The flip side of 2020

I have hade the opportunity to be working the last 15 years with challenging organisations to new perspectives and leading them through all types of changes.

The last three years I have found myself in a new country with a culture that turned out to be a lot more different than I would have ever expected, and my learning curve the last years looks a lot like these exponential diagrams that we have gotten so used to these days.

Now, 2020 threw us all in an entirely new situation that changed the everyday work life and personal life for most of us. But with this came also the opportunity to try new things, dealing with the fact that we could not physically meet any more drew a lot of creativity out of everyone, trying new things that we would not have the courage to try before. Suddenly we have to put away the fear of trying and potentially failing, we had to get creative and do what we can with what we have and when perfect no longer is a requirement it is astonishing what we can come up with!

This year I found myself facilitating digital workshops, learning new tools almost every week and working on my visualisation and drawing skills and on the personal side, meeting my friends in all types of digital meeting rooms, which actually meant that I spent more time talking to them now then the year before giving the fact that we are living in different countries at the moment. But it was also suddenly more important to meet, and to talk and reflect. I have the feeling that we all had to evaluate what is important in our lives, and what is not. That has also brought a lot of insights around that I think we otherwise would not have made the time for. This makes me curious about what we will bring in to 2021, hopefully the flip side of 2020 is that we all focus on what is important for us and continue on trying new things, not being afraid of changing old ways of doing things. What do you think? What has been the flip side of your 2020? Please share the positive learning you got out of this shitty year!