In today’s fast-moving and uncertain world we all need resilience, but also agility.
My book on the subject published recently, is meant not just for business, but life in general. It argues to achieve effective agility you need to future proof yourself, and be grounded in timeless principles. Specifically, the principles of Honesty, Fairness, Kindness and Compassion. Otherwise you are like a politician, reconstructing the truth day by day — even hour by hour — to constantly justifying their actions.
The relevance of timeless principles struck me recently when I thought about Marie, who runs our local paper shop. She is struggling financially, because fewer and fewer people are buying newspapers, preferring to get their news online. When she was younger, she had four miscarriages, after which he husband left her with significant debts to go back and live in India.
She has a hare lip, a glass eye, and is one of the most beautiful people you could wish to meet.
People love her, and her shop is populated with loyal and loving customers — all from very different backgrounds. Why? Because she radiates kindness. She is interested in everyone, and keen to find out how they are getting on, and help where she can. Pre-Covid, if there was snow or ice around, and it was dangerous for our disabled next-door neighbour to go out on her mobility scooter, Marie would do her shopping for her, and deliver it.
Marie’s landlord recently tried to increase her rent unfairly in order to repossess the property and the whole neighbourhood mobilised to save her shop. Each Christmas, although a Hindu herself, she has a carol concert for the neighbourhood on the pavement outside her shop.
Marie, in a sense, is the embodiment of the principles of Honesty, Fairness, Compassion, and above all Kindness. And her wicked sense of humour means she has a pretty agile brain too.
Her agility is wider than that of course. She is plugged in to how her commercial world is evolving, but more importantly is alert to what is going on around her in the lives of human beings.
By refusing to become stuck by the adversity she has faced and still faces through a totally instinctive embracing of honesty, fairness, compassion and kindness she has future proofed her mind. She is not stuck in the past — of what might have been — she is fully engaged in the present.
She does agile, and she is an example to us all.
