Black Lives Matter - From 2020 Vision to Reality

The business community had high hopes for 2020.

A few years back, 2020 was the year when your big visionary strategy was supposed to become a reality. Your company had to have a “2020 vision”.

Whether it was just vaporware or a real thing, if you had one, at least it sparked ideas and dreams in people’s hearts and minds. Hopefully, 2020 would mean more equal prosperity and less division. You could see yourself celebrating that year when it would be there. I could.

Now, we’re there.

Instead of glitter, we are wrestling with diseases.

That sucks.

A first one has challenged our ability to increase physical distance: COVID-19.

A second one is challenging our ability to decrease the distance between us: RACISM.

We have big hopes we’ll be able to find a cure and a vaccine for COVID-19.

My hope is that we’ll finally listen and make progress towards the of end RACISM.

I stand in solidarity with Black Lives Matter.

I know you didn’t sign-up to hear from me about politics, civic duties, or racism.

But I was also reminded by a post from my mentor Philip Morgan, that this daily publication is a platform that comes with privileges, and also a responsibility.

So, I skipped yesterday’s publication. I knew I just couldn't avoid silence, but I also couldn’t write because I needed to listen more to what is really going on in our country. I needed to try to make sense of my feelings as a writer, and a bi-cultural citizen.

Frankly, there is some emotional chaos inside me. I am still processing it.

Talking is not enough. What about action?

When I guide my clients through change, my responsibility is to seek to understand first, to try to lead with empathy, ask better questions, and have a deeper conversation so we can avoid getting to useless answers.

One action I am taking at the moment is to do the same with my family, friends and neighbours in the context of the current events.

I am also using these links from the Obama Foundation.

More than ever, my work is going full speed with all my clients to make their 2020 vision a reality.