Okay it's time to complete this memory with a thread https://twitter.com/alexhillman/status/1253417848262627331

First, some context.

Back in 2013 the crew from @BizDojo had the crazy idea to fly me to New Zealand for a multi-city workshop tour educating a wide range of community leaders about coworking and community design.

I ran two intensive workshops in each of the cities of Christchurch, Wellington, and Auckland on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday respectively.

Inside of 7 days. Two workshops a day. This was madness. But memories and friendships were made!

Thing is, we started in Christchurch.

I hadn’t really put 2+2 together before landing in the city that just 2 years before, it had been DEVASTATED by a massive earthquake.

2 years later it wasn’t quite rubble...but it was clearly still being rebuilt.

This suddenly changed the context of my coworking workshops tremendously.

Instead of talking about the “innovative, futuristic” concepts of coworking (their words not mine) I got to bring it all down to earth in a very real, meaningful way.

We talked about how @indyhall came together as a community with with a love for our city and an ambition to help it become a better version of itself.

In the context of a city being rebuilt, we had a LOT to share about how and why people come together in the face of a challenge.

But the questions in Christchurch were a little different than I was used to.

There was a different anxiety that I didn't recognize, but tried very hard to understand.

After a few conversations, I figured it out.

Between the government and a few massive banks, a VERY large pool of money had been allocated to provide resources to help rebuild.

Sidenote: imagine if the big banks in America did this

But even though the money was technically available, decision-makers were afraid to use it.

More specifically they were afraid to use it *incorrectly* whatever that meant.

Nobody wanted to be on the hook for doing the "wrong" thing.

That sounds familiar, right?

But in Christchurch, it was still very different from what we are seeing America for a very specific reason.

Christchurch needed rebuilding.

It had an opportunity to become a new, better version of itself. A unique chance for a society to make sweeping choices about it's future.

This pressure was crippling their ability to decide anything, at all.

It was very informative for me to see this up close...even though it was just for a day and a half.

I actually think about it a lot, when I see people and organizations so worried that they'll make the wrong decision that they make no decision.

And often, making no decision is more painful, expensive, and destructive in the long run.

At least when you make the "wrong" decision, there's a chance to fix it.

Obviously, this was very different than a pandemic for so many reasons.

But I'm seeing similar patterns across institutions and organizations at all levels. Its part of how we got in this mess in the first place.

But I can't help but think about the "decision scars" that were already dealing with, and will continue to be impacted by for a long time.

I don't know how to end this thread.