Sent from Milan.

To listen, click ▶️ on the postcard.

Here’s the transcript of Aga’s message:

These are testing times that we’re going through right now and I’m sure that you’ve had your fair share of challenges. So I just hope that you and yours are healthy and safe and that you are taking good care of yourself.

It’s clear that this pandemic forced all of us to reprioritize and to reconsider the way we do things. Many of our orderly structures and our cultures are turning topsy-turvy and all that unfreezing, all that chaos, uncertainty, and fluidity – it can be scary and unsettling.

But there is a silver lining. The silver lining of this collective time out that we’ve been given by nature is that we get more mental space, more room to reflect, and to consider things that, frankly, we didn’t consider before. I think that we’re all getting a crash course on a coaching mindset right now. Covid-19 forces each and every one of us to make fewer assumptions and to start asking more and better questions. And what we get as a result is extraordinary plasticity for change. In the past few weeks, I heard many people wonder: “Will things change post-COVID or are we just going back to business as usual – perhaps with just more remote working thrown in?”

Yeah, it’s an interesting question, But there is a better one: How can we take advantage of all that fluidity, of all that plasticity that we experience right now to make the changes that we actually want to see happen.

If you are an entrepreneur or a leader, now is a great time to explore three questions with your team.

1. What’s our vision for the Post Covid-19 world? What change do we want to see happen and what will be our role in making this vision reality as a business? You are asking this question because change depends on people having a shared sense of purpose and a shared sense of direction.
2. How can we flex and evolve? Who do we need to become to serve this vision, to serve this vision to the best of our capabilities? It’s important to reflect on this because one thing is certain: we will all need to find new ways of being and new ways of feeling, thinking, and doing in this new world.
3. What are the priorities, projects, and practices that are simply not relevant in the light of current developments? What do we have to drop? What are we going to leave behind? We need to ask this question now because change is not just about embracing the new it’s also about shedding our old skin.

So wherever you are and no matter how your organization has been affected by this crisis, no matter how painful and how disturbing this has all been and how out of control you might be feeling, remember that you still have a choice and the choice is between being a victim of your circumstances or being an active agent of positive change.

You can keep asking: “Will things get fixed?” or you can start fixing things. I hope that you pick the second.