What A Difference A Year Makes

Early this morning, I have come across this line chart you see below as I was browsing my LinkedIn feed.

It just spoke to me.

It’s a great illustration of how our storytelling mind works in making sense of our reality to inform our behavior. Yep, that ancient fight or flight survival mechanism.

Back in 2019, which now seems light-years away, remote workers ran the question: Why do I want to work remotely? against their past experiences, what they knew their friends are saying/doing, and how the world at that time was objectively behaving…

They likely picked out a bunch of meaningful details from stories they felt and thought strongly about.

They also edited out the irrelevant noise or uncomfortable truths and responded with the top reason that made sense to them at the time.

If you are also a remote worker what would you answer back in 2019? How would your answer change today?

How would your top reason look like today?

Fast forward to April 2020, regardless of your personal experiences working remotely, the world – as we all know – has objectively changed.

Like “the wrong 1985” in Back To The Future movie, in 2020 world, the word Corona doesn’t bring up a serene beach escape, lolling palm trees, and a cold drink…

With the raging pandemic, new constraints were added like social distancing extra attention to personal hygiene, masks, and gloves.

We’re fighting an invisible virus but use physical absence or visual barriers to fight it.

Under the current state of affairs where we’re all still in Act 2 of a rolling story, fighting a sneaky “dragon” and our magical object (that miraculous vaccine) is still 18 months away, I bet the top reason would be:

Avoid getting infected!

When times are normal the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of new information, revolve more around higher rungs of self-fulfillment needs (e.g., work-life balance) whereas today we’d likely to replace them by physiological and safety needs.

When you see a tiger in front of you, you worry less about your self-esteem or higher-order philosophical questions…

Looking at this example, what do you do to unpack the stories your customers are telling themselves during these uncertain times? How can you bring value to their lives in a way that is sensitive, relevant, impactful, and doable?

I am curious to know what are you discovering. Did you guess right or did you learn new things you haven’t considered before that could open up new dialog channels?

Feel free to drop me a line by emailing me shlomi_at_visualstorytell_dot_com I am happy to help 🙂

Be well and stay safe!