The following is the first of three excerpts from my short book, All Crises are Local: Understanding the COVID-19 Global Pandemic. It was written during late spring and early summer 2020 and published along with four other short books in late August of that year.
Over the course of the summer, I’ll be posting to paid subscribers excerpts from the seven short books that I wrote between April 2020 and July 2021. They are available in both Kindle and softcover formats at amazon.com/author/edbrenegar.
An Unsolvable Problem?
Usually, I’m not at a loss for words. Particularly when presented with a problem to solve. I use my Circle of Impact model to resolve the problems and conflicts that are exhibited in virtually any situation.
The other night I spent 90 minutes in a Zoom session with 40 young professionals from Nairobi, Kenya. I really like these young men and women. They are smart, respectful, passionate, thoughtful and willing to learn. And they ask really great questions.
I spoke to them about the Circle of Impact model of leadership. The framework of my presentation was the Five Guiding Principles seen below.
One question from the group concerned “the missing middle”. They mean young, middle-class men and women who during ordinary times are able to find work and do a wide range of activities that young adults the world over do. Where I live, there are many of these same young people who work two or three jobs in order to live in an outdoor paradise.
The specific question concerned the COVID-19 pandemic and their country’s lock-down. They are not poor enough to receive government aid, yet not rich enough to be able to weather the economic impact of a global pandemic. They wanted to know what they should do. What would you tell them?
My thoughts immediately went to all those people whom I’ve coached through job and career transitions. My advice was usually the following.
Be clear about what you have to contribute to a business.
Don’t look for a job. Look for opportunities to contribute from your skills and experience.
Activate your network to help you find the people who need to know you.
I realized that their real problem was a systems problem.
A system is an interdependent network of functions within a social or organizational structure.
A key element for these young adults is their freedom of movement to find work where they can. The systems of the world have mostly shut down their freedom of movement under the rationale of social distancing. The system is not simply a healthcare system or a transportation system. It is all facets of a family, a community, and a nation. The result is that there is a global system of interdependent functions that now is an obstacle to these young men and women being able to work.
PART ONE
Looking At The World through a Systems Perspective
In November 2019, a virulent novel coronavirus, COVID-19, emerged in Wuhan, China. It quickly spread across the world in a matter of weeks. The complete story of this global pandemic has yet to be written. My interest is not the virus, but the world’s response to it.