Week 20, 2020
New Normal: Black Swans, Complexity, and Agile Transformation
Each week I share three ideas for how to make work better. And this week, those ideas are all about business in a post-COVID19 world.
Why am I writing about this? It seems like everyone is writing “New Normal” articles these days. And honestly, I feel a bit dirty following suit. But I do have something to say on the topic. So here we go:
1. Black Swans
In his 2007 best-seller, The Black Swan, Nassim Nicolas Taleb argues that much of the change we’ve seen in recent history can be attributed to a relatively small number of events — asymmetric shocks that were as unpredictable as they were profound. COVID-19 is just the latest in a long line of wars, terror attacks, natural disasters, and technological disruptions that have fundamentally changed the world as we know it.
For more on this, I highly recommend reading the book. But if you are pressed for time, I found a nice and succinct summary at strategiccfo.com.
2. Complexity
The point being that the New Normal will soon be replaced by the New-New Normal which, in turn, will be replaced by the New-New-New Normal, etc. Black Swan events are unpredictable but inevitable. They do happen more often than we like to believe. And this is what we mean when we say that the world is a complex place. In this day and age, it is all but impossible to predict that the future holds. Only one thing is certain: this too shall pass.
For more on complexity, check out the archives. There you will find multiple posts on complexity, decision-making, and related topics.
3. Agile Transformation
Adapting to a post-COVID19 world might be well advised. But it’s not enough. Rather than play whack-a-mole every time complexity strikes, organizations must configure themselves in such a way that they can adapt to changing circumstances — whatever those circumstances happen to be. And the sooner we acknowledge that we cannot predict the future, the sooner this transformation can take place.
For more on this, check out issue w20202: Business Agility: Fit for Purpose, Listen & Learn, and Continuous Reconfiguration.
My two cents.
In his latest book, Simon Sinek talks about finite and infinite games. In a way, that’s what I’m doing here as well. Adapting to a post-COVID19 world equates to finite thinking — it assumes that adaptation is a one-time occurrence; you do it and its done. But that’s not the case. Business Agility is all about infinite thinking. It’s a continuous process. And it never ends.
That’s all for this week.
Until next time, stay safe out there.
/Andreas
PS. Actually, Taleb doesn’t consider COVID19 to be a Black Swan event because it wasn’t unpredictable. In the book, he writes: “As we travel, epidemics will be more acute — we will have a germ population dominated by a few numbers, and the successful killer will spread vastly and effectively.” In my defense: while a pandemic might have predictable for some, it was completely left-field for most. It’s a matter of perspective.
