Chip Conley

In 1999, we feared a bug. Today, it’s a virus. Two decades ago, people worried about traveling over New Year’s due to Y2K. Today, people worry about traveling (assuming they’re even considering leaving home) over the Presidential Election due to WTF, as in What The F*** might happen on November 4, the day after the election?! Does the pandemic turn into pandemonium?

I’m not talking about someone distant from you dying (that would be “the death of AN acquaintance”). I’m talking about letting go of acquaintances that no longer serve your needs (for whatever reason), or those acquaintances that require more than their share of maintenance.

“Tilt the playing field.” That’s what my first boss, Larry, told me when I asked why some businesses and leaders are more successful than others. Larry explained how great companies changed the competitive landscape by stretching what people thought was possible.

Meaning is fuel. I learned that from Viktor Frankl the first time I read “Man’s Search for Meaning.” And, I cracked open that book twelve years ago in a St. Louis hospital after having gone flatline that day. I penned an Emotional Equation that night: Despair = Suffering - Meaning.

After what we’ve collectively been through in the past year, how do you prepare yourself for a completely different mindset for 2021? As evidenced in yesterday’s video, I had to dramatically shift my mindset to move from our 2020-21 workshop calendar and programming to our new Sabbatical Sessions.

When I joined Airbnb in early 2013, the two topics that CEO Brian Chesky was most curious about as he heard me converse about creating organizational culture as a strategic differentiator were: (a) mindset; and (b) moving from the transactional base of the hierarchy of needs pyramid to the transformational peak (which you can read about in my book PEAK). For the sake of this post, I’m just going to focus on mindset.

Many of us are impatient caterpillars who want to emerge from the chrysalis before the magic has arrived. We’re tired of the “messy middle” part of our transformation. Maybe this pandemic is our version of a societal cocoon.

Coarse. Mean. Angry. For so many of us, it defines how U.S. society feels right now. Emotions are contagious and even more so on an island. And, let’s face it, the United States is a big island full of emotions, all in the ricochet mode. How do we change this” island fever?”

One of my greatest regrets is never meeting management theorist Peter Drucker who died just before his 96th birthday in 2005. Why do I admire Peter? Let me count the ways:

The human brain has been called “the world’s most complex pattern recognition system.” Pattern recognition is considered a proxy for wisdom, the theory being that if you recognize a pattern based upon past experience, you can forecast the future.