By Chris Cochran
Flexibility and resilience are two personal attributes that won’t go out of style. Whether applied to your personal or professional life, these two characteristics are basic to any level of success, let alone survival.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the course of my career, it’s how to be flexible. My reference librarian and business information research career tracked with the broader development of the internet and the world wide web. As research options evolved from strictly print-based to hybrid digital solutions like CD-ROMs to purely internet or online databases, librarians like me were flexible and resilient: learning and using new technologies, teaching library users new technologies, and continually adapting to changes in interactions with library users as communication technologies evolved. It was and continues to be challenging, interesting, and fun.
Long before the Covid pandemic struck, I was comfortable serving clients remotely. I worked for a couple of organizations where my internal clients were already disbursed, either geographically or locally over four different floors of a commercial office building. In fact, in the case of the latter, colleagues and I were often amused when a chance interaction at an all-hands meeting might glean an introduction to a client whose name we’d been familiar with for a few years but had never actually met in person. In 95% of those cases the typical interaction had been via email (in fact it was a given in the corporate culture). Having that face-to-face interaction always changed the dynamic of the relationship for the better.
When the pandemic came along and kept most of us inside most of the time, the swift transition to at-home remote work required resilience on new levels. My “home office” was little more than a nice desk. I brought some paper files with me from the office, but suddenly everything became electronic, seemingly overnight. My own resilience included building skills that allowed me to more completely operate in this digital environment. One of our newer senior managers was even working mostly just by phone, a new challenge when contracts or invoices needed a signature, even a digital one.
Staying engaged with my work, my clients, and technology is how I maintain my flexibility and resilience, not mention the importance of family, friends, and personal interests. We keep moving forward so we can keep improving. As a lifelong learner, these values are a bright shining light for me.
Where do you find inspiration to maintain your flexibility and resilience?
An Inquiring Mind 