Category: Leadership Development

Day 32

Day 32

It was another stunning day, helped by some rain overnight. I didn’t manage a COVID-19km walk because of my sore ITB but I got to 13. Dr Google says that I shouldn’t aggravate it by the activity that causes the pain, so I told myself on the walk that as long as it was short enough that’s not the actual activity. How we try and fool ourselves! Contrary to the impression I had that medical facilities were open during Alert Level 4, it’s extremely restricted – only primary care – with severe restrictions. So a physiotherapist will have to wait. To be fair I walk along Auckland’s Medical Mile frequently and it’s been quiet like everywhere else.

What didn’t wait was Mum’s birthday – coming ready or not – and according to the ancestry.com family tree that I maintain, she’s the oldest person on record in her line for many years. Obviously I don’t have all the dates but she has now moved ahead of my 12th Great Grandmother Mary Banestre who lived 1509 to 1598, although my 25th great grandfather Robert du Vaux is recorded as having died in 1194, aged 94 years.

Dad put on a special breakfast and when I saw the picture on Facebook this morning, with blurry morning eyes I assumed it was a shot of the Queen, and then I realised of course it was. Just our family’s! I did feel a bit sad I wasn’t there, as I usually see Mum on her birthday, but there’s a lot more pain going on that this of course. But after singing her Happy Birthday, she didn’t muck around with the niceties:  “Have you got yourself ready to go into work?” Now I remember why I wasn’t late for school! Wisdom brings with it refreshing practicalities I find with Mum.

A birthday breakfast in Lockdown for Mum

There were nine cases today and my running review of the eighteen deaths shows none of them appear to have COVID-19 as the underlying cause of death according the WHO. New Zealand has a remarkably low level of cases, and related deaths, and we’re being put in a group of five nations with similar statistics – Australia, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong.

The fact of elimination being touted up until the other day as ridding the country of the ‘rona, but now being used in a medical sense i.e just very low cases, has caused some disquiet as to whether our media are fact-checking the press conferences. It’s obvious they’re not – in fact as I’ve said before the whole thing looks like a propaganda exercise.  If you’re tempted to think it doesn’t matter because it’s our health at stake, that’s in the same genre of argument that can apply to multiple areas that is essentially government knows best.  In this category is the unlimited access to our data by government agencies (if you’d done nothing wrong, why worry etc). That’s not a system I want to live in. Freedom is far more important.

Be that as it may, our success is being analysed and includes the fact that we are quite socially distant anyway – low population density – and very isolated and relatively wealthy. The cost in this article is described as astronomical, with our Tourism sector as a major contributor to GDP effectively shut off. We have the strictest measures of these countries.

The sooner we can bubble with Australia the better.  Bring those Aussies over for the Ski Season I reckon.

I was lucky enough to escape the city for some essential maintenance at my rural property. I’m quite disappointed to have not had to use my evidence, nicely collated in a plastic sleeve – police exhibit style – I thought they might appreciate that, although the car is a bit cleaner that might be expected and my hands too smooth!.

One more day, and it’s a holiday. We won’t forget this ANZAC break for a while.

See you for the final Lockdown Blog tomorrow!

Stephen

Day 30

Day 30

It’s almost as good as a trip to Europe – Paris and London – replete with car chases, the main scenic attractions, historical buildings. Your film, should you decide to accept it on a Friday Night – Mission Impossible-Fallout. It’s a big film, non-stop action, appropriately big plot – Nuclear bombs to be detonated at three religious sites – and bonus, scenes filmed gloriously in the Southern Alps of the South Island. A helicopter chase through the mountains and valleys – borrowed partly from Bond’s Spectre opening scene – but much more too, and like the best promo for New Zealand tourism.

Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park, South Island, New Zealand
Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park, South Island, New Zealand

There’s talk we might have a “bubble” with Australia. That would be a great start to get trading and tourism kick started. It would also be a great lifting up of the ANZAC spirit. Relations at a political level with Australia have been under strain recently.  It would be the ideal ANZAC announcement. Two great friends as one.

They’ll be no ANZAC parades but we’ve been told to stand by our letter boxes as a mark of respect in the morning. It’s one of the few times we can feel united in the horrors of wars fought in the past by mostly young men – just boys really – who sacrificed their lives, mostly unknowingly until the end, to create a better world. It’s easy to think the world isn’t a better place – there’s plenty wrong, but there’s also plenty that’s right.

I’m not sure if standing by the letterbox does it for me in an apartment with a panel of letterboxes by the main entrance. On the way into the lift I’ll hit “G” say “At the” and the lift will give it’s sober “going down” and I’ll say “of the sun and in the morning. We will remember them.”  I think this almost every time I get in the lift, it’s the way the lift voice says it, so now’s my chance to bring the whole building into thoughts I’ve had for ages.

And I really do think about those sacrifices and hope that once again we can make some good by rebuilding the ANZAC nation back. My paternal grandmother born in Tasmania in 1902, also on a 13th, would be proud of the thought. She’d also smile at the lift sequence. She’d know I meant no disrespect, which I don’t.

So maybe COVID-19 can be an ANZAC force for good.

Stephen

Victor and Ellen Drain 1928

Day 27

Day 27

It could have been the penultimate Lockdown blog, but we’ve still got five more days. David Bowie’s Five Years comes to mind for no other reason that it’s five, although that song is about the end of the earth coming in five years.

Thinking, hoping that it might be only one day to go I went back and looked at the earlier blogs of the Lockdown. Quite a bit of talk of anxiety and being indoors. It did kind of scare me a bit at the beginning.  The 80sqm apartment, my love of freedom,  I think I was a bit sceptical reasonably early on – or more questioning – as it worried me and still does, that the media have acted like an arm of the official information bureau, rather than any deep questions. I mused about what I would do – watch all 25 Bond movies – I’ve watched one only.  Moonraker with Roger Moore – great sets, actually a really good story, but the lines. Ouch, James Bond 007 The Sleaze!. I finished the third series of Ozark and nothing else on TV has really held up well in comparison. As the days stretched into weeks I’ve felt my rational mind more active and have read lots about COVID-19 and consumed a lot of data, some of which I’ve shared here.

People I know have a range of views but many people, sadly I think, appear consigned to defeatist – or they would say realistic – unquestioning compliance. At the risk of sounding like a consultant, that’s not to say that we’re not doing the right thing.  But I think we should, must! question such a massive imposition on our lives the impact of which is long term for many.

On our leadership programmes we really encourage the leaders on the programme to do serious self reflection. At first it’s not natural – it can be seen as time consuming when real work could be done. But as we do more of it, there are real moments of clarity and insights that can cause material and long-lasting change for people in their lives. This is the unquestionable beauty and satisfaction of this work. But it needn’t be a programme or a special event that drives reflection.

This electronic, public diary has helped me to process my thoughts. The changes forced upon us these last few weeks have given me deep and unexpected insights about my own behaviours. I’ve realised that I derive quite a lot of contentment from being much more structured that I have in the past. I feel confident that this new structure is something I take forward. It’s happened on the back of other reading I’ve done – Cal Newport’s Deep Work – is the main reading, so it’s been a happy coincidence. I don’t know whether reflecting each day has been the deciding factor in these insights, but it’s almost certainly accelerated it.

As a police cadet there were a few unusual things we learned. We learned a lot about death and dealing with it practically and emotionally. This has come up quite a bit for me these last few weeks as there’s been lots of dialogue about death, and as my rational mind has come forward, it’s played out here. I’ve felt it’s been quite healthy and therapeutic for me to discuss it here and I do hope it’s not been too confronting.

Another thing we learned about at the Police College was what act is the act that makes an attempt. That is, how close to the crime does the act of the suspect need to be to be an “attempt”? If you’re going to rob a bank, does buying the guns cut it? Does getting into the Ford Transit van to drive to the bank do it? Does marching into the door and demanding to be let in through the sliding doors do it? The answer is, you look for the “penultimate act”, which would be the last example here. The one before is the anti-penultimate act and doesn’t cut it. Of course there might be conspiracy, possession of weapons etc, but not attempted robbery. Some things stay with us forever. Hopefully yours are more useful than the need to explain anti-penultimate just because you started a short dialogue using penultimate. And I haven’t gone all totally structured!

Reflection using everyday tools of deep thought, writing, processing, sharing and being honest with yourself can bring amazing changes for the better for anyone who wants to give it a crack. Those things can stay with us forever and for good.

Stephen

 

Day 25

Day 25

It was like one of those old school Sundays where it’s a bit cold outside, there’s nowhere to go anyway, and the inside is full of warmth and activities. I read The Calculus Affair today. Yes I know the story but it’s got some of my favourite components of Tintin – Marlinspike Hall, the Trains in Europe and the cities with amazing details. And funny too.

It wasn’t exactly funny, but the 1pm press conference did seem fairly upbeat. After saying that no decision has yet been made,  in response to a question about business the prime minister said that retail, hospitality and other businesses should be getting themselves readied for opening with social distancing. She said that although level 3 will mean some relaxation for business, the social relaxation is not a thing. Perhaps we should tell her we’ve actually been doing quite a bit of relaxing! Or did I just get my relaxings all mixed up. Anyway, I’m pretty relaxed about it.  Someone mentioned that they’re getting ready to start working on Thursday in a cafe although they probably don’t know any more than the rest of us. Either way, expectation is building of a partial release – let’s say it’s going to be a pre-release work experience type of thing.

As well as Tintin, I also did some reading on Worldometer.  It seems the whole world is obsessed with infections and death rates. For a while there, it had a bit of Olympic Games medal table feel about it – who would get the top of the table, but it’s serious of course – people are dying. It looked like China at the top for many weeks, but that seems a life-time ago and the infection rate in the US is now just less than one-third of the total infections, but only 24% of the total deaths. Dare I say it, they must be doing something right, having let the ‘rona loose.

Since I last looked, the rate of those in serious condition as a percentage of active infections is down to 3%. The percentage increase in deaths has been on a decline for two weeks now. It doesn’t matter what data you look at, the vast majority of deaths are in the 65+ age group, and most have underlying conditions. That doesn’t mean that there are exceptions to this rule and everyone knows of an example that doesn’t meet the majority. Not so in New Zealand though. On the information available none of the deaths in New Zealand had COVID-19 as the underlying cause of death. We don’t know all the actual ages of those whose deaths are attributed to COVID-19 in New Zealand, but using an assumption that someone described as in their 80s is 82.5, and 90s is 92.5 and so on, so as to not overstate it, then the median age is 82.5 and the average age 83.5. We are not an outliner. In Italy 83% of deaths are in people aged over 70.

Here’s some predictions. When we look back the death rate of humans on the planet for 2020, it will not be materially different to other years. The virus squeezed the mortality rate into a compressed time frame. That compression of mortality is without doubt the main reason why action was required to not overload the health system, as is happening in the States. Sound harsh and unfeeling? 150,000 people die each day on earth. At least 500,000 people die each year from influenza and you’d have to think that social distancing and isolation measures will reduce that materially.  Will the ‘rona cause worse rates of fatalities in Africa? Unlikely, the age demographics are wrong – median age in all of Africa is 19.7 years, compared to Europe at 43.  But it won’t be a picnic either, as health services are likely poor.

So 4pm is when we’ll crowd around the radio, Michael Joseph Savage style, crackling reception, have the valves even warmed up yet?, waiting “Where she stands, we stand“.  Okay, so it’ll be “Breaking News” on the television even though we know it’s coming.  Hopefully it’s breaking the Home-D.  Either way it’s a significant leadership opportunity.

Leadership is not for the faint-hearted. In this matter, we have replaced a possible medical crisis, with an absolute economic and social crisis. Breaking the cycle of STAY HOME! will not be easy and requires courage and an acknowledgement that it’s time to let go.

Credit to Peter Bromhead for the cartoon. Captures it perfectly I reckon.

Stephen