In The Mix and Getting In the Pocket — Aligning and Synchronizing

The best leaders and teams that get alignment around their Purpose and North Star will determine the winners and losers coming out of the great transition we are going through in 2020. That is a tough calling, even for the best. We thought this was the year to see how Vision 2020 was conveyed 5–10 years ago to rally people around a vision. We wanted to communicate how all the pieces would come together in new ways. Now we have a world that is turned upside down. For the few that aren’t struggling with feeding their families and the survival needs of their livelihood, there are many that are trying to determine what our socio-economic relationships might look like on the other side of this.

While most of history has found those leaders with great vision would do better than most, now is a time for the present moment. This is of urrgent importance coming from a technology background and living on the front lines of the roll out of Moore’s Law. We have gone from a linear path to a vision that took us to a destination and now is one that you need to get in the mix and iterate to a better place with a direction in mind. Adding capabilities you and a network of people can build will create new services for the new economy.

This brings us to what “Being in the Pocket” means. As a professional musician in my day, the greatest experience was when the rhythm section was all connecting, bringing a pace that the audience resonated with while collaborating and improvising with band members. This created a flow of sounds that expressed a movement. The Beatles, Symphonies, Jazz and most of the musical greats have experienced the highest level of capability when different people with different skills can come together and create greatness. It does not need just to be the greats, but it will be those that come out of this with a new capability to synchronize with teams that are not in the same room but believe in a common cause. This is “In the Pocket” Commercial or Social.

There is starting to be more people talking about the fact we are defining the future of work as we are all distanced from each other. I’m working with a great group of people exploring this and sharing experiences of what you can do to work through this challenging time as we are now adjusting to a new work and home life experience. There are three drivers that we must keep our eyes on and participate in. Stabilizing where we are, pivoting to a unique advantage and normalizing to a new normal.

There are organizations with a mission that need to be preserved for shareholders with many existing organizations, some recognize this needs to be improved upon, we can’t walk away from what has served us before. We must build a bridge from the old Industrial World to the new Information Age (this is how we surface new valued interactions) and in many ways will require us to redefine our purpose around stakeholders. There is the interworking of stakeholders that moves our society to a better place. This is not easy and new approaches to evolve our collective advantage will be tested at scale.

If we focus on where stakeholders are coming together to move socio-economic interests along we will find a way to get “in the pocket” as we mix it up. We will better align and synchronize to serve a broader middle class. This is the core to the survival of society.