What do you do when the Solution is the Problem? Re-Solution

If the last few weeks have shown us anything, it’s that the “solutions” we have in place… Whether for civilian and military evacuations, ensuring our vaccination roll-outs happen smoothly, extreme weather, reopening our businesses and economy safely, getting our kids back to school, or even getting my microwave to stop spitting parts out at me when I try to open and close the door… don’t always work. And actually, often turn out to be the problem.

It’s times like these when I turn to the immortal words of Robert Burns in his  Ode to a Mouse, and his statement that “The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft a-gley.” And, to one of the first things we are taught at IPEC:  to keep a “Solutions Rock” in front of us at all times.

The point of this being that, regardless of what “the “rules” have taught you to expect and depend on in life, those rules are simply limiting beliefs to your own capacity to reimagine and reposition yourself to create or “re-solve” a way out of any situation regardless of how “impossible” it might at first appear to be. They are frameworks and legitimate “red tape” of a bygone era in which they did work for the people they were meant to work for. 

I first learned about the “rules” when I read Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir. And realized women were not taken into consideration in the rules, nor were the “colonized” people of the world – AKA, Minorities. We were the invisible infrastructure put in place to ensure the rules worked for the people who’d written them. And oh my, was that eye-opening. 

So, as I listened to the reports of Afghan interpreters and civilians stranded on the ground in Afghanistan after serving, supporting, and relying on our country for their safety and future just as much as our own military, I realized, we need to break the rules here. We need new solutions for this invisible infrastructure we built there for our own nation-building” benefit. Solutions that wouldn’t depend on the slow wheels of Congress and our federal system to get the balls rolling on behalf of that crumbling infrastructure. And those re-solutions seemed to miraculously appear in the media coverage driven by the very individual military representatives who’d gone to Afghanistan to uphold and expand the rules of our Democracy. 

Whether or not you like the New York Times. It was its "Daily Podcast" recounting the stories of interpreters that the US had left behind that really brought home the urgent need for new solutions. And the lengths that these individual military members went to in order to get help to those left behind. I was truly moved by the heartfelt pain shared by our military (especially Marine Corps Maj. Thomas Schueman) who tirelessly moved heaven and earth, pushing every boundary, bending every rule, pulling every string – from social media, to Rachel Maddow to Nightline, to help his friend and brother get his visa and seat on an airplane to the USA, until his re-solutions finally triumphed.

And this triumph should be a hopeful example to you as you examine every problem in your life in search of a re-solution, especially if the rules and solution weren’t design for or by you. 

If they weren’t, what would you design and build yourself? 

Holly Lynch is a 20+ year communications veteran and life-long social impact advocate and strategist who has helped individuals, educational leaders, and companies tackle the toughest challenges in their worlds.
Having survived countless life setbacks and two rounds with terminal cancer, while seeing the country-wide collapse of the systems and safety nets for the most vulnerable in and outside our communities, she is now shifting her life and career trajectories to focus on coaching those facing down fundamental shifts and transitions as they try to navigate and rebuild their lives, institutions and businesses during these unprecedented times.