We can go on holiday. We can’t go on holiday. We can travel to green list countries but they might be on the watch list so they might have gone amber before the plane wheels touch the tarmac. We can mix with others…well as long as they are in our bubble, or they are six members from the same household, or six members of different households.
Honestly, it’s enough to make one pull up the drawbridge and say I’ll just stay home, FOREVER.
The wider point, though, is about confusion. About how lack of clarity in communication confounds us, stimulating actions that make little sense but we do them anyway as that’s what the instruction, or at least our interpretation of it, called for.
The clue here is in the word interpretation. From the start of our lives, slowly but surely, our filters begin to develop through our fundamental wiring, our nurturing and our life experience until our take on the world and on what we see and hear becomes unique to us.
As leaders we must remember that what we say, demonstrate, mean, may not be what is heard, seen or experienced by others. Like light bending through a prism the out-take can be very different to the input.
And so we must simplify…make the message so graphic and well thought through that it can’t be misinterpreted. This isn’t about dumbing down but about synthesising complexity into the clear and relatable so people can understand what’s being asked of them, the part they may play, the impact on their lives and the outcomes they can achieve.