What's Next?
Either 'The Same' ... Or 'Different'.
The choice is yours!
The most reliable way to predict the future is to create it.
… Abraham Lincoln
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The challenge is who actually gets to create the future, because (spoiler alert) the world is divided! As we emerge on the other side of the COVID-19 lockdown, will the same thinking that was applied to the last 75 years apply to the next, or will the new thinking be like ‘day and night’ (sic)?
Image Credits: Day and Night - M.C. Escher, 1938 - "A masterful demonstration of symmetrical opposites."
Old Thinking. Old Values. In Action.
Judd Legum published a story this week about Ruth’s Chris Steak House. My paraphrasing of his report … ‘They purposefully set out to defraud American citizens, fire all their staff and reward their shareholders’. (If you think that’s bad - I’m being generous!). I have never been to the overpriced, pretentious, chain restaurant and now I know that it is the antithesis of everything People First … I know I made the right decision.
The sad thing is that they are not alone. It is rampant.
Scott Galloway wrote this great piece last week.
I worry our government has been co-opted by the wealthy and is focused on protecting the previous generation of winners, even if it means reducing future generations’ ability to win. Aren’t we borrowing against our children’s prosperity to protect the wealth of the top 10, if not 1, percent?
… Scott Galloway
To summarize one comment he made …
If allowed to fail, the cruise ships won’t sink to the bottom of the ocean. The jobs won’t disappear. The companies will go into bankruptcy, existing shareholder equity will get wiped out, and new ownership will take over. A bailout won’t rescue the industry or the jobs — it will rescue the shareholders.
… John Gruber - reflecting on Scott’s article.
Back To The Future
There are two outcomes in the Post COVID-19 world.
We (that’s most of the people on planet earth) do nothing and return to ‘business as usual’.
We take control of our lives and destiny. We ‘think different’ (to riff on ‘Steve’). We stop thinking about ‘The Future of Work’ and start thinking about ‘The Future of Income’. We act.
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
… Buckminster Fuller
‘Build a new model - that makes the existing model obsolete.’ I have three stories of people and companies doing just that.
Microsoft has a new patent that allows a human to mine ‘coin’ through their bodies activity.
Universities are exploring changing the student loan paradigm by investing in their students.
A young Frenchman has just sold fractional shares himself that allows his investors to take a share of his earnings over the next three years.
The newsletter was too long by including the stories, so for your delectation have published them separately. You can read them here.
These are just some examples of how people, companies and universities are taking the initiative and reenvisioning how ‘a new model can make the existing model obsolete’. There are many more. Keep reading. Keep thinking. Keep exploring. You will be amazed.
My thanks for your continued support and attention. Please like the post, share through your social channels of choice and forward the email to colleagues, friends and family that want to join us on this journey. In particular - thank you, David - for sending the stories over, you obviously ‘knew’.
I truly appreciate all your support. All your comments and don’t forget these opportunities.
Nice post. Sparks thought on the energy and capacity to reflect on the alternative models and possibilities. Helping people get into the mental and physical spaces to do that well. Seems the energy and capacity is being sucked up with the wasteful efforts today. Interpret wasteful in any way you see fit.
Great piece of thinking. I particularly aligned behind Scott Galloway's line "protecting the previous generation of winners, even if it means reducing future generations’ ability to win" - A true distillation to the essence of how I see the inter generational promises being broken. I sit between the boomers and the millennial's. Often trying to convince my boomer friends that the next generations need a fairer chance to succeed. Unfortunately, Boomers do not see the vast array of social, policy and economic drawbridges that were drawn up after themselves.