I came across this article today and thought it might serve as food for thought.
Briefly, the author points out that, in the midst of crisis, we tend to make all sorts of predictions about global, systemic change - "Things will never be the same..." and "The age of [important value or activity] is over..." - but posits that, often as not, the naysayers get it wrong. Not always, but enough of the time that we really should know better than to make grand, sweeping pronouncements about how life will look 12 months or 12 years into the future. That asking questions and following those trails does far more to help us navigate great uncertainty than extrapolating forward based on historical data.
I tend to agree. Citizens - even very smart, well-read citizens - lack the expertise required to analyze or assess technical information accurately. Conversely, experts become experts by virtue of complete devotion to a specific topic or mode of thought and suffer the attendant intellectual blindspots. Add to this that most of us are... freaking out? Just a bit? And it seems to me that trying to guess what on Earth the world will look like has about as much value as spitting on a bonfire.
That said, I think the author misses a an important step, here. What we ask, and how, impacts profoundly the quantity and kind of information received. Politicians pay pollsters an enormous amount of money, not just to interpret survey results, but to design questions that yield useful data. (Or ensure that they receive the desired response.) It's not enough to simply shift our stance from one of reactive planning to responsive curiosity, we need to consider our lines of inquiry and direct them effectively.
This takes on special resonance in the context of globalization, I think, both because all voices on the global stage do not speak at the same volume and because how we engage in this kind of dialogue could change that. A world remade according to the priorities of Vietnam probably diverges from that envisaged by Boris Johnson, but we're never going to know that unless we: a) Ask Vietnam for an opinion; b) listen to that opinion; c) ask questions that do not take as axiomatic our own worldviews; and d) receives responses as value-neutral, rather than 'good or bad' depending on our own perspectives.
Which brings me to: What should we be asking now? Of whom?
Interesting read indeed and very insightful examples on wrong predictions. If I may add however (or ask to be precise) is it safe to assume that there is a not negligible chance that life post COVID-19 will not be the same? if it changes how would that look like? how would we like it to look like? what role individuals play in influencing this change?
I take your point. Certainly, on a micro level people will need to adjust their behaviors to accommodate the reality of thee virus (until we see a vaccine or the public health system accumulates resources to treat large numbers of infected people effectively.)
Likewise, I think we will see change on the macro level. Of what type, however, I'm not sure - which is why the above interests me. Certainly, states could double-down on current trends (nativism, isolationism, realpolitik and imperialism). Or perhaps we, as individuals (those of us living in democracies, at any rate), opt instead for leaders interested in more egalitarian global engagement.
So I suppose that, in your view, the correct questions are: 'How would we like a post-COVID world to look?' and 'How can individuals create that world?'
I see in reinventing the concept of "leaders" a potential opportunity for a sustainable evolution. We see a leader as someone with specific characteristics and able to maintain his leadership throughout time. To me, the challenge and the opportunity is to shift this paradigm and create a system where each individual can lead in a specific time; a circular leadership vs. a linear classical
@Costantino Spagnoletti I agree. What kind of questions would need answers in order to accomplish that shift? Who's the person best-placed to answer them? Would you ask political scientists about systemic change? Revolutionaries for tips on overthrowing the system? Philosophers and generals for definitions of leadership?
@lewolfe love your questions!
In the process of co-creation, we need to involve in replying to those questions the linear leadership and doing so we need to understand the actual system of leadership needs. Profit is a substantial component of the actual system, and we have to analyze it with the linear leadership to see how to shift the paradigm. The second worth to consider would be power.
I like to start with pilot projects, and eventually, we could involve a small size company to test a few assumptions. I believe that a conscious creation of things is excellent, and the right balance of being and doing is needed.
With this in mind, I would like to consider the below three postulates of profit:
1 - Profit is not generated with the willingness or the scope to harm myself
2 - Profit is not generated with the willingness or the scope to harm others
3 - Profit is not generated with the willingness or the scope to harm the ecosystem
So the profit, seen as a tool and not as the ultimate goal, can be considered still in the co-creation process between linear and circular leadership.
At this point, we need to work for a correlation between the three postulates and the profit.
My proposal is:
P~w1*PI+w2*GI+w3*WI
where
P is the profit
PI is the personal index
GI is the group index
WI is the ecosystem index
The ws are the weight of each component
If we can show to the linear leadership that profit is strongly correlated financially by the three main areas of welfare and wellbeing, we have a system wherein the transient between two methods can still be related and work for both. In the second phase, we can work out the evolution of it.
It would be interesting for me to create a project out of it to analyze the approach further