By Neil Venter, Managing Director, Arthromedix 

During and post CV-19 one may understand the view held by many that our world, as well as our future, has changed. The dilemma now, however, is that unless we are psychic, we do not know what our future holds.

As a result of our past experiences, knowledge, planning, and preparations for the future, we may have felt we had a good idea of what the future had in store for us – but did we really know? Based on CV-19 sidestepping us with absolutely no prediction of the impending sidestep, I would suggest that we actually had, and may still have, very little knowledge of what most of our futures hold. Does this mean we must stop planning, preparing, scenario workshopping, and financial modelling – definitely not. Should we consider alternative methods or thinking in planning, preparing, scenario planning, and financial modelling – absolutely yes.

It is our innate human nature to draw on vast amounts of personal experience, market intelligence, coupling these with the vast knowledge and resources available to us in the modern age. One may even be considered foolish to ignore this, however, one may also challenge a broad approach as opposed to relying a bit more on instinct, intuition, and the good old ‘gut’ feeling. I am sure many South Africans recently watched the documentary – Chasing the Sun – covering a behind the scenes view and insight into the successful Springboks road to winning the RWC ’19. There is no doubt in my mind that Rassie learned from the past. He drew on key aspects from the past to eliminate any ‘ghosts’ and harness the positives to further enforce his plan and motivate the players.

Did he plan ahead and cover many aspects to the minor detail? Absolutely. It did, however, not derail or clutter the overall, simple plan of winning more games, building confidence, and generating support while instilling an unbelievable belief in the squad and within each player. There has been an in-depth analysis of what Rassie, his support teams, and the players did to allow them to overcome many obstacles to lifting the Web Ellis trophy for the 3rd time, all of which may be 100% accurate.

Yet, in my view – and I suppose to Rassie’s mantra of ‘letting the main thing be the main thing’ and ‘the only thing’ – the single most important factor was the conscious effort made to connect with the players, and the players with each other on an elevated psychological level and deep, emotional level.

When you watched or may still watch the series, this is evident in numerous scenes and interviews. This allowed them to achieve their goals, implement any strategy or deal with any aspect that was required, while ignoring, dismissing and managing any negativity along the way. With the obvious and far-reaching impact of COVID-19 and the further uncertainty about OUR future, a greater focus on human connection will be imperative. There may be elements of Thought Leadership and or Transformational Coaching to consider and even challenge to reset some of these elements.

More recently I have drawn on a more specific Transformational Principle of understanding, embracing and evolving some key Principles of Mind, Consciousness and Thought. ( The Principles – The Principles Institute) Although a complex topic – and I am certainly not an expert on The Principles – I have focused on the simplicity, acute awareness and innate human nature to ‘connect’ with ourselves and each other.

Somehow, I sense a greater need for connecting at this level with our peers, our staff, our customers ,all stakeholders and most critically , indirectly with patients via their specialists within a unique relationship through professional medical education , expert technical support as we strive towards,

‘Improving Patient Outcomes by Delivering Distinctive Devices’

I have no doubt that we will weather the COVID-19 storms and set sails into the high seas, Chasing OUR Sun.