“I do not believe in miracles, but I cannot explain this,” said the doctor.  My 89-year old mother – vaccinated and careful – had been exposed to COVID and because of a pre-existing condition, it hit her hard.  Family had gathered from around the country to be together and hopefully have a chance to encourage her.  But the morning after determining that no ventilators were available, after leaving the hospital beginning to grieve, we were met with that message.  Mom was rallying, eating, entertaining the staff with funny stories about her family.  She is still 89-years old with severely impacted lung capacity, so we are realistic about her prognosis.  But she is now in a rehabilitation facility, surrounded by pictures, mementos and hosting regular family visits.  For the record, I do believe in miracles.

But I also believe in the extraordinary power of the human spirit:  throughout history, we know of its capacity for achievement.  The human spirit is at the core of a soldier’s ability to run toward danger, a researcher’s racing to develop a life-saving vaccine, an artist’s resolve to capture profound insights in a creative expression.

At this confusing, challenging time in our lives, leaders – of families, of organizations, of communities, of countries – need to count on the capacity of the human spirit to accomplish extraordinary things.  But like my mom’s rally, the conditions must be created that inspire or enable the human spirit.  Resources; Hope; Support; Purpose. 

We have too often expected extraordinary results without creating or providing those conditions. A few examples come to mind:

• Educational systems were stripped of resources to meet the increasing demands of learning in a technological, fast-paced world – and then we criticize the quality of our schools. That is not an ideological throw-away line:  the data show that over almost thirty years, the resources going into public education were sliced, diced and squeezed.  We, as a society, have to be honest about that. We can and should push to reimagine how education is delivered – but we must provide the resources to do so.
• Ditto in access to health care. While the passage of the Affordable Care Act was a move in the right direction, we still have grotesque disparities in access to care, which undermines hope.  In this nation with its vast resources, extinguishing hope seems a most crushing blow to the human spirit.
• It has taken too long, but I have optimism that support for recognition of systemic racism in our country is making headway. Repulsion triggered by George Floyd’s murder really did create a different trajectory for our future: while the resistance to ideas like reparation or critical race theory exist, that resistance is fueled by wariness about what reconciliation will look like or feel like or cost – and not so much by unwillingness to acknowledge our history.  We can and must keep making real progress toward a better future.
• Perhaps my most optimistic reflection relates to how purpose can not only ignite the human spirit, but can trigger institutional innovation and momentum, as well: the global recognition that we are in a race to save our planet. Decades after the most insightful conservationists began sharing dire warnings, the data is now irrefutable, we have an existential challenge before us.  The clarity of that sense of shared purpose is enabling collaborations and explorations that would have been impossible to imagine just a few years ago.  Now our capacity to imagine, fueled by the power of human spirit, must keep that work on track.

If we can help your organization illuminate how best to bring the power of the human spirit into the work ahead, we would love to have that conversation.  Resources. Hope. Support. Purpose.

Organizations used to spend weeks, even months, developing multi-year plans that went deep on details about strategies, resource requirements, talent recruitment and more. Annual budgets were drawn from those strategic plans, setting out the milestones and measures that would be used to define goals and incentives for a set 12- month period.

After navigating the ever-changing milestones associated with navigating COVID-19, those old planning paradigms seem positively quaint.

Organizations do need to have planning frameworks, of course: deciding how to deploy both human and financial resources is dependent on making choices that are based on determining where the organization is trying to go. But the dynamic nature of our current organizational lives has me thinking about how to adapt our planning processes for the ever-increasing speed of change we are experiencing. And it has me thinking about what we can learn from professional football, in particular.

My dad was a football coach and two of my brothers were quarterbacks, so I grew up around the discipline of preparing with detailed plans but also being ready to improvise on the field.  Huddles are the place where the play is called: something they practiced over and over again and chosen for the moment because it is an opportunity to take optimal advantage of the skills and talents of your team at that point in the game, that place on the field.

But then the huddle breaks and the team gets positioned at the line of scrimmage…and so does the opposition. This is where real leadership happens: you can see the players assessing the yardage in front of them, pointing to what they want teammates to note, barking out code words that dynamically change their plans.

I’ve had the opportunity to talk to football players who were on teams with leaders like Aaron Rogers, Tom Brady and Peyton Manning. They talk about the capacity of those athlete/leaders to dynamically read the field, assess the readiness of their colleagues to adapt, and call audibles to change the whole team’s understanding of the priorities for the next moment. It doesn’t always work – because the leaders on the other side of the ball are doing adjustments of their own (with leaders like John Randle, Jalen Ramsey and Mike Singletary). But the magic of watching a disciplined group of professionals adapt instantaneously based on a few words is impressive in and of itself – and of course, when it works and the offense breaks through, it creates the sense that anything is possible. Or when the defense correctly reads the intention of the audible and adapts – it is a powerful reminder of the capacity of a team of people to accomplish a shared goal.

As our businesses adapt to the speed of disruption and innovation that seems to be our inevitable future, spending a few Sunday afternoons watching the genius of what happens at the line of scrimmage may be a very valuable investment in lessons in leadership.

It is important to note that having the capacity do that real-time assessment and re-ordering of priorities is only part of the challenge. Building the confidence and trust across the team is also essential: assurance that when the audible is called, everyone knows what it means, what they need to do and why. High-stakes leadership communications. Go team.