Remember back in 2020 when everyone severely messed up the supply chain due to the approaching “End of the World”? And remember how, even though many were lost, the majority of us are still here?
Well, let’s contribute this to what I would call bad crisis management. While yes, we were able to respond, get everyone their PPE, figure out remote work options, and ensure restaurants were able to have increased to-go options, retrospectively a lot of this panic was due to a severe lack of leadership across our governance.
Rather than staying cool, calm, and collected, the people responsible for managing our communities were kind of freaking out. They started screaming about how terrible the other folks were about responding, created an insane level of fear to the point that people were sanitizing their whole bodies after being in public for about two minutes, and made sure that you were stuck at home to watch them do all of this.
Now obviously, yes, viruses do absolutely have potential to cause devastation across our community regardless the level, and it is important to take mitigation measures to keep the population healthy. However, do you know what isn’t necessary? Taking that crisis and turning it into fear in order to sway an election.
The worst part about it all is that due to their need to use crisis as an opportunity to leverage their power plays, we are generally ill-prepared as a nation. Another example: the recent budget impasse that Congress is having. This fiscal year, they have had to develop multiple stop-gap budgets since they can’t get along enough to the point that they can agree on how to move our country forward, despite the fact that passing a budget is their primary Constitutional duty – they are the purse of our government.
So now they get along thinking that it’s 100% acceptable to not perform at their jobs, to not complete their primary function, to amplify everyone’s anxieties because they are ill-prepared, and then scream on cable news and social media about how awful everyone else is. Meanwhile, those people who care enough to pay attention to what they are yelling about since they think it’s important to be involved in your community absorb this panic and reactive mindset.
This is how we develop a nation that is not prepared.
This is how we develop a nation that is not ready for disaster.
This is how we develop a nation susceptible to crisis.
So we can either continue to listen to people who don’t show up to work on time, if at all, and then cause a bunch of drama that directly impacts people’s lives OR we start preparing ourselves and ignore their drama until they wake up and acknowledge the destruction they have caused.
Personally, I will be doing the latter, and hope you’ll join me as we work towards building communities that last.