Excession Events go way beyond business
An Excession Event is a point at which a change of circumstance redefines what success looks like in a market. That is the basic thesis of this book. It’s about how these changes happen, what causes them, and how to profit from the opportunities these events cause.
During late 2014, early 2015 when putting together my thoughts on this book, it was becoming increasingly obvious that Excession Events were not only changing the world of business at a rate that many found impossible to cope with, but that politics, and the fabric of our society was also being caught in the wind of change. The book is primarily about the change Excession Events cause to business, but I felt compelled to speak a little about these changes to society in the forward for this second edition.
As an Englishman living in the United States I had a grandstand seat for events unfolding in Europe, the Brexit debate and the US election cycle of 2016.
It has become apparent that the left right split in western democracies is quickly becoming much less relevant and new battles lines are being drawn around a inward looking, nativist society or an outward looking global one. The new war is a global orientated, or an insular one society.
New political systems are not created in a vacuum. The forces at work in Europe and the USA today are the consequence of Excession Events that have been in play for 20–30 years. The deindustrialization of the Western economies have left a part of the society in the position where their livelihoods were effectively extinguished.
What the new breed of politicians is offering them is not a sunnier tomorrow. They describe the future as a horrible dystopian nightmare. What they promise instead is a return to a mythical past, full of well paying blue collar jobs, no competition from “foreigners”, whether those foreigners are based in their country or not, and a better life for their families. It’s a form of the idea that the past is always better than the future. It’s lulling, sophistic, and false.
For those completely blindsided by changes in technology, and unwilling, or incapable of reinventing themselves the future is bleak. The populist politicians promising a return to the past are simply playing on the fears of their supporters to gain power for themselves. Technology can’t be uninvented. Short of a total global breakdown in society things can not be unknown. The genie never goes back in the bottle.
There is a danger that society will be seduced by the forces of nationalism and populism as espoused by figures such as Donald Trump in the US, Nigel Farage in the UK and Marie Le Pen in France. If our societies can resist the siren song of a return to yesterday, and build institutions built specifically to helping when employees of industries destroyed by rapid change then I believe the world is on course to benefit mightily from the ever growing rate of change.
If however the strong men prevail, the bullies and demagogues promising to rewind the clock for the benefit of a few, then I believe the world is in for a very rough ride.
My prediction is that a little of each will occur, has already occurred. Turkey has already fallen under the spell of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, his counter revolution an excuse to lock up dissenters and gut Turkish democracy. Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines is busily murdering thousands of his countrymen in the name of stability, and Nicolás Maduro is silencing dissent on Venezuela. It is a tragedy for these countries that these things are occurring. For this to happen to the USA and Europe would be a global catastrophe.
This book was originally designed to be a field guide to Excession Events and how to maximise the opportunity to benefit from the next round of business changes. In 2017 in feels more like a way of thinking to enable us to keep ourselves and our families out of the hands of the bullies and demagogues trying to pull us to back to a yesterday that never existed, for their own nefarious ends.
