Forget About A New Normal

In the early spring of 2021, following the first rush to get vaccinated, I was experiencing a sense of excitement, anxious to emerge from the restrictions of the COVID 19 global pandemic and to resume some sense of normalcy in my daily life. Yet, after more than a year of perilous uncertainty, there is a different sense of what normal is, or what we want normal to be.

Although my blog has been dark for the past few months, it’s not because I haven’t been processing a lot of thoughts about my work. I have put significant effort into what I thought would be a book project but I now realize that is not where my ambitions lie. The long road to publishing and promoting a book is not the best use of my time now and I’m shifting my focus to efforts that can have a more immediate impact. I’m also focusing on things that, because of my life experiences and interests, I am uniquely qualified and prepared to do.

I find that, like a lot of people, I’m thinking differently about the future and actively rethinking the relationships between work life and home life, business and society. It’s because of this mass rethinking that organizations are facing greater scrutiny for the moral and ethical consequences of their business practices. And organizational leaders are now expected to incorporate a concern for safety, sustainability, and social and economic justice into the ways businesses develop and grow.

All of this tends to expand the range of possibilities and increase the potential for transformative change. When past assumptions no longer hold, more and more people are willing to question the status quo, consider new alternatives, and even think the previously unthinkable. Yet, there are deep differences in people’s ideas of what the future should look like. As a nation we are dangerously divided on many social and economic issues and this has significant implications for the leaders in organizations and those of us doing work in organization development.

The idea of returning to normal – even a new normal – now seems insufficient and misdirected for me. It pushes aside the need for critical reflection on what is most important and the opportunity for thinking differently about both the past and the future. There really is no new normal, only a new future.

The conversation about change in organizations is evolving, expanding and being pursued with a new sense of impatience and expectation. And I want to do better than what we’ve done in the past. There are still too many problems that everyone sees, but nobody owns. We can’t keep referencing back to old ideas and incomplete knowledge. We are facing systemic challenges but avoiding systemic solutions.

I continue to believe that I can make a difference through my writing and by sharing my unique perspective. I want to use my voice to challenge the old narratives of business and capitalism, especially short-term thinking and the dominance of shareholder primacy. I want to be part of creating a new narrative for organizations that focuses on creating value through safe and equitable work cultures, creativity, innovation, and change. I will continue to pursue publishing that advances the field of organization development and pursue personal projects where I can have have a meaningful, and positive social impact. I will not miss the old normal, not even nostalgically. The future is too important for that.