A future by design
Shifting from crisis recovery to future shaping?
Confinement — Day 16.
Like more than half of the planet’s inhabitants, I’m confined in reaction to an unprecedented crisis. One that fundamentally challenges the core assumptions of the current paradigm.
Inevitably in times of crisis, some people step up and we’ve seen leaders from all sectors demonstrate extraordinary courage, resilience and agility in their responses. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Adern or Danone CEO Emmanuel Faber are inspiring examples of that. The collective measures put in place within weeks have had more impact on our societies and on the planet than all the boldest measures taken globally for the past 10 years combined. One of the most striking impact being, of course, the reduction of CO2 emission way below the COP 21’s target within weeks, when most states were timidly suggesting they would achieve those targets somewhere between 2030 and 2050.
Suddenly, what seemed impossible happened! And what made it possible? An imperious shared sense of purpose and strong system leadership.
The traditional dominant drivers of public decision making — economic and political — have been trumped by our survival instinct and the common good is back in the front of our mind. Today’s heroes are not successful businessmen or charismatic political leaders; they are doctors and nurses, truck drivers or farmers feeding us.
Past the initial stupor caused by the exponential spread of the virus, some people are starting to step back and consider crisis recovery. What most people care about is to understand when and how they will regain their freedom to circulate, interact and consume. For many others through, the primary question is elsewhere and somewhat more existential… what will we learn, if anything, from this crisis and how will we profoundly transform a system that was no longer viable?
Many will be tempted to ‘re-start the engine’ full throttle to make up for lost time and lost revenue. But the opportunity is here for others to consider the deeper underlying learnings from this crisis and to shape a path towards a new model. Our relation to the natural world, the distribution of wealth, the access to basic services like health and education, the time horizons we consider when making decisions, etc. There will be no shortages of beautiful questions that we could explore to inform the next iteration of us.
What was required to react to the crisis will be even more critical to create and sustain a new paradigm: a (renewed) shared sense of purpose and strong demonstrations of leadership across the system. While we can turn to people in positions of power to lead the way, it’s also up to each of us in our individual roles to create the right conditions for it.
Concretely, that will require that we make time — with our organisations, our teams and our communities — to make sense of that destabilising shared experience, unpack what we learnt individually and collectively, and determine which learning we want to take forward and what future we want to create by design. Investing time in creating that deep and meaningful feedback loop will allow us to build in now in our businesses and democratic systems the resilience we will need for the next crisis that may not be far away if we decide to revert back to ‘normal’.
Now, here is something to look forward to!
