“She just tested positive.”

The year after my mother died, my husband and I planned to spend Thanksgiving with my sister in Reno. This would be the first time – other than when we had emptied my mother’s house after her death – that this sister and I had chosen to spend time together. The first time. Ever.

And now, a week before Thanksgiving, two days before our flight to Vegas, my sister had tested positive for COVID. Now what? Cancel our flight and rental car, lose our deposits, spend Thanksgiving alone in our apartment? Go to Reno anyway, risk catching COVID in an unfamiliar town on the other side of the country? My husband stills wears a mask to take the trash down the hall of our apartment building to the compactor room. He had given up a chance to spend Thanksgiving with his 90-something year old parents. His mood hit rock bottom.

“Let’s go to Death Valley,” I suggested.

“What?!?”

Several YouTube videos later, he realized that a) people take photographs of Death Valley; b) it’s a short drive from Vegas; c) we could adjust our trip to include Manzanar, the WWII Japanese Concentration Camp. And, after a few days at Death Valley, my sister would probably be past the contagion period and we could spend Thanksgiving with her in Reno.

Death Valley is gorgeous.

In case you didn’t know that.

It’s not gorgeous in the crashing waves, driftwood patterns, carpet of starfish sort of way. It’s not gorgeous in the majestic towering trees and elk in the fog sort of way. It’s not gorgeous in the grassy meadow, shaded glen, cascading waterfall sort of way.

It’s gorgeous geologically.

One of the areas that we most looked forward to seeing was Bad Water Basin. When you google Bad Water Basin, the first photo that comes up is usually a flat plain, covered to the foot of the surrounding mountains in blanket-sized plates of dried salt and mud, bleached white by the sun. The plates run into each other, like the patterns on a quilt, with raised seams of the white between them.

Eminently photographable, my husband’s standard for a great vacation, when he can’t include his family.

We had no trouble getting reservations in Death Valley. Although there are really only one or two places to stay there. We didn’t think about it at the time. But, when we got there, we realized it was because the area had flooded. In fact, many of the roads leading into and out of Death Valley were still closed, too damaged for traffic. Including the road to Manzanar, alas.

The rainfall made Bad Water Basin a sheet of liquid mirror.

When you visit the main stop at Bad Water Basin, just beyond the parking lot, a portion of the basin is sectioned off. You gaze down into concrete-hard, tumbled mud and wonder why. A sign explains that these are footprints (and mule hoofprints, if I remember accurately) from the 1800s. That the basin is sensitive to footprints and, if you walk on it when it is damp, your footprints will remain forever, damaging it for future visitors.

Other, bright orange, temporary signs along the sanctioned walkway into the basin repeated the warning boldly: REMAIN ON THE WALKWAY. DON’T DAMAGE THE BASIN.

And yet, people ventured out into the water – no more than ankle deep – to take photographs. The couple in the photo above. And, far worse, a family: the parents setting a shameful example for their children.

But the pictures are sooooo cool. We’re just two people – and it’s so big. Surely we can’t be doing that much damage. And America’s a free country: no one can tell us what to do.

My husband and I are not perfect people but we stayed on the path.

And my husband got some beautiful photos.

Embracing unexpected roadblocks.

Instagram zombies excluded, my husband and I had a great time in Death Valley.

And we learned something about embracing unexpected roadblocks.

At the last minute, the planned graduation speaker gets sick and the Dean has to throw a Hail Mary: the change management graduates end up listening to Henry Mintzberg instead! (Score!)

Your flight from Newark gets canceled. The airline re-books you on a flight from Phili and sends you there in a cab. On your way to that gate, you see another flight to your destination that is about to close boarding. You ask, expecting to hear No, whether they have any seats. And snag two in first class.

One of the most important soft skills right now is the ability to remain flexible.

Things are going to change on you. Fast. At the last minute.

Success has always been a constant tension between operations – the art of sustainable, dependable, repetition – and marketing, the art of reading the wind and adjusting the sails. Perhaps balance would be a better term than tension.

The two are interdependent. Making a certain portion of your organization operationally effective provides the freedom to respond when marketing senses that the winds are shifting. Too much operational stability, and you can’t turn the ship. Too much pivoting, and the boatsuffers from stress fractures, falls apart, and you find yourself in the water.

Working on flexibility

West Side Talkers, the Toastmasters group that I belong to, includes improv exercises in our monthly meeting. Afterwards, people often remark that improv should be something everyone studies in school.

That’s especially true right now, as the world goes through this period of rapid change.

The guest on this week’s episode of the Hello Monday podcast, Lisa Bodell, suggested a couple of exercises to help with flexibility:

Exercise 1: Align on the definition of Meaningful Work

With your team, discuss and come to agreement on the definition of Meaningful Work. And then use that definition to evaluate the importance of each component of your work – and how you do that work.

Does this project contribute to meaningful work? Does this meeting? How about that report or that task?

Focusing on meaningful work helps your team feel that they are not wasting their time. And it helps them eliminate work that is a waste of time.

Exercise 2: Practice sailing with different winds

Come up with a scenario and practice coming up with positive solutions. Bodell used an example of a bowling alley that is supposed to open this weekend and runs into a few problems:

• Problem: Our bowling balls aren’t going to arrive in time!
  • Solution: That’s great! We’ll use cantaloupe – that will give us a competitive advantage because no one else will have cantaloupe.
• Problem: They shipped us pins that are designed to explode on impact.
  • Solution: Awesome! No one else has exploding pins. And, when the cantaloupe hit them, we’ll end up with fruit salad!

You laugh, but one of the best event managers I ever worked with was a master at this. I could throw any insane problem at Brian and less then a second later, he would have some fabulous way to make lemons out of lemonade. His ability to think positively and pivot saved many a conference – and kept his conference owner (me) calm. It was a joy to work with him and he inspired me every day that I worked with him.

Become someone it is a joy to work with.

And visit Death Valley in November. It’s really beautiful.