Shortages of everything is being reported as a catastrophe: we are doomed. But what if this is just a symptom of massive changes underway that are now driven by the COVID black swan? Changes that were inevitable in our way-too-brittle world. If so, this shifts our management context to one of challenge and opportunity. We look here at what to do about the global supply chain mess.
Almost every day now we read about something or other being “unavailable” or “in short supply”. Supply chains are crashing. Many kinds of workers are no longer looking for work despite millions of open jobs. COVID has largely vanished so we are told so shortages must be due to “something else”. What “something”? How do we manage in this terrible mess? Time to worry?
COVID certainly has messed up the world but it will eventually go away. Just another black swan experience. But what if there is something much bigger, fundamental, and permanently world-changing? Like the crisis-driven end of an age? If so, where are we in this time of crisis? Strauss and Howe see this as the final crisis phase or Fourth Turning of a roughly 80-year secular cycle. Could they be right?
While this sounds very much like a scary totalitarian vision of the future, it may be something more. What if this “something” is actually taking place as a result of the huge changes in world society over the past century, along with the recent COVID push into hyperdrive. What if WEF’s Klaus Schwab is simply describing what is already under way and perhaps inevitable? Is this a vital forecast for you?
Life in the old normal was stable, predictable, manageable. Life in the new normal of constant major change is creating Darwinian survival challenges. Size and strength, or being the fittest, will not make you a winner (i.e., survival-plus-success). As Darwin wisely observed back around 1870, it is the most adaptable who ultimately come out on top. Just how do you go about this adaptability thing?
Many of you may have noticed that one of the greatest COVID-driven changes has been a major restructuring of both the workplace and work itself. Not for everybody of course but for a very substantial portion of the working population. The full impact has not yet been felt. It is going to get much more pervasive, extensive, and permanent. Everyone will be affected to some degree.
