Ghost horses and other lockdown learnings
I really like this story from Jonah Goldberg (one my daily feeds):
When World War II was just gearing up, the British were ill-prepared. They couldn’t just wait for factories—at home or in America—to start churning out the arsenal of democracy. They had to get ready with whatever was on hand. To that end, they de-mothballed some light field artillery last used during the Boer War and assembled the five-man crew required to fire it. But when they drilled with the equipment there was something not quite right. According to procedure, three seconds before discharging the weapon, two of the men would stand at attention off to the side and hold position until after the shot was fired. No one knew why they did that. Ultimately, they had to call in an old retired artillery officer. He watched the exercise for a while, and then a spark of an old memory struck and he recognized what they were doing: "I have it. They are holding the horses."
Lockdown has revealed a whole lot of horse-holding. Some of the things people are re-thinking include the need for physical premises, shifting to an online business model, larger scale working from home, the need for physical meetings, how to communicate with staff and customers, how to entertain ourselves, what’s important and what’s not.
With less than a day to go, I’ve been reflecting on what I’ve learned to love and what I’ve learned to let go of.
At a personal level, we learned among other things that Franceska’s ginger crunch is better than the local baker’s. We found that we didn’t have to go out for dinner on date night – we could create some romantic moments with some imaginative furniture shifting. Parking was a lot easier too.
At a business level, the lessons are only just emerging. One of them that we’re very aware of is that the world of training is changed forever. Day or multi-day workshops are a thing of the past – and online long workshops are the last gasp. A lot of people will try to navigate using coordinates for a world that doesn’t exist anymore. There are many more effective and efficient ways of delivering training, but they all start at a different place from that of traditional training.
Here’s some great questions in that vein:
how do people learn rather than how we will teach them?
how do people connect to our organisation rather than how do bind them to us?
how do customers buy rather than how will we sell?
why do they buy rather than what do we think they need?
What are your ghost horses that you’ll let go of? What will you hold onto?
We’d love to hear your comments so please share them below.