[Author’s note: thanks to the Birmingham Community Foundation, who hired me to think 50 years into the future, and present my ideas at their 50th Anniversary earlier this spring. That exercise inspired this week’s webcast. Members may watch the entire presentation (video, slides, audio) in our Library next week.]
First, a little perspective:
The current economic calamity we’re facing was predicted.
In 1997 - twelve years ago - William Strauss and Neil Howe wrote in The Fourth Turning:
“Around the year 2005, a sudden spark will catalyze a Crisis mood. Remnants of the old social order will disintegrate. Political and economic trust will implode. Real hardship will beset the land, with severe distress that could involve questions of class, race, nation and empire.”
How could they predict this? Because we’ve been here before. Strauss & Howe analyzed all of American history and determined that - like the seasonal changes in nature - history moves through four predictable stages: a High followed by an Awakening followed by Unraveling and finally Crisis.
We, my friends, have entered the “Crisis” phase. Like the Civil War. Like the Great Depression.
(Author’s note: I prefer to call it “transition;” after all, one person’s poop pile is another’s pot of fertilizer. During this transition period, the zeitgeist is going to shift. Drastically. (Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve already tuned into this.)
What’s going to happen as we move forward? I don’t have The Answer. No one does. But many people far smarter than me have been studying trends - and the people and organizations who seem to always be in the right place at the right time - for years. In their book Competing for the Future, C.K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel assert, “The future is to be found at the intersection of changes in technology, lifestyles, regulations, demographics and geopolitics.” In other words, if you keep your eye on the trends in these four areas, you’ll see the future faster. And would’t we all like a bit more of that these days?
So, let’s get started.
Trend #1: The regulatory environment will get busy. We’ll see more regulations.
If President Obama’s administration is any indicator, you can bet that regulations on all manner of businesses - financial, environmental, and others - will increase. Politics aside, there is a behavioral rationale for this: when people get scared, they want to feel protected. And regulations often make us feel more safe. So, there’s a huge opportunity for any person or organization who’s paid to either enforce or intepret policies. Tim Geithner is the sexiest man in D.C. right now. Why? Cuz he’s a policy wonk, and he’s trying to make Americans - and our banks - feel more secure.
To give some emotional context to these trends (and make them a little more personal), remember that there are (at least) two continuums that run through most human behavior: “Me/We” and “Hope/Fear.” I doodled it here:
At any point in historical time, the zeitgeist is in one of these quadrants, depending on whether we’re feeling hopeful or fearful, and focused on myself or the greater good. President Obama used a message of hope during his campaign, and the timing couldn’t have been better: it was the perfect counterpoint to the freak-out mood America was experiencing as the economy collapsed. His slogan, “Yes, We Can” was an effort to move people into the upper right hand quadrant, out of fear (and into hope) and out of selfishness and into the greater good. His message resonated with the “we-minded” Boomers and Millennials.
Enough for today, we’ll tackle the next trend the next time.
