Each of us is grappling with the rolling, roiling challenges of this unprecedented time – and mostly without the framework of rules issued by clear authority (‘what are we supposed to DO?’). As a result, each of us can be forgiven for momentary lapses in composure, perhaps lashing out at other consumers in a store to “get away from me -you are too close!”  We are feeling mostly left to our own capacity to protect ourselves and those we love. An extraordinary time.

But as this extraordinary time drags on, the life lessons that have been ingrained can kick in to show us the way. Let it happen:

Treat others as you want to be treated. Simple, universal. Variations in this particular time might include asking for permission to approach a person, rather than invading their personal space: ‘I won’t get in your face, please stay out of mine.’

I have long cherished this anonymous little poem:

Words are seeds that do more than blow around.

They land in our hearts and not the ground.

Be careful what you plant, and careful what you say.

You might have to eat what you planted one day.

My childhood version of this was defending another schoolmate from bullying on the playground. I knew what needed to happen, I just had to do it. Now, it is pivoting from a suspended sense of ‘the answers are coming’ to acceptance that we must each do our best in the circumstances. Don’t break the law (unless you are prepared to accept the consequences), but within the law, act on the information you have. Go to work wearing a mask or stay home; send children to school with a mask or keep them remote. Open your business under new rules and creatively make a path forward. Own your actions.

They have changed for everyone, about everything. If you focus too tightly on what has changed for you, it will be experienced as loss. Take two (or five) steps back and see the bigger picture: it has changed for everyone. Not equally, not fairly.  But we have the opportunity to set new expectations going forward. Don’t give up, instead, reset expectations for yourself and others (including our leaders).

I’ve always hated this one actually, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t an important lesson. Endings are not easy (humans are not wired to be good at them), so pushing ahead into new possibilities is where to put your energy. The key, I think, is to think BIG about the next door.

An important follow-up to the previous lesson: thinking big isn’t enough to deliver big. Hard work, luck, synchronicity must all combine. The only one of those things you can control is the hard work…’nuf said?

“A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees,” Amelia Earhart.  I can’t say it better than she did.

Over the course of my career, I have learned from some amazing leaders (you know who you are!). Leaders that have stepped up when the times have gotten tough, leaders that have put me (and others) before themselves when things felt uncertain and leaders that understood change and the impact it makes in the short and long term – both personally and professionally. Change that evolves teams, change that builds people up and change that makes a difference that has helped create my generation of leaders

Mental health is extremely important, but rarely discussed. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), one in five individuals will experience some type of mental illness each year. Think about your family, friends, co-workers and acquaintances. Now picture 20% of those people will experience some type of mental illness this year.

When left untreated and coupled with internal and external stressors, physical changes, addiction and/or trauma, mental illness can lead to a variety of negative impacts. This may include everything from strained relationships to poor work performance to hospitalization and, in the case of approximately 43,000 Americans annually, to suicide. According to the CDC, suicide is the 10^th leading cause of death in the United States. This is up 35% from 1999 according to the CDC. The percentage of adults reporting serious thoughts of suicide in 2019 is over 4%.

I’m an obsessive list maker: my computer screens show daily ‘to do’ lists; I have a running note on the kitchen counter for groceries and shopping; my computer holds a ‘priorities’ list for business development and other investments in my company. And I like to think that before COVID-19 I was pretty thoughtful in how I spent my energy: family first, company second, community third—including voluntarism and philanthropy.

I think—I know—these are still the right order of priorities for my attention. But I am really rethinking the specifics on my ‘to do’ lists!

We are all functioning in a scenario that we know is not sustainable: lost jobs and confusion about which will come back; ‘working from home,’ knowing new rules for interaction are coming. We’re also learning things in this time about the people we love: for parents of school children, there have been revelations about how they learn best; for adults with aging parents, there is enlightenment about the risks inherent in congregate living. We all know this: We are not going ‘back to normal.’ So, how to prepare for whatever is ahead?  Well, I am making lists to think about that!

For my family, it is safety first: masks, sanitizer, open spaces, new ways to ‘gather’ and keep in touch.  Being creative about all those things is exhausting—but I believe it is the number one priority, for my own mental and emotional health. We can’t force others to comply, but we can role model what we believe will benefit the common good.

As a business owner, we’re trying to start with a blank sheet, understanding our mission and our value proposition: in the world emerging, how best to compete? Our company is dependent on the collaboration of talented people—so getting the ‘office thing’ right is essential, ditto for the ‘technology things.’ Lists of options, experiments, risks and possibilities are under development. And which of our clients’ worlds will be so changed as to re-invent our relationships? It is hard to fight the reflexive notion that there is a ‘normal’ to return to—but essential that we do fight it. “Change or die” may never have been a more essential, literal mindset.

It is my commitments to civic life that keep me awake at night: the massive eco-system of public, non-profit and philanthropic organizations that interact to produce much of what we experience as ‘life in America’ has been under serious strain for many years. This pandemic may be the straw-that-breaks-the-camel’s-back, as the classic idiom observed. Rather than contemplate that with doom, I am dedicated to the idea that we can emerge better, stronger, wiser. That will require some very seismic changes in power, though. How to proceed?

I remember visiting China for the first time twenty years ago with a group of U.S. college presidents who were our clients. We visited with very senior officials there, who were contemplating how to provide college education to their surging population. There was a discussion late one evening, in particular, with an official who talked in remarkably open terms about the challenges of changing their economy without a revolution. The clear-headed and frank way he described both their goals and their risks has stuck with me all those years—it was clarifying in a way American political discourse doesn’t allow.

We need to take on the responsibility for an American response to this challenging time. It has to start with acknowledgement that some priorities have changed. We can do this. Make your lists and bring them into the discussion in the public square

So as organizations develop their plans for reopening and when the retrofitting of offices for the ‘new normal’ is complete, I urge business leaders to revisit their response to this crisis and use it as a chance to be better prepared for future crises, particularly when it comes to communicating with their most important stakeholders.

And though no business, organization or individual can be 100% prepared for every possible scenario, there are a few key steps an organization can and should take to be on offense when communicating during a crisis.

There was a very sharply-worded column in the New York Times over the weekend about the pity with which our great country is increasingly being viewed around the world. I don’t take issue with much of what the author said but find myself wanting to pivot toward finding a path forward, rather than brooding on the hurt. Right or wrong, most Americans have never cared that much about what others thought of us—or more precisely, the innovation and extraordinary developments throughout our history have not been motivated by international opinion. As a nation, we’ve mostly been inspired by what is possible, what is imaginable—and then put in the hard work to achieve those things. So how is it that we find ourselves seemingly without that inspiration at such a critical time—and what to do about it?

One of the concepts that permeates much of U.S. business thinking and public policy choices is the notion of getting things ‘to scale.’ Given the expansiveness of both our physical size and our economy, it is a pillar of most plans to gauge the potential to develop and build things that can serve the most (public sector) or sell the most (private sector). While we love to see both start-ups and small businesses thrive, the reality is that momentum in our country is driven by achievements at a massive scale (whether you watch Wall Street or the halls of Congress).

Because of how this novel virus arrived and the determination that states should drive the public health response, my observation is that we are very challenged to imagine the way out of this very sad time for so many. It seems we are struggling to understand the tools we may have to work with, because we’ve not attempted to work with them in quite this way before. It’s not that we don’t have the capacity to solve for this: We’re not acknowledging the size of the challenge and we’re not organized enough to see it clearly.

Full disclosure, I’ve not always been a big fan of the fascination with ‘at scale.’ I think some of the best ideas and experiences work better in smaller constructs, and I’ve successfully navigated the last 30 years of my career to prove it. But there are times when scale is critically important—and it may very well be that this is one of those times: a ‘Marshall Plan’ for the United States, as we recover physically and financially from the ravages of this enemy.

Clearly, there is a big role for government here (federal and states); but now we also need the bodaciousness of business leaders, engineers and inventors, the discipline and rigor of military leaders, and the energy and motivations of young people. We need to be drawing on our collective best, asking them to come together in ways they have not before—or at least not in a very long time.

Before the frustration with the fits and starts of ‘re-opening’ overtake our better selves, let’s encourage our public and private sector leaders to acknowledge what we’re striving for here: the bridge to the next generation of American imagination and accomplishments. At scale.

My father-in-law turned 99 last month. He marked the day with his first-ever video call, a Zoom celebration with 15 family members spread over three time zones. Within minutes, he’d adjusted to the unfamiliar technology and enthusiastically resumed his patriarch role, this time as the central image in our new Brady Bunch-style family motif.

It’s been seven weeks since my husband and I last raised a cocktail hour toast in his cozy apartment at a St. Paul senior living facility, a thrice-weekly practice we’ve observed since he relocated here in late 2017. Now, other than a daily trip to his mail slot, he’s locked down on the eighth floor. No more dinner conversations with other residents. No more monthly classical music enrichment classes or building-wide happy hours. No more Sunday dinners at our house or pizza nights with his son when I’m away. And, thankfully, no COVID-19 cases in his residence. Most days his in-person contact consists of the staff member who delivers a Styrofoam meal container three times a day.

It’s tough way for a “super senior” to start his centennial year. Yet in my own stay-at-home pandemic world, I draw inspiration and courage from his example.

His own life began as an act of pandemic resilience. The youngest of five children in the Baltic nation of Estonia, he once told me he was born to replace his next oldest sibling, a brother who died in a diphtheria epidemic at age three. His medical education at Estonia’s oldest university was cut short when that country found itself a ping pong ball in a World War II takeover contest between the Soviet Union and Germany. Reunited with his classmate fiancé after the war, the two married and spent nearly five years as displaced persons in Germany, and still managed to finish their respective medical and pharmacy degrees.

With a suitcase each, little money and their toddler son in tow, these refugees boarded a packed ship to New Orleans and then a train to Yuma, Arizona, where a local church sponsor awaited. It’s hard to envision a geography more different than Germany or Estonia. Within a couple years, he was drafted into the U.S. Army as a Korean War medical officer. His discharge was followed by a move to central Illinois where he built a successful small-town medical practice, educated three sons and at last created a stable life.

Three years ago, widowed after 67 years and alone in a sprawling house on seven acres, he announced, “it’s time for me to move to St. Paul.” We packed up the essentials and drove him north, then sold the house and contents. He looked back once as we rolled down the driveway, then turned ahead to set his sights on the future once more.

Blowing out his candles on his 98th birthday, one year ago.

Each evening for the past seven weeks and counting, he calls us promptly at dinner time to announce: “This is the 6 o’clock News.” Then he cheerfully details the day’s events, always closing with “we’ll see what tomorrow will bring.”  And so we shall.

As we’ve adjusted to life in quarantine, we’ve seen almost all interactions go digital. Happy hours, hangouts, work meetings and more, which were once done in conference rooms or over lunch, are now done via Zoom or on phone. This means that interviews of all sorts are also being conducted from one’s safe, socially-distanced home.

This coronavirus experience is giving each of us the opportunity to rethink our connections to others.  Let’s commit to come out of the experience with a renewed understanding of our shared fate. 

I’m still going to the grocery store: I live in a small community without an extensive ecosystem of deliveries. And though I am having to don a face mask and disinfect my purchases as soon as I get home, I actually appreciate the few minutes each trip that allow me to make verbal contact with the checkout clerks and baggers. It is the eye contact with other shoppers that haunts me a bit.  We note each other at opposite ends of a long aisle, silently signaling right-of-way decisions. When our eyes meet, there is an unmistakable second of recognition that we are each counting on the other to do the right thing.  That’s the common sense that (most) civic leaders and health experts are pleading with us to use. Most people are applying theirs—though it is not universal.

The increasing protests illustrate not only a lack of common sense (no masks, no social distancing), but a depressing lack of commitment to the common good: people shouting about freedom to do what they want, never mind another person’s right to be protected from a public health hazard. We all want to get our lives and the economy back, but we need to use common sense to do things in a way that serves the common good.

So, I’ve been thinking a lot about the word ‘common.’ It is unfortunate that it is often used in a somewhat disparaging way—as in, the opposite of unique or interesting. Because according to Webster’s Dictionary (I have time on my hands, so I actually found and opened the physical book, which has exhaustive insights on the word), the very basic definition of common is “shared by all or many.”  At a time in our history when a lot of energy and airtime is expended highlighting all the ways we are different and separated, it is perhaps important to start lifting up the things we have in common.  Much as some of us like to circulate in exclusive circles of our own design and observe the rest of humanity, this virus is a humbling reminder that we are all, it turns out, mere mortals. What can befall one of us may very well take another, seemingly randomly. We have that in common.

Prior to this pandemic, the notion of ‘common good’ had been taking a serious beating. We have been increasingly driven to see everything through filters that separate us: partisan political ones, geographic ones, ethnic and religious ones, economic ones. And let’s be honest, we each saw ourselves as the victims of others’ faulty filters. Righteous and misunderstood.

And it is human nature for most to focus on the now, on where we are and where we think we’re going—striving for competitive advantage, getting to the front of the line or the top of the ladder, hoarding the toilet paper or the disinfectant.  What gets lost in that focus, though, is the ultimate reality:  shared fate. In any community or nation or civilized society, we will experience it: sometimes we need help, sometimes we offer it. The reality of shared fate emerges slowly sometimes—in other times, like now, it lands in our psyche in a flash. Or it should. And shared fate is what makes the common good a priority. Or it should.