We founded Culture Shift Agency with the intention of helping individuals and companies scale their ideas and businesses to have a BIGGER impact in the world. But now we're faced with a virus scaled to global pandemic proportions that’s having a HUGE impact on us. There’s very little that’s not being affected. From our work lives to our families to almost every waking moment we're being asked, forced, mandated to adapt.
Everyone is Asking How Are We Going to Stay in Business?
With the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, our clients have been calling us during these last couple of weeks not to discuss how to scale, but how to stay alive. How to pivot. How to adapt and adjust.
Culture Shift Agency was founded on high concept but the foundation of our day-to-day business is creating, engineering and maintaining the digital infrastructure required to build and maintain our clients’ brand, customer bases, and businesses.
Certainly, thinking about how to better shore up your digital assets and planning and preparing for what comes after this is over is more important than ever.
But we think relationships may be the most important thing to be thinking about right now.
Focus on Relationship
We’ve defined this thing called “Culture Shift” as a profound change in how we relate to the world around us, each other, and ultimately ourselves. Culture shifts can occur as something big, like when the smartphone was first introduced which fundamentally shifted the way we connect. It can also be something more local, like the opening of a neighborhood coffee shop that builds and strengthens community. Culture shift can be created intentionally as in the gender equity movement or more as an afterthought or aftereffect – like social media.
With the onset of COVID-19 happening on such a profound scale, most everyone’s everyday routines have been dismantled, you could even say the cultural landscape has done an overnight 360. What do you do when “what you do” suddenly disappears – like your job or like going to that neighborhood coffee shop or getting on the train for your commute? What do you do when “what you do” becomes virtual – checking in on your friend at the water cooler, going to painting class, having dinner parties, having that team meeting? How do you relate when there is no one to relate to besides yourself, folks online and whoever you live with – if you indeed live with anyone?.
Whether you’re a doctor or a bodega owner, a financial advisor or a homeless advocate, a chef or a government administrator for the foreseeable future it’s a different reality where everything is operating on a different frequency and socially distanced from more than 6 ft. away
Relating to self
For many of us, social-distancing and lockdown are golden opportunities for alone time. Put the phone down, sign out of social media for a few hours and get reacquainted with yourself. Feeling angry? Afraid? Stressed? Well, yeah! Embrace it. You don’t have to like it but ignoring it or painting over it with rainbows and unicorn emojis is just a bad as wallowing in it. Be still. Look out the window. Breathe.
Relating to others
Now more than ever we need each other. Whose presence enriches us? Who do we feel nourished by? Who do we look forward to talking with versus who drains us or brings us down, There are people who need your voice and you theirs. People who need your tears or your laughter so reach out to them in ways you both feel enriched.
Relating to the people in your business
And guess what? It’s not so much different for businesses. Your truest most valuable assets are your employees, your customers, your suppliers and vendors, and yes, even your competitors. Each holds a critical role in your business’s ecosystem and now more than ever, you need them, and they need you… even your competitors.
We’re all in this together. We’re all making it up and learning as we go. And we all need each other.
Obviously, maintaining and fortifying your digital presence is essential. Your website is the digital hub of your brand and social media, email, SEO and in certain cases, digital advertising all link out to the world and keep your employees and customers connected and engaged. But before we go there, let’s take time to be conscious in our relationships with self, others and the world.
With that, we invite you to share with us your struggles and triumphs. What do you need? Where are you at a loss? What have you learned? Reach out to us for help and if we can, we will and if we can’t, we have our rich network of relationships and maybe we can find it.
The new normal is nothing is normal. We are committed to scaling our relationships to have a bigger impact on each others’ lives. Please join us.