After The Great Nap, Leaders Need To Embrace A New Reality
I recently had the privilege of listening to Joe Rogan’s fantastic interview with the frighteningly brilliant Eric Weinstein (mathematician, economist, and Managing Director of Thiel Capital). If you haven’t already listened to it, do yourself a favor and set aside a few hours to soak it in.
It’s a lengthy and meandering conversation, but one idea that Weinstein threw out struck a chord with me: the big nap (which I’ll refer to the Great Nap).
The Great Nap refers to the period of prosperity and relative calm that followed the conclusion of World War II in 1945 and has lasted into the new century. It has been a historical aberration in which Americans, in particular, have been able to live lives largely free of tyranny, disease, widespread suffering, or the need for communal sacrifice. Times have been good, and relatively little has been asked of us.
Weinstein posits that the Great Nap has now ended and that the future holds the promise of widespread challenges and struggles not seen in generations.
Now, I realize that many people will take issue with any suggestion that the past 75 years have been peaceful, prosperous, or for the most part free of suffering.
There are so many things we can point to that seems to fly in the face of this assertion, including but certainly not limited to, the Cold War, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, ongoing issues with social and racial inequality, the events of 9/11, and the Great Recession.
These events were and, in many cases, still are great and terrible challenges, but the truth is that they weren’t necessarily shared struggles. Yes, they impacted people from all walks of life, but not in the same way or on the same scale that the Spanish Flu did in 1918, WWII did in the 40s, or COVID-19 has so far in 2020.
In the past, we could rest easy knowing that the world always returned to our definition of normal in relatively short order. In a way, we viewed national challenges as media events; something to unfold via the 24-hour news cycle and watched from afar.
We acted as though they impacted us on a personal level, but for the majority of Americans, the suffering was often several degrees removed from our personal experiences.
Sure, there was poverty and suffering out there, but not in my life. Yeah, there was war and destruction, but not in my neighborhood. And of course, there was disease and pestilence in the world, but it didn’t impact my friends and family.
We convinced ourselves that we were untouchable and that the days of widespread, shared suffering were a thing of the past.
We grew complacent, believing that it was each subsequent generation’s birthright to have a better life than their predecessors. We allowed our expectations to grow unchecked, and we created a business and political system predicated on an unshakable belief in never-ending growth and prosperity.
We were wrong. Such thinking was nothing more than vanity. Our collective Great Nap is now over, and the world has changed.
Boomers, Gen X, and Millennials all love to complain about each other, but the reality is that we’ve all enjoyed the relative comfort of the Great Nap.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a wakeup call. It has shown us that the “bad old days” aren’t a relic of the past.
We’re being tested right now, and we’re not rising to the challenge. The pandemic is shining a bright light on just how soft, weak, and petty we’ve become during the Great Nap.
Make no mistake: If a pandemic like COVID-19 can sweep the globe, so can widespread war, severe economic depressions, and other tragedies we once thought were relegated to the dustbin of history.
So, what does this mean for the business community and its leaders?
We find ourselves navigating a world that virtually no one has experience dealing with. We must accept a new post-Great Nap paradigm and evolve if we want to survive. There are no quick fixes or easy answers, but there are common-sense principles that we can rely on to help guide us.
Cut The Bullshit, But Don’t Forget About People
The first thing we have to do is cut the bullshit. Leaders, and businesses in general, adhere to what I call the Goldfish Principle. Essentially, given enough space and comfort, leaders, teams, and organizations will grow to fill the space allotted.
Often, this takes the form of excessive and non-essential corporate programs, convoluted strategies, and messy partnerships that are only tangentially related to the core business.
It’s great to focus on self-serving, feel-good programs when times are good, but all of those things go out the window when things get tough. That’s when you need no-nonsense leadership that isn’t afraid to make hard decisions and take the arrows so that the organization can survive as a whole.
Yet, at the same time, we cannot backtrack on the advances we’ve made as a society over the past 75 years. We must continue to be mindful of important topics like diversity, corporate responsibility, and sustainability, but more genuinely.
This requires us to internalize these issues in a meaningful way while putting the safety and security of the organization above all else. Gone are the days of virtue signaling and self-indulgent programs designed to show how sophisticated or responsible we are.
This generation of leaders needs to start leading by example, demonstrating a balance of strength, compassion, and common sense we navigate the difficult road ahead.
Embrace Simplicity and Clarity
When I started my first company, BodeTree, I often found myself struggling to explain exactly what we did. We were a financial management tool for small businesses that helped them organize their finances and understand their operations.
However, when pitching to people I made the whole thing overly-complicated, partially to obscure the fact that it wasn’t exactly a product that people knew they needed.
I’d talk about our ability to aggregate data and how that information would be of tremendous value to strategic buyers of all kinds. I did all sorts of mental gymnastics to justify the value of our product, and people usually just nodded along in an attempt to get me to stop talking.
We lacked simplicity and clarity, and it was the thing that always held us back. We got away with it because times were relatively good, investment flowed freely, and there was a general acceptance of new and “out there” ideas.
Now, however, I realize [MS2] that if you can’t explain something simply, there’s probably something wrong with it. Simplicity does not imply lack of sophistication. Instead, it’s the hallmark of an elegant and well thought out solution.
I realize that there are always exceptions, but in general if a product, service, or structure doesn’t make sense on the surface, there’s a good chance it just doesn’t make sense at all.
I believe that now is the time for leaders across all industries to take a step back and evaluate their company’s offerings. Are they simple enough to explain to a layperson? Can you easily explain them to your child or parent? If not, you should strongly consider going back to the drawing board.
The same applies to your internal and external communications strategies. Now is the time for direct, plain, and honest language. Customers and employees have little tolerance for corporate speak and mushy, self-protective language when the world is on fire. They want leaders who share the good, the bad, and the ugly in all situations and take decisive action.
Above All Else, Have Discipline
When it comes down to it, I believe that the key to navigating this post-Great Nap world is demonstrating discipline in thought, word, and deed.
One of my great faults as a leader in the past has been the lack of discipline. I’ve been too soft with employees, clients, and partners. At the time, I told myself that it was because I wanted to take a more progressive approach to business, but the truth is that I simply lacked the strength to do what needed to be done.
I indulged myself by avoiding conflict, and in not wanting to be the bad guy, I allowed behaviors to continue that eventually led to greater suffering. Had I been more disciplined, both with myself and those around me, much of that suffering could have been avoided.
I am grateful that I made these mistakes and learned these lessons when I did. They served to better prepare me for the world as we find it today.
I have a feeling that we’re not even approaching halftime in this pandemic, and even if it begins to slow you can be sure that the economic impact will be felt for some time to come.
As leaders, we are going to have to demonstrate a level of austerity and discipline that we’ve never encountered before in our lives. This isn’t simply a matter of responding to the crisis at hand; it’s a matter of being prepared for what is to come.
It’s time to build our cash reserves, avoid piling on easy debt, use straightforward language, and steel our teams for difficult times ahead. We are at a generational inflection point, and it’s up to us to set the tone for our organizations going forward.
We should abandon the dream that our lives will be better than our parents. We must let go of the entitlement and expectations of comfort that we once had. This generation has a different calling, similar to that of our grandparents.
We are called to offer leadership in uncertain and often frightening times. Only by letting go of the feel-good nonsense we’ve fed ourselves, embracing a simpler approach to business, and demonstrating discipline can we survive and thrive.
This may sound bleak, but remember that through suffering we achieve greatness. The Great Nap is over, and this is our moment to embrace a new way of thinking and confront our new reality with honor, resilience, and grace.
