Have we Failed as a Society?
Failures are an everyday experience. We all fail. But not everyone who fails learns from it. On the other hand, some deliberately ‘engineer’ failure, as they want to proactively go through the experience before it ‘happens to them’. So when it does, their memory allows them to respond (quickly and meaningfully) versus react to it.
Crises like COVID have created, or showcased, ‘failure points’ across the value chain. Democratic, political, and scientific failures.
A report by a W.H.O. established panel called the COVID response a ‘failure in our collective capacity.’
This type of systems failure is typical of what has been seen in other domains as well, such as climate change and education. Where everyone is so consumed with their own certainties and assumptions, that any data points that suggest otherwise are treated like a virus, and discarded, or worse, ridiculed. Where the sunk cost of past data presented by vested interests is so strong that momentum is more important than finding meaning and purpose. Where the majority seem so busy, or perhaps egotistically occupied with their own ‘missions’, that they are unable to often even watch or listen to the ideas and possibilities presented by peers and other stakeholders, if they didn’t happen to be in their ‘own webinar’. And with that, we go back to the same perils that COVID, unfortunately, brought to the fore with such morbid force, where nationalistic or industry-specific agendas dominated response strategies.
Perhaps the principle of emergence can be ‘deployed’, where we don’t use a leash, but help unleash by creating the environment for the ‘stack of failures’ to sharpen our curiosity and creativity. Where ‘active failure’ is a deliberate strategy, similar to what Lockheed architected with its Skunkworks project. A project was undertaken by a highly motivated group of people who are given autonomy to work without the normal restrictions. Where business as usual is treated with concern. Where the mindsets & behaviors required, necessitate a mix of human competencies covering resilience, perseverance, and creative restlessness.
A lot of countries have futures initiatives and ministries often centered in exponential technologies like the Dubai Future Foundation in the UAE & the National Assembly Futures Institute in South Korea but data sharing is limited.
Does the world need a transnational consortium of ‘Skunkworks labs’ that are always working on solving known and knowable challenges that then give them the flexibility and agility to respond to unknown challenges and emergencies?
With a global convening around the corner with Expo2020, perhaps the political will can be marshaled to start building this.
