Manage to Engage

Introduction

You can be anything you want. But if you are going to be something, be brilliant at it, and do it with gusto. Showing up gets you started. Stepping up gets you across the finish line.

—Capt. Ron Hackett, B.E.M. British & Australian Armed Forces, Military Police

The COVID-19 pandemic thrust the world into navigating the largest “work from home” experiment of modern times. Realistically, it is the largest work disruption of any time since Henry Ford designed his first production line. There is no denying that the COVID-19 virus is a large-scale human heartache, a health care crisis, and an economic tragedy. It raged across the globe, spreading sickness, death, and displacement. The double whammy impact on lives and livelihood hit many. The millions unemployed created a new reality overnight, and many of those jobs will not be coming back. Whole industries will have been destroyed, disrupted, or dislocated. Still others changed at speeds never seen before. Some have and will prosper. Perhaps not the masses.

While the threat of automation replacing jobs was the focus of much anxiety over the past decade or so, it proved to be a disease that did the most damage, most rapidly. We all saw how quickly the economy halted, the health care system faltered, people were furloughed or, worse, simply laid off as businesses shuttered closed. The world suffered a global crisis and responded with a country-by country, industry-by-industry, company-by-company, plan. The word