Reflect. Commit. Transform.

(By Bob McCurdy) It’s almost “game time” again with the country re-opening and lock down restrictions easing. What exactly the new normal will be is anyone’s guess, but it’s a safe bet that May, June and July and possibly the rest of 2020 will not be a repeat of February for the overall economy, or media budgets.

We are emerging from our two-month metaphorical cocoon and just as the butterfly emerges from its cocoon a transformed entity, we too should emerge from ours as transformed professionals.

We have all likely experienced every emotion possible these past two challenging months, with the past sixty days never forgotten. Our world and our lives have been forever been transformed in many ways via this massive discontinuity.

Transformation literally means, “thoroughly changing an existing form.”

So will we emerge not marginally or incrementally transformed but as revamped sales and marketing professionals capable of competing and thriving in what is sure to be an evolving and increasingly Mad Max competitive revenue landscape.

One thing that could immediately assist with this self-transformation is some good old-fashioned, honest reflection and introspection. While we have all just been through an unparalleled experience personally and professionally, “experiences” are not truly “ours” until we think about them, analyze them, examine them, understand them and decide exactly what we are going to do moving forward due to them.

While it is important to know what is going on in the world, our community and our industry, it is critical that we understand what is going on within ourselves, what we have just experienced and how we intend to move forward professionally. Reflection is critical to any self-transformation process.

So how will we be approaching our jobs differently in the coming months? What have we learned about our profession, the industry, sales, prospecting and ourselves the past sixty days? How can we best put to use any new skills and insights we have developed while under lockdown? Life can only be understood looking back, but must be lived forward. Reflection helps illuminate the road ahead.

Identifying a path forward is the easy part. Actually following through is more difficult. This is where something called “Singleness of decision” comes into play. We have reflected, we have digested, understand what we have just experienced and identified what needs to be done to more effectively compete. The key now is execution.

This “execution” part requires discipline. With “Singleness of decision”, we simply make an inviolate commitment to ourselves that we are going to do “X” and every time we begin to waiver doing “X”, we remind ourselves that we committed that we would do it. It is simple yet hard, but doable. Soon “X” becomes habitual and it is smooth sailing from there due to the “Singleness of decision”.

Self-transformation can’t be viewed as some future event. It requires immediate action, and it is not easy. It requires no extra effort or transformation for us to remain on “auto-pilot” approaching our jobs the way we always have, but it is beneficial to our short and long-term collective professional health to keep “auto-pilot” in the cockpit.

Reflect, commit and self-transform to meet the remaining challenges of 2020 and beyond.

Bob McCurdy is now retired and can be reached at [email protected]