Lessening the Load in Difficult Times

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the German word “rucksack” found its way into the English language and spread worldwide. It clearly expresses the burden on one’s back.

It’s a universal truth that every person must carry their individual backpack. It stores personal experiences, burdens and challenges. The same applies to the business world. Every enterprise has its own history, which includes highs as well as lows. Not every price negotiation has been successful, and many products have turned out to be slow sellers.

Especially in the age of globalization, buyers must face situations that require quick and flexible reactions. Their innovative strategies are not always as effective and efficient as desired. In both private and professional life, unpredictable and overwhelming events occur. Suddenly, you find yourself in a crisis. How can you overcome it? How can you achieve your own goals despite adverse circumstances?

A Resilient View

It’s critical that everyone involved maintain an inner balance. On a psychological level, it’s important to distinguish between external demands like professional obligations and personal needs. Maintaining a balance between the two is a prerequisite for not letting the content of the backpack become too heavy.

Face issues head-on instead of ignoring them, Conducting a clear analysis of the facts can reveal the first approach to a solution.

This is how the chaos in the backpack becomes structured.

However, it’s also important to focus on goals, whether personal or those of the organization. In private life, this can be maintaining a relationship. In business life, it is furthering the company. How can we succeed in pursuing goals with confidence and determination? What mindset must one be equipped with to accept life’s challenges?

Let’s start at the individual level. The great philosophers of old questioned how to develop resilience in and for times of crisis. Believing in stoicism, from which today’s practical philosophy developed, they wanted to alleviate suffering and felt that a person’s attitude fundamentally determines their behavior in crises. People have an individual conviction for everything they strive for, possess and suffer from. Specific feelings result from this conviction.

The Greek philosopher Epictetus formulated: “It is not things themselves that disturb us, but our judgments about them.” Accordingly, it is not the situation itself that creates stress and anxiety, but one’s own assessment of it. This personal judgment can lead to feeling threatened.

This insight is helpful in bringing clarity and overview to the analysis of the crisis, as it enables one to separate objective circumstances, which are not in the backpack, from personal judgments, which are embedded in its contents. It’s the groundwork for developing problem-solving strategies and discovering possibilities for action. This results in innovative power as well as a new, better and more optimistic assessment of the situation.

Communal Action

But individual attitude, no matter how positive, is not enough. People cannot encourage themselves alone, because, from a developmental biological perspective, they are herd animals. They need other people. Their decision to fight or support each other is subject to their free will.

Behavioral biologist Karsten Brensing reports in his recent book Magic of Community about the exemplary behavior of our animal ancestors, chimpanzees: “They constantly provide each other with social services in their community and have a good memory for what they themselves contribute and receive compared to others.” He also points out that fairness in human coexistence is the basis for morality, which, however, threatens to decline in today’s times.

Mutual support must therefore be gained and expanded. From the philosopher Seneca comes the proverb “one hand washes the other.” This simple wisdom applies in both private and professional life. The community of disciples following Seneca and his philosophy in antiquity would today be considered peer groups and communities.

A community naturally achieves more than a single person, and at all levels. Few if any can make a great invention alone anymore. For motivation and an optimistic view of the future, one needs a community that sticks together and provides support in times of crisis — which takes some weight off the rucksack.

German soccer coach Julian Nagelsmann summed it up after his team’s elimination from the European Championship in July: “It’s important to realize ... what possibilities we have when we all stick together and don’t paint everything extremely black.” Only in community do we become stronger and more resilient — in private as well as professional life. We learn from each other. We inspire each other. And we develop further in our individual personalities. Cohesion makes it easier for us to adapt to current trends and remain confident.

In business, this management approach is based on the cooperation of two or more organizations pursuing common business goals. Collaboration increases effectiveness, conserves resources and promotes problem-solving. In this model, each partner trusts in getting through difficult times together. It’s not the individual, but the community that succeeds in moving forward to pursue goals.

It’s about getting beyond constant comparison and beyond playing off against each other. Mutual promotion and inspiration are the keys to happiness and success.

Consider: In 1987, former president Ronald Reagan emphasized the necessity of human cooperation before the United Nations General Assembly with a drastic thought experiment. In essence, he said that people strongly emphasize irreconcilable differences and forget their commonalities. Perhaps it would take being threatened by extraterrestrials to unite as humans, he concluded.

What Reagan related to the world situation continues to occur. Groups with many participants are subject to the same dynamics as groups with fewer participants. Size isn’t as important as how people interact with each other.

A mutually respectful and appreciative attitude is the basis for successes and overcoming failures. This inevitably includes involving diverse people at all levels of operational processes. Exclusions, discriminations and the like fundamentally contradict the principle of morally responsible community action.

A community strengthens its members on the basis of humanity, empathy and understanding. These abilities take a lot of baggage out of the backpack. A modern company does well to apply these principles as well. They guarantee humanity as well as good balance sheets.

(Photo credit: Getty Images/Zbynek Pospisil)