, drone strikes, impeachment and Stock Market crashes had shocked the world. Britain left the European Union and some Royals left Britain. The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken business, economy and society to its core and profoundly changed our priorities and operations. In these times where business, society and economy are being reshaped, we have also seen people and organisations step up and forge a path into the New Normal.

In What The Hell Do We Do Now, 18 authors explore the tools and frameworks that can help you and your organisation navigate and emerge from crisis in better shape than when you entered it. Drawing on their own research across a wide range of domains, the chapters follow the narrative arc of Victoria Lynn Schmidt’s Heroine’s Journey, the classic story-telling formula of heroes who are thrust into chaos and return transformed through the challenges they face.

The need for ideas doesn’t end

Challenges still present themselves. 
Problems are still to be solved. 

Even when we are overloaded with life in general, we may still have to come up with some genius and share our thoughts and ideas. 

Oh but what if
- we don’t feel like it
- we’ve ‘got nothing’
- we can’t think of anything
- we aren’t ‘feeling it’?

We may expect genius to just show up magically when we require it. 

But the funny - or perhaps cruel - thing about ideas is they can arrive when we’re bored! 

As our brain begins to relax from the pressure we put it under, zoooomwhoosh, in comes an idea. 

‘Out of nowhere’, we’ll say. 

This week I worked with a team to help them get bored... and quickly. 

As boredom arrives from a mundane task, their genius fires up and their ingenuity helped solve the challenge they’d been working on. 

They’ve come up with so many resourceful solutions and surprised themselves about how useful boredom can be. 

We can become less frustrated about times or tasks that are ‘BORING!!!’ and instead use them as the space and place where your clever is bubbling away, working on the problem. 

Get bored and use boredom. It’s a valid, relevant and practical strategy. 

OMG so boring !! 😁😁🤣