When the pandemic ends, our generation has a choice to make

Our family had a nice run.

We made it through the peak of Omicron before the first member of our household tested positive for Covid-19, this weekend. Thankfully, we’re all fine so far. God willing, our nuclear family’s bout with Covid will pass in a few days and fall into the footnotes of our family’s history.

Ironically, the moment we saw the positive test, it felt like the beginning of the end of Covid-19, for our family at least. Assuming we get through this week without requiring hospitalization (which it seems like we will, fingers crossed), Robyn and I can breathe easier through the next few months as the pandemic hopefully transitions to an endemic. We’ll have gotten it and got through it. Our family is in the endgame. Thank goodness this didn’t all happen the week of Robyn’s due date.

Soon enough, the collective Covid endgame for our country and world will come, too. And when it does, I expect the narratives of what’s next to start forming. It’s what we do in contemporary human society: when crises end, we start to rewrite history.

It’s perhaps unnecessary to say something this obvious, but I don’t think the stories we’ll tell about the end of Covid will be along the lines of, “we just went back to the way things were.”

Our collective minds have changed; something inside us has snapped. We all went just went through an existentially-affective experience. Everyone has lost someone in some way. Some of our communities were ravaged. We all went through waves of lockdowns and uncertainty.

I don’t know about you, dear Reader, but I do not feel like the same person I was two years ago. Like, I feel like a very different person that I was two years ago - with different perspectives on family, work, gender equality, social policy, leadership, health, and public service.

And because we won’t just go back to the way things were, the question becomes - what will the story be? At the end of our collective reflection, what will the call to action be as we emerge from Covid-19? What narrative will be choose to accept and make real?

Speaking as a member of the millennial generation as I write these words in early 2022, the next 20-30 years are ours to lead. We’re at the age where our parents are retiring and we’re stepping in. And if the next 20-30 years are truly our turn to lead, what will our story be?

To contemplate questions with generational implications, I prefer to think in generational terms. The best judges of how we lead as a generation are not us, but our grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

So what I think about is what my children will say to their grandchildren about me. When Bo and Myles tell their grandchildren about how their father and his contemporaries acted between 2020 and 2050, what stories will they tell about us? As the true arbiters of our history, how will our grandchildren and great-grandchildren judge us?

I see two prevailing narratives, starting to form already. The one I think we all expect is the one typified by the big speech.

This is the story that begins with the President and other world leaders making a national address on television, ritualistically performing all the usual elements of pomp and circumstance: claiming victory, honoring the dead with semi-sincere words and and calculated phrases, and celebrating the front-line workers who carried the burden of the pandemic. In the final overtures of the speech that politician - whether Republican or Democrat - will play into our fears and darker memories of the pandemic, and vow: “Follow me, and I’ll make sure something like this never happens again.”

There will be a blue ribbon panel, scapegoats will be shamed and punished. There will be grand, short-sighted gestures implemented to help the nation feel like something will be different, whether or not they actually make things different. And then a few years will pass, the next crisis will emerge, and the same farce - muddle through crisis, posture and stoke fear, gloss over problems, and move on - will repeat.

I do not want that fear-based narrative to be how our grandchildren and great-grandchildren remember us.

The other prevailing narrative I see brewing already is that of enlightened self-awareness. It goes kind of like this.

First, there’s an awakening. Something shaken up in our heads because of the pandemic. We realize life is too short for jobs we hate and keeping up with the Joneses. We lean into our family life or our passions. We, as a generation, pursue our own dreams instead of everyone else’s. We become a generation, not of dreamers, but people who actually chased their dreams and poured everything into the relationships that meant the most to us. We become heroes because we stayed true to ourselves; the generation the finally broke the cycle and began the process of collective healing. The story is so intoxicating, and feels so familiar, doesn‘t it?

Lately though, I’ve worried about the slippery slope of that hero’s journey. If we all pursue our own dreams and build up our own tribes, where does that leave the community? Will we balkanize our culture even further? Will we put ourselves on a path of endless tribialization and greater disparity between those who have the surplus to “do their own thing” and those who don’t? Isn’t it so easy for this narrative to start as as a story of self-actualization but then end as a story of narcissism, self-indulgence, or elitism?

It seems innocuous if we individually pursue our own dreams and invest in relationships with our own loved ones. But what happens if we all narrow our focus to that of our own dreams, our own passions, our own families, and our own tribes? What will happen to the bonds that bind us? Is that a world we actually want to live in?

I sure as hell don’t want to be known as the generation who perpetuated a cycle of fear. But I don’t want to be the generation that turned so far inward that we lost the forest for the trees, either.

What I hope, is that our children and grandchildren remember the next 20-30 years as a time where our generation looked inward, and in addition to advancing own passions, families, and tribes, we also took responsibility for something bigger. 

What if in the next three decades we came out of this with an awakening, yes, but an awakening of honestly embracing reality. Where we really understood what happened, all the way down to the roots. Where we asked ourselves tough questions and accepted hard truths about our priorities, our institutions, and our sensibilities about right and wrong. 

And what if instead of pursuing quick fixes, we acted with more courage. What if we stopped putting band-aids on one big thing. Just one. Maybe it’s one issue like caregiver support or global access to vaccines. And we drew a line in the sand, and just said - this global vaccines thing is hard, but we’re going to figure this out. We’re not going to kick the can down the road any longer. We’re going to invest, and we’re going to do the right thing and do it in the right way.

And what if that one single act of courage, inspired another. And that inspired another. And another and another. What if instead of a cycle of fear, we ended up with a cycle of responsibility?

I know this is all annoyingly lofty and abstract, and probably a bit premature. But after every crisis comes a VE Day or a VJ Day or something like it. After every crisis comes a writing of history. After every globally significant event comes an inflection point, where the generation taking the handoff has to make a choice about what comes next.

For us as millennials, we’ve drawn the cards on this one. The end of the Covid-19 pandemic is right when it’s our time to take the handoff from our retiring parents, and step into the role of leading this world. It’s our time, our turn, and our burden.

When the Covid-19 endgame finally arrives, and our handoff moment is finally here, I don’t want to be swept up in it so badly that I can’t think clearly. I want to choose the narrative for the next 30 years with intention. 

And the only way to do that I can see is to start thinking about the handoff we’re about to take, right now.

And I hope the narrative we choose is not fear, nor narcissism. I hope the story we choose and the story we commit to write, in each of our respective domains, is that of courageous responsibility.

How to take more responsibility

“I’ll take responsibility for that.”

Hearing this phrase in a team setting is generally a good sign. Choosing to be responsible for something is effectively an act of leadership. And whether it’s in our families, at work, at church, or in community groups, more people choosing to lead is a good thing.

So instead of worrying about abstract concepts like “leadership development”, why not just focus on “taking responsibility”? If more folks - like us and our peers - are taking responsibility for their conduct and the needs of others, isn’t that exactly what we want?

One way to foster responsibility-taking is to make it clearer why taking responsibility is really important. This is fairly intuitive, it’s hard to convince someone to take responsibility for something if they believe it doesn’t matter. In my experience, people on teams don’t take responsibility if the challenge is unimportant, myself included.

Another way to foster more responsibility-taking is to build up competence. This is also intuitive, if someone feels like they’re definitely going to fail or have no idea what they’re doing, they don’t step up to take responsibility. For example, if someone asked me to take responsibility for making sure a car’s design was safe, I would say absolutely not. I do believe having safe automobiles is extremely important, but I am not comfortable taking responsibility for something in which I have no competence.

A third way to foster more responsibility-taking is to make teams non-toxic. I’d put it this way. Let’s say you’re in a meeting about a new problem that’s come up, maybe it’s a product safety recall your company has to do. You’re deciding whether or not to step up and take responsibility for executing the recall effort. 

If you believed everyone would dump every last problem on you and vanish, would it make you more or less likely to step up? If you weren’t sure whether your boss would constantly overrule your decisions or if it seemed like your colleagues would scrutinize your work unfairly, would you volunteer? If you questioned whether or not you’d get the money and staff to solve the problem, or felt like you’d get all the blame for a mistake and no gratitude for a success, wouldn’t you think twice about taking responsibility? 

I would, regardless of how important it was or how competent I felt. If the culture around us is toxic, we shouldn’t expect to see responsibility-taking.

In the American context, we tend to emphasize competence a lot. We like “all-stars” and “high-potentials” to save the day. There is a danger, however, to overindexing on this when assessing leadership. Competence (and also confidence) is easy to fake. It’s also easy to have hubris and think we have more competence than we really do.

I would also hypothesize there are diminishing marginal returns to competence. After a certain point, adding more competence doesn’t lead to more responsibility taking if importance isn’t clear or if a team has a toxic environment. If we want to increase responsibility-taking, competence matters, but it’s not the only thing that matters.

The big realization from this thought experiment came when I put these ideas into the context of our family.

I, like many others, want my kids to take responsibility for their actions and for helping others as they grow older. In fact, I believe that I owe it to them to help them learn how to do take responsibility. But no extra-curricular activity, or online video is going to do that for me. I cannot expect our kids’ school to teach them to take responsibility.

Rather, the responsibility lies with me. I have to explain to them why taking responsibility for something, like befriending a classmate who is struggling with a bully, is important. I have to create a non-toxic environment at home, and let them make decisions for themselves. I have to give them the time and support, and help them clean up a mess when they screw up - even if I knew beforehand that whatever they were doing was going to fail.

Sure, maybe at the margins, some sort of class, extra-curricular, or book is going to help them build up fundamental competence in some way, like say in how to run a meeting or how to manage the budget of their lemonade stand. But even then, I’ll still have to coach them - they won’t learn everything from a class, video, or book.

In a family setting, it seems to me that learning to take responsibility has much more to do with how we interact with our kids and shape our family’s culture than it does with sending them away to camp for a few weeks and assuming the “training” they receive there will be enough.

So why do we think “leadership training” at work would have different results? It seems to me that if we really want to create teams where more and more people take responsibility, having “leadership development” retreats or “high-potential talent pipelines” are a bit of a sideshow. 

What we should be doing is telling stories about why the work we do is important. What we should be doing is finding really specific training courses to build up contextually-specific competence. What we should be doing is treating our colleagues with more compassion so they can count on a reasonable level of support and respect when they step up and take responsibility for a challenge.

I’m skeptical of the concept of “leadership” and have been for a long time. It seems to me that if I want other around me to take on more responsibility - whether it’s my family, my neighbors, or my colleagues - the biggest obstacle to that is not them and their “leadership abilities” or creating more “leadership development” opportunities. The biggest obstacle is probably me, and the way I treat them.

High Standards Matter

I’ve been part of many types of organizations in my life and I’ve seen a common thread throughout: high standards matter. 

Organizations of people, - whether we’re talking about  families, companies, police departments, churches, cities, fraternities, neighborhoods, or sports teams - devolve into chaos or irrelevance when they don’t hold themselves to a high standard of conduct. This is true in every organization I’ve ever seen. 

If an organization’s equilibrium state is one of high standards (both in terms of the integrity of how people act and achieving measurable results that matter to customers) it grows and thrives. If its equilibrium is low standards (or no standards) it fails.

If you had to estimate, what percent of people hold themselves to a high standard of integrity and results? Absent any empirical data, I’ll guess less than 25%. Assuming my estimate is roughly accurate, this is why leaders matter in organizations. If individuals don’t hold themselves to high standards, someone else has to - or as I said before, the organization fails.

Standard setting happens on three levels: self, team, and community.

The first level is holding myself to a high standard. This is basically a pre-requisite to anything else because if I don’t hold myself to a high standard, I have no credibility to hold others to a high standard.

The second level is holding my team to a high standard. Team could mean my team at work, my family, my fraternity brothers, my company, my friends, etc. The key is, they’re people I have strong, direct ties to and we have an affiliation that is recognized by others.

To be sure, level one and level two are both incredibly difficult. Holding myself to any standard, let alone a high standard, takes a lot of intention, hard work, and humility. And then, assuming I’ve done that, holding others to a high standard is even more difficult because it’s really uncomfortable. Other people might push back on me. They might call me names. And, it’s a ton of work to motivate and convince people to operate at a high standard of integrity and results, if they aren’t already motivated to do so. Again, this is why (good) leadership matters.

The third level, holding the broader community to a high standard, is even harder. Because now, I have to push even further and hold people that I may not have any right to make demands of to a high standard. (And yes, MBA-type people who are reading this, when I say hold “the broader community” to a high standard, it could just as easily mean hold our customers to a high standard.)

It takes so much courage, trust, effort, and skill to convince an entire community, in all it’s diversity and complexity, to hold a high standard. It’s tremendously difficult to operate at this level because you have to influence lots of people who don’t already agree with you, and might even loathe you, to make sacrifices.

And I’d guess that an unbelievably small percentage of people can even attempt level three. Because you have to have a tremendous amount of credibility to even try holding a community to a high standard, even if the community you’re operating in is relatively small. Like, even trying to get everyone on my block to rake their leaves in the fall or not leave their trash bins out all week would be hard. Can you imagine trying to influence a community that’s even moderately larger?

But operating at level three is so important. Because this is the leadership that moves our society and culture forward. This is the type of leadership that brings the franchise to women and racial minorities. This is the type of leadership that ends genocide. This is the type of leadership that turns violent neighborhoods into thriving, peaceful places to live. This is the type of leadership that ends carbon emissions. This is the type of leadership, broadly speaking, that changes people’s lives in fundamental ways.

I share this mental model of standards-based leadership because there are lots of domains in America where we need to get to level three and hold our broader community to a high standard. I alluded to decarbonization above, but it’s so much more than that. We need to hold our broader community to a high standards in issue areas like: political polarization, homelessness, government spending and taxation, gun violence, health and fitness, and diversity/inclusion just to name a few.

And that means we have to dig deep. And before I say “we”, let me own what I need to do first before applying it more broadly. I have to hold myself to a high standard of integrity and results. And then when I do that, I have to hold my team, whatever that “team” is, to a high standard of integrity and results. And then, maybe just maybe, if the world needs me to step up and hold a community to a high standard of integrity and results, I’ll even have the credibility to try.

High standards matter. And we need as many people as possible to hold themselves and then others to a high standard, so that when the situation demands there are enough people with the credibility to even try moving our culture forward. And that starts with holding ourselves, myself included, to a high standard of integrity and results. Only then can we influence others.

Joy, Sacrifice, and Cattails

“These are cattails, Papa!”

When we were at the Metropark, I had another one of those moments where I can see the world through our sons’ eyes. “Dang,” I thought, “Bo finds joy, somehow, wherever he is.”

And I began to contemplate, how does he do that? Bo was as happy, peaceful, and silly-seeking as he ever is finding Cattails with Mommy and chasing Dadi around a tree, on this grassy pointe we were on at this lake, on an otherwise unremarkable Saturday morning. 

And I was nostalgic, perhaps even a bit jealous as I watched him, laughing and enjoying the outside.

What happens to us along the way that makes it so that such little pleasures aren’t enough?

Later that week it hit me, one day our sons will grow out of this mindset too, and it will be my fault. 

As they grow, I will teach them to sacrifice for the future. I will have no choice but to. Trade one cookie now for two cookies later sort of stuff. Or, study now so you can earn a living later. Or, that kid came a long way to play here, want to help him up the slide instead of going yourself?

All the examples, and more, are ones that hold the basic structure of: invest for the future so the future can be better, it will be worth the wait.

And that point of view, will probably lead to him believing that there’s more to life than cattails, so to speak. 

As part of this growing up and learning to sacrifice, he will form beliefs on what “better” and “worth the wait” are. And my big gasp came when I realized that he will learn that from me. 

As he learns to make sacrifice, his perceptions of why we should sacrifice will come from me. Should it be to lift up ourselves, or lift up others? Should we always strive for more? What is valuable, money and status? Character? Nature? Family? Being popular? Faith? 

My example will dramatically influence what our boys will perceive as valuable and therefore what they sacrifice for. 

I hope we can live up to that responsibility. And with any luck, at my age, Bo will still find joy in little things like cattails on a sunny day at the lake. 

A Bill of Responsibilities

I am writing this post during the Covid-19 pandemic. And these days, whether or not I choose to wear a mask is a political statement. There are a lot of reasons to be bothered by this. It bothers me because wearing a mask is no longer as generous.

For example, If wearing a mask is perceived as a political statement, it’s harder for me to convey that I care about the strangers in public who surround me. If wearing a mask is perceived as a political statement, it distracts from the love I hope to give to my neighbor. If wearing a mask is perceived as a political statement, it’s harder to see it as a gift.

And this got me to thinking about the Bill of Rights (if you know me, you’ll probably not be surprised by this - a lot brings me back to the Bill of Rights). Yes, any of those 10 rights are mine to ask of the government. But it’s also a privilege (and essential) for me to emphasize and take seriously the responsibilities they imply.

So I figured I’d try something out - reimagining the Bill of Rights by adding a call and response and thinking about it more as a Bill of Responsibilities.

First Amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances…

And we agree to embrace the spirit of this foundational first amendment by listening carefully to those sharing their ideas, lifting up the quietest of voices, and holding ourselves to the same standard of peacefulness, civility, and integrity as we hold others.

Second Amendment

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

And we will work tirelessly to reconcile our differences peacefully, with the hope that Arms will never need to be used to resolve conflict.

Third Amendment

No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

And we will work to resolve international conflicts so that soldiers need not go to war except in the most egregious of circumstances, and we will care for all that make sacrifices for the nation.

Fourth Amendment

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

And if we commit a crime, we will support the process of restoring and repairing what that crime has broken.

Fifth Amendment

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

And if we make a mistake that harms our fellow citizens, we will admit it honestly so that what has been broken can be restored and repaired.

Sixth Amendment

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.

And we will dig deep into our hearts and souls to prevent our anger for crimes committed to make public trials unfair or vengeful.

Seventh Amendment

In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

And we will help our friends, family, and neighbors who become entangled in a conflict to reconcile their differences before an injury between parties occurs.

Eighth Amendment

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

And we will help those convicted of crimes to rehabilitate so that they can rejoin the community someday.

Ninth Amendment

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

And we will work to build strong companies, families, and communities of freely associating people, thereby reducing the circumstances under which the government has to exercise its powers.

Tenth Amendment

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

And we, the people of the United States of America, accept the difficult responsibilities that a government by the people and for the people requires.