Creating a Positive Ripple from a COVID-19 Response

If we look at most of our actions, doesn’t seem like we spend a lot of time fixing what we broke? Accidents happen, however we should learn from them and do better next time. Issues like the environment, however, is something we know about. Instead of finding ways to make it better, we stop at fixing what we broke in the hopes it get back to how it was. As noted in, “Best Practices are Contraindicated for Improvement”, Dr. W. Edwards Deming explains that fixing what we broke is like putting out fires.

This approach of fixing things to make it like it was is also unrealistic because it assumes things are static, they are not. Our world is dynamic and when anything changes, everything changes because as John Muir observed, everything is interconnected:

Understanding our interconnectedness means that when we throw a rock in a body of water and it creates waves and ripples that spread and impact all that surrounds it. COVID-19 has demonstrated, in stark terms, how we are all connected and interdependent. Our interdependence and the interconnectedness of everyone and everything provides a solution that can provide not just a powerful ripple, but a powerful tsunami of future pervasive, reciprocal, selfish, selfless, synergistic interactions from which everyone and everything can benefit in a way that would exceed expectations.

To exceed expectations, the solution to the COVID crisis should build a better future that as a by-product also treats COVID-19 and prevents future similar events. If the event is not prevented, actions taken should leave us more prepared for anything similar. The actions we take are more than just the interaction, it is all the related ripple effects.

      Sometimes the power of the secondary benefit can change the world.                                                                  –        Colin Vaughan

In other words, we need to aim to  create more good, not just less bad or what I call +3.

Creating more good, not just less bad also means we can be what Rory Vaden calls a time multiplier. This means we do things that create more time. Rory Vaden explains this in his powerful TED Talk “How to Multiply Your Time”(for more see Be Fruitful and Multiply – Time That is…).

Creating a Greener Future for a better tomorrow that also ends COVID means we are time multipliers. Taking this type of actions means we complete tasks in ways that gives us more time in the future because our time what be spent fixing things that we break.

Rhiana Gunn-Wright’s, Director of climate policy at the Roosevelt Institute, (@rgunns) April 15, 2020 New York Times Opinion piece,”Think This Pandemic Is Bad? We Have Another Crisis Coming: addressing climate change is a big-enough idea to revive the economy” explains how we can be time a time multiplier by addressing COVID-19  and Climate Change together. She explains…