My mom is a Lutheran minister. But I haven’t see her officiate an Easter service in easily 25 years. Until yesterday. That’s when her church decided to stream their Easter service on Zoom. The reasons for this quarter-century gap were largely geographic; she lives in New Jersey and I lived in Switzerland, San Francisco, Portland and now Switzerland, again. So, I grabbed my computer – along with her grandkids (and her grandpuppy, Brownie)—and headed to the balcony, which has become my unofficial office for the last several weeks of COVID-19 quarantine. Behind us you could see the 600-year old mosaic-tiled steeple of the church in my lovely adopted town of Muttenz.
Behind my mom, you could see the lovely blue stained-glass of the church where she is interim pastor in Moorestown, New Jersey. Of the approximately 100 people on the Zoom call the attendees also included my sister in Philadelphia, my aunt in Wisconsin and my uncle and his wife—the latter of whom, upon seeing me and the grandkids online wrote a “Hello” and “XO” on a piece of paper and held it up to the screen—sending virtual hugs and kisses to us all the way from their home in Portland, Oregon. Technology and circumstance bringing family together. #coronamiracle1
Earlier that day I’d witnessed another miraculous COVID connection. A family game of monopoly including twin 7-year olds and a 16-year old. (#coronamiracle2 …and any-one who has teens knows what a miracle that really is.) Then later a family dinner outside in front of the neighboring cow pasture, with everyone actually eating with gusto the spaghetti carbonara I’d whipped up. #coronamiracle3
At work, I’ve seen similar COVID connections being made and – as someone whose role it is to help people embrace more agile ways of working – I’ve been inspired to see how our company’s awesome COVID response (#RocheProud) has given our people REASON TO BELIEVE that by working differently they cannot just continue our important work for patients and societies – but they can actually ACCELERATE it. The “why we can’ts” have been replaced with “how can we’s?” The artificial boundaries of our internal organizational units are melting away. In their place? Connection. Collaboration. And a shared conviction.
The Corona-Miracles are too many to mention here, but suffice it to say my personal gratitude to the often unsung heros in our manufacturing and packaging sites and the first-line teams supporting our customers and diagnostics equipment is ENDLESS. As it is for the clinical teams working night and day to accelerate our clinical trials, the heroic teams in China and Italy and others who have been actively sharing their hard-won learnings across the system. And to the amazing People & Culture teams and my former Communications colleagues who are also working tirelessly to ensure our employees and their families are supported and informed during these unprecedented times. My Easter Hat is off to you ALL.
BUT….I did get to wondering this morning over my cup-o-joe: which of these ways of connecting would we HOLD ONTO when COVID has finally exited stage left? Will we continue to connect across geographic – and other – boundaries? Will we continue to leave ego at the door and just GO on behalf of whatever communities we serve – whether it be the healthcare communi-ties in 100+ countries around the world or a community of faith in central New Jersey?
So, whether you are celebrating today as Easter Monday, day 6 of Passover, or just Monday April 13, I invite you to consider: what COVID CONNECTIONS will you take forward? And why? Because while we might not have gotten to choose this horrible pandemic, we DO get to choose what we CREATE out of it. This is our chance to reimagine our ways of working. In fact, as a wise colleague said, this is an opportunity to do nothing short of REIMAGINING THE WORLD.
—Karena Stoner (AKA Pastor Marks’ Daughter)