When Things Seem Hopeless And That Nothing Will Ever Change, You Need To Prepare For The Next Window Of Opportunity

In 2012, two young activists in Kyiv, Vitalii Shabunin and Dasia Kaleniuk, set up the Anti-Corruption Action Center with a bold mission: to expose and tackle corruption in Ukraine. Their strategy was simple but powerful: investigate corruption, publicly “name and shame” those responsible, and work with international NGOs to advocate for specific reforms.

To most people at the time, their work seemed hopelessly naive. The Yanukovych regime, was not only hopelessly corrupt, but deeply cynical. Yanukovych himself was a convicted felon, serving two prison sentences in his youth for violent crimes. The rest of his administration followed suit, freely exploiting power for personal gain.

I was living in Ukraine when Yanukovych was elected and I remember how a helpless feeling loomed over the country. Yet, as it would turn out, Vitalii and Dasia’s work was not naive, but incredibly important. Later, Vitalii shared with me a crucial insight: In dark times, the key to making a difference is to keep preparing for the next window of opportunity.

Where It All Started: The Poisoning Of Viktor Yushchenko

When I first arrived in Ukraine a decade before it was a deeply cynical place. After 80 years of communism and then another decade under kleptocratic rule, few thought change was possible. So why worry or complain about things that you couldn’t do anything about? It seemed better to focus on things close to you; your family, your work, your friends.

That changed in 2004. The opposition candidate for president, a technocratic reformer named Viktor Yushchenko, was poisoned by pro-Russian agents. He survived, but his face was so disfigured, many thought he would have to end his campaign. Instead, he marched down to parliament, pointed to the damage and said, “Look at my face… Take a good hard look…so that the same thing does not happen to you.”

In that moment, the once boring central banker was transformed into an inspirational leader. The forces backing his opponent, an almost cartoonish thug named Viktor Yanukovych, tried to falsify the election, which led to the Orange Revolution. I remember how, at first, the effort seemed futile. But we persevered and the Supreme Court of Ukraine nullified the falsified election results. Yushchenko rose to the presidency.

It was an astonishing confluence of events. Yushchenko’s role in improving the country’s finances provided not only credibility in his skills as a technocrat, but also some modicum of prosperity and stability that made it possible to dream for more. Even then,  If the regime had chosen a somewhat more suitable candidate, or at least not poisoned the leader of the opposition, things could have gone very differently.

But they didn’t. A window of opportunity opened and a country of nearly 50 million people walked through.

Commitment To A Core Belief

I recently had the chance to meet Yushchenko over dinner for a few hours with about a dozen others. My wife and I were among just a handful at the table who could speak Russian or Ukrainian (his wife grew up in Chicago and translated for the rest). It was an intimate setting and gave us the opportunity to get to know him as a person, rather than as a historical figure.

I asked him about that day when he got out of his hospital bed, marched down to parliament and inspired the nation? What was going through his head at the time? “Do you believe in Democracy?” he asked me rhetorically. “I’ve always believed in the spirit of the Ukrainian people and that’s what drove me.”

It was that deep faith that made him the ideal man for the moment in 2004. However, While Yushchenko’s skills, character and temperament were, perhaps, uniquely tailored for the Orange Revolution, he was not able to manage competing political forces swirling around his administration, which quickly fell into infighting and got bogged down.

It’s hard to describe the Yushchenko era. Early on it was a time of great optimism and foreign investment flowed into the country. However, it was also a time of increasing frustration as the pace of change failed to meet expectations. When the global financial crisis hit at the end of 2008, things spiraled down quickly.

I remember vividly the visceral feeling of chaos, as we would walk by the currency shops each day and see the value of the Ukrainian Hryvnia diminish. The stage was set for Yanukovych, expertly rebranded by American political consultant Paul Manafort, to position himself as an agent of order. In 2010, he was legitimately elected to be Ukraine’s President.

Seizing A Window Of Opportunity

When Yanukovych got in, he moved quickly to change the rules. His and his cronies amended the Ukrainian Constitution to remove checks and balances on presidential power and his chief prosecutor, handpicked for his loyalty and corruption, immediately moved to indict his chief political rival, Yulia Tymoshenko, who was convicted in a show trial at record speed.

The corruption was mind blowing. A group dubbed “The Family,” of relations close to the regime emerged to control vast swaths of industry and real estate. Estimates of the looting ran as high as $100 billion, an amount approaching Ukraine’s annual GDP. Scandals, epitomized by the heinous case of Oksana Makar, began to pile up.

This was the environment in which Vitalii Shabunin and Dasia Kaleniuk established the Anti-Corruption Action Center. They issued reports nobody read and proposed legislation that politicians ignored. Yet they kept at it. When Yanukovych finally went too far and triggered the Euromaidan protests and Revolution of Dignity, the environment would change quickly.

After Yanukovych was impeached and fled the country, Ukraine found itself destitute, at war with Russia and desperately in need of aid from the west. The US, EU, IMF and World Bank were willing to help, but with one condition: Credible anti-corruption laws must be passed. All of a sudden, the legislation that Shabunin and Kaleniuk had been working on in obscurity moved to center stage and was passed in record time.

When I interviewed Shabunin for my book, the point he continually stressed to me is how critical it is to prepare for the next window of opportunity. It is during those dark days, when nothing seems possible, that it is most important to put in the work.

Preparing For Possibility

We often see events as decisive. A road forks and it feels like our fate has been set. Yet that’s rarely ever true. There will be more forks ahead that represent new possibilities. When times seem bleak, it’s crucial to remember this and focus on preparing for those future moments, so you’re ready to seize the opportunities they bring.

I remember moving to Poland in 1997, shortly after the Berlin Wall had fallen. The Cold War was had ended, capitalism and democracy had emerged victorious. There was a sense of triumph in the air. The future felt not just bright but assured. Across Eastern Europe, people were embracing newfound freedom and prosperity. It seemed inevitable that this model was the path everyone would aspire to follow.

Yet, many twists and turns lay ahead. There would be the 1998 Ruble Crisis, the Color Revolutions of the early 2000s, Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014. Each came with their own triumphs and heartaches, but none were decisive—there was always another chapter waiting to unfold.

I was honored to have played a small role in some of these events and fortunate to know others who made far larger contributions. One key lesson I learned is that the most effective people are always preparing for the next trigger—an unforeseen event that could shift the landscape in their favor —in order to be ready when the winds of fortune shift.

So that’s what I try to do when things are bleak. That’s the discipline I try to build. When things don’t go your way and you feel like you’ve been knocked to the ground, lay down there for a moment, focus on the foundational ideas and values that make the fight important to you in the first place, and then return to the fray with renewed vigor.

Greg Satell is Co-Founder of ChangeOS, a transformation & change advisory, an international keynote speaker, host of the Changemaker Mindset podcast, bestselling author of Cascades: How to Create a Movement that Drives Transformational Change and Mapping Innovation, as well as over 50 articles in Harvard Business Review. You can learn more about Greg on his website, GregSatell.com, follow him on Twitter @DigitalTonto, his YouTube Channel and connect on LinkedIn.

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