Pandemic Principles
What I’m learning about success, fear, and purpose.
It’s been almost a year since COVID-19 arrived in Canada and disrupted every part of our lives. As I reflect on what I’ve learned, I hope Future Me can look back and appreciate how far the world has come since 2020. And if not… at least I’ll have a good laugh at my naive optimism. Enjoy the synthesis of a year filled with existential dread, virtual life milestones, and sourdough bread.
Success is measured by your impact on the people around you, not by your own achievements.
I celebrated my promotion in March and it was extra special because I failed twice before. In the prior six months, my biggest struggle was proving my worth at work (a very privileged problem in hindsight). I was so consumed with building a track record of success and getting validation from my peers that I turned every day into a performance review. Looking back, I didn’t know how to process failure and blamed myself for circumstances outside of my control. Well, the rest of 2020 surely taught me that lesson.
Ten months later, I’ve learned much more about sustainable success and satisfaction. It’s impossible to get far in work and life if you are alone. Great leaders don’t feed off people’s validation — the fruits of their labour are evident in the growth of those around them and the impact of their relationships.
Contributing to the growth of my team was way more fulfilling than putting all that effort on myself. I invested in knowing my coworkers as people: their goals, personalities, life story, and interests outside of work. I found opportunities to develop their skills, gave actionable feedback, and praised their achievements publicly (side note: we should do that more often). As JFK said in a totally different context, “a rising tide lifts all boats”. By defining my success as my team’s success, I found new motivation to work hard, think collectively, and foster the best culture.
This was especially meaningful during the darkest days of the year. I remember stopping a team meeting to watch Trudeau’s first national press conference together in March because none of us could focus on work that week. Being united is more important than being productive in times of trial, and a great leader prioritizes their team’s wellbeing before their own profits.
Don’t waste your life solving the wrong problems.
I initially phrased this as “find the right market first”, but then I realized that market is just business lingo for problem. I’ve always been fascinated with why founders and companies succeed or fail, and this year I recognized the same patterns in daily life. After all, founders are humans and companies are solutions.
In April, I signed up for a global remote hackathon to tackle the unemployment crisis caused by COVID. My team spanned across three continents with diverse backgrounds in tech, finance, sales, non-profit, and law. We spent four months building our MVP and launching a beta, receiving positive feedback from all 24 users about how they benefited from our platform’s career insights. Eventually, most of the team including myself had to drop out due to other commitments.
From time to time I wonder: did we fail? Although we stopped at our MVP, I’m proud of accomplishing our goal to help people along their career transition journeys. But from a product mindset, there’s one thing I wish I did better. We jumped into creating a solution before having a thorough understanding of our target market. Based on secondary research and personal anecdotes, we assumed that hospitality and tourism workers were the most impacted by layoffs, and therefore they would need our product the most. In reality, we had a hard time recruiting that persona. We ended up reaching out to all our networks and discovered that our career insight sessions were popular with users across industries and career stages. The debate of niche vs. mass market is a topic for another day, but I believe we could have had more impact if we focused on defining our market first.
In business and in life, we can’t afford to waste time and resources solving the wrong problem. The global race to develop and administer a COVID vaccine is a prime example of what’s at stake. As Marc Andreessen wrote, “in a great market — a market with lots of real potential customers — the market pulls product out of the startup.” This year, I learned that stacking my resume and expanding my network are secondary to getting out of my comfort zone and understanding the world’s most pressing problems.
The fear of being wrong is more destructive than actually being wrong.
I’ve always struggled with my fear of being judged by others. People have told me that I am hard to read, and that I should speak up more. But it’s not that I have nothing to say, it’s that I don’t like to voice my opinions unless I can defend them.
This year, I learned that holding back can have the same consequences as being wrong. For example, my lack of strong opinions at work was perceived as apathy or incompetence, which damaged my professional reputation. My lack of emotional feedback was perceived as “everything is ok”, which caused relational tensions that eventually blew up. Either way, it impacted how people thought of me.
In his Principles series, Ray Dalio recounts how letting go of being right in pursuit of the truth liberated him personally and professionally. When I did a case study on his firm’s culture of radical transparency in a strategy class, I judged Dalio for forcing his employees to rip apart each other’s ideas. Isn’t it exhausting to prove yourself every time instead of being trusted for your expertise?
This year, I realized Ray was onto something. Group-thinking and treating the HIPPO’s opinions as fact have resulted in lack of diversity in boardrooms, discriminatory laws, climate change, and too many deaths that could have been prevented. There are countless examples in design and development as well. Throw in a global pandemic and extreme U.S. politics into the equation and the “bubble effect” becomes even more terrifying. If everyone could put aside their egos and practice empathy for people with different opinions, 2020 could have been very different.
Tough times reveal what we value most.
This summer, I asked my pastor why God allowed COVID-19 to happen. His educated guess was that God is using this trial to reveal what we place our hope in, and test whether those things could save us. Many people rely on their wealth, status, or health to get them out of trouble, but COVID-19 shows no partiality. The rich, poor, educated, oppressed — we’re all fighting this war in different ways.
For me, I have the immense privilege of working from home, being young and healthy, and using technology for most of my needs. Before the pandemic, I took these things for granted and often compared myself to people with more. This year, I was exposed to the burden on many communities of colour, low-income individuals, and frontline workers who are fighting for their lives because they lack access to healthcare, PPE, financial and mental support, and safe housing options. My continuous challenge to myself and others is to get up and do something about it. Build empathy (not sympathy), give generously, and advocate for those whose voices are not heard.
My biggest takeaway is that life can slip away at any moment, and time is something that we can never get back. So cherish moments with the people you love, chase your dreams while you still can, and use your resources to make the world a better place. Simply being alive is a privilege, so make every day count.
