You only get punked when you don't expect it

Photo by Pixabay.

It's a good prank. From the outside, the can looks pretty boring.

There's a picture of mixed nuts and then in large font across the top, it says MIXED NUTS.

If you've fallen for this prank, you already know how it goes. Someone approaches you. Often at a party. Usually with a gleam in their eye, doing their best to seem casual. "Go ahead. Have some," they say.

You pop the top and instantly regret your decision. Out jumps a snake made of a tightly-wound coil and some polyester fabric. Cortisol shoots through your body and you vow to never open another can of mixed nuts again.

Look right out

Swim lessons are back.

Three newsletters ago, we talked about how to predict the future. In it, we predicted that schools would come back in 2-6 weeks. It was 2.5 weeks. And we predicted swim lessons would come back after that. They are.

We said it at the time: this exercise of predicting the future is a practice. It's a muscle you can build over time. And as a boss, it's especially handy, because it means you're generally a step ahead on most things.

It starts by paying attention to what’s going on around you. Look for the places where something came up and then shows up again in a seemingly unrelated place. Like sorting through a big bowl of skittles and spotting all the red ones.

Everyone is still quitting. Or just quit. Or is onboarding into a new role. Or thinking about leaving. We are sick and tired of pandemic restrictions. We are burnt out, but also beyond done talking about burn out. We have rearranged the living room furniture again. We have incredibly fraught relationships with our pelotons. We are booking swim lessons. And summer camp. And date nights. And vacations to far-off lands and maybe never coming back.

Bosses - those skittles are all the same colour. If you pay attention, there's a prediction coming in so loud it's practically screaming.

A new prediction

In the next 6 months, your people are going to go completely party snake.

Not all at once, of course. The last two years have hit everyone differently. Many folks will not be able to spring out of the can as quickly as their peers. And some will choose not to.

But our strong overall impression. Our intuitive sense of the mood of the zeitgeist. The vibe, if you will. Is that a vast reservoir of repressed energy is about to burst the dam. Opportunity-seeking energy. Joy-seeking energy. Making-up-for-lost-time energy. Your people's collective FILDI is strong, and loud, and well-fed by the past 700 days of sitting still.

Right now your team is a volatile mix of tightly-wound coils and party snakes. And it's your job to figure out how to respond to that.

What to do with a team full of party snakes

If we're right about this prediction, the amount of energy coming at you is going to be intense. The question to ask is: do you have somewhere for that energy to go?

And no, we don't mean, "Sure, they can do the job we already pay them to do but with more... energy." They're gonna want a better answer than that.

A better answer is to find the places that have suffered from a lack of energy during pandemic, and that need reinvigorating. So many leaders told us that their culture suffered during pandemic. And when we dig in, what they mean is that work still happens but their sense of connection has suffered.

Whatever creative ideas you have for rebuilding connection – the stuff you couldn't get anyone to bite on back in September – dust it off and take another look. You have a different workforce now, in more ways than one. The first snakes out of the can are going to take anything that smells like connection and possibility, and they are gonna run with it, if you let them.

It's not just culture work, either. New products. New roles and opportunity. International expansion. Travel. Many of your people will not be ready for that. Not yet. But the ones who are will be rocket-powered.

Snakes go through fences

Your people will let you steer this energy. As long as the direction gives them what they need. What they won't tolerate, though, is attempts to fence the energy in.

We're already hearing stories of bosses caught by surprise here. Managers showing up with rigidity instead of creativity. Companies who are seeing the early waves of this energy, and treat it as something to be mitigated instead of something to be embraced. And from what we hear, it's going badly for them.

Because that energy is going to go somewhere. If there isn't a place for it in your organization, they will take it somewhere else. They're a little bit tempted to do that anyway - clean start, new opportunity, all of that. But they are open to giving you a chance if you want it. Especially if you can get there first and put something compelling in front of them.

You might feel like we're off on this prediction, and maybe we are. But if we're right, then your plans for the next 3-6 months will need some review. If we're right, then years from now you're going to describe the first half of 2022 as a massive shift in how your organization felt.

There's an opportunity to bring some back burner problems to the front again. There's an opportunity to rebuild culture and community in your organization. There's an opportunity to start a whole new chapter. And there's also an opportunity to get knocked on your ass the moment you open the tin.

- Melissa and Johnathan