Getting back to normal is a fool’s errand

The last issue of MindPrep described leaders as those who live by the motto of “Learn from the past, deal with today, and prepare for the future.” They know that surprises are inevitable, but they don’t want to be taken by surprise.  

It’s late 2022 as I write this, and many companies are hoping for a “return to normal” as we come out of the Covid-19 pandemic. To be blunt, that’s a fool’s errand. The reality is that the future has never been normal.

The future is never normal – just look to the past

Consider a few of the global, big-picture events triggering “winds of change” over the past 120 years.

• 1900s: Airplanes; 1^st commercial oil field; Panama Canal starts; San Francisco earthquake; General Motors started as a holding company
• 1910s; WW I; Spanish Flu; Titanic sinks; 8.8 million immigrants come to U.S.
• 1920s: Stock market crash; prohibition; communism; Jazz Age; 19^th Amendment (women’s vote)
• 1930s: The Great Depression; dustbowl; Japan invades Manchuria; Hitler becomes chancellor; Social Security Act
• 1940s: WW II; Pearl Harbor; Liberty ships; Polaroid camera
• 1950s: peak of the polio epidemic; Salk vaccine; sputnik; space race; credit cards
• 1960s: Vietnam War; China Great Leap Forward; Kennedy assassination; Apollo 1 fire
• 1970s: OPEC oil embargo; defeat in Vietnam; Intel 4004 released
• 1980s: Coke launches New Coke; Reaganomics; Challenger disaster; AIDS is “officially” declared
• 1990s: Asian financial crisis; dot-com bubble; Oklahoma City bombing; Amazon starts selling books
• 2000s: Dot-com crash; subprime mortgage financial crisis; iPhone launched; 9/11 attacks
• 2010s: Occupy Wall Street; the Brexit vote; triple hurricanes; Sandy Hook school killings
• 2020s: China lands a rover on Mars; Covid-19 pandemic; cryptocurrency; non-fungible tokens (NFTs), the “great resignation,” and “quiet quitting.” 

Now, answer these questions.

Do you think there may have been clues to some of these events and their consequences before they happened? If someone has paid attention to the clues, do you think they might have avoided problems or taken advantage of the impending changes? Do you think they were thinking about the future?

Coming this fall

We will be launching a high-tech, high-touch, five-part workshop focused on intercepting the future.  It will be offered as an online workshop, with workbook for self-study,  and as a hybrid (online + weekly Zoom meeting) for a cohort.

Thoughts and questions???