Dave Gilmore posits a new order in response to concurrent crises.
Challenges
2020 has been marked as a “Year of Crises.” A crisis can be defined as a “testing or trying time affecting an individual, group, community, society, or other organizational entity.” Usually construed in the negative sense, crisis often relates to themes such as security, economic, political, environmental, or health. By any metric, there is little doubt — in 2020, our world experienced multiple crises in multiple genres across multiple dimensions. Here are some notable challenges we faced:
Public Health Crisis
- Overt misinformation regarding the COVID-19 virus led to many thousands of unnecessary deaths. Our leaders assured us early: “this is just another flu.”
- Contradictory directions for mask wearing led to public frustration, anxiety-based denial, and left vs. right political division.
- Communication that the malaria drug, hydroxychloroquine, would mitigate the virus’s effects led to speculative use and compromised its availability for proven uses.
- Confusion regarding social and physical distancing opened the gate to hundreds of thousands of people returning to densely proximal, mass assembly gatherings that activated repeated virus surges — far beyond what should have occurred, had direction been clear, consistent, and enforced.
Economic Crisis
- The economic conditions that ensued from the public health crisis resulted in the most destructive global economic loss in over ninety years.
- Unemployment surged, waned, and reappeared as governments waffled on how best to address workplace health.
- Debt default waves mounted and washed over multiple global credit industry segments, suppressing banking, finance, and investor confidence.
- Politicization of federal fiscal support for individuals, industries, and state governments further undermined recovery possibilities.
Political Crisis
- The U.S. population bifurcated into distinct left/right, liberal/conservative camps through which every judgment and decision was filtered.
- The deep divide between parties, leaders, neighbors, and families fed disunity in public health and economic crisis responses.
Societal Unrest Crisis
- The collective crises exposed multiple social inequities resulting in widespread social unrest, rioting, and protests.
- Overt displays of racial discrimination and marginalization reached boiling points, spilling into the city streets nationwide.
- Use of excessive force by law enforcement, direct targeting of immigrants, inflammatory language from leaders on the left and right, overt public displays of firearms by second amendment adherents, and calls for defunding law enforcement combined to create a wave of social unrest not seen in the U.S. for decades.
Educational Crisis
- Caught unprepared, most Pre-K through 12 educational institutions coped in and out of physical and virtual classroom settings through most of 2020.
- Teachers were tasked with inordinate responsibilities to manage effective education on multiple dimensions — from physically present students to virtual classrooms, to nonstandard hybrid forms — all without additional compensation for the extra hours required of them.
- Higher education institutions were constrained by a lack of cross-institutional collaboration supporting standardized approaches. Many were forced to adapt individually, rather than coalescing around collective standards and protocols.
Climate Crisis
- 2020 saw widespread climate disruption and destruction as the effects of carbon continued to weaken global climate stability.
- Effects scientists predicted would result from global climate change materialized in 2020: loss of sea ice, accelerated sea level rise, and longer, more intense heat waves. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicted that 2020 would be one of the hottest years in recorded history, and they were right. With the heat came a rash of unpredictable environmental ripple effects.
- The U.S. National Hurricane Center noted the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season was an ongoing tropical cyclone season which featured tropical cyclone formations at a record-breaking rate.
- Wildfires, mudslides, tornadoes, tropical storms, and hurricanes. 2020 saw more than normal of all calamity types, yet legislative and regulatory bodies did little to establish new laws and regulations to ameliorate the human-caused impacts of these climate crisis dynamics.
Truth Crisis
- Perhaps the worst crisis the global population endured in 2020 was the “Crisis of False Information” and the “Questioning of Everything.” Truth was subject to open assault from all vectors.
- Misinformation and disinformation became the norm as governments, supposed experts, and politically motivated scientists and journalists joined the fray.
- Jane and John Public adopted expert postures simply because they could access the internet.
Crisis is often characterized by a catalyzing event. From that beginning it impacts people, places, and things in untold ways. When a crisis starts, we’re inclined to focus on its triggering event. The boulder dropped in the pond creates a great splash. Its impact is sudden and forceful. Yet it’s not the splash that demands attention, but the waves and ripples that emanate afterward. The power of crisis lies not in its initiation, but in the myriad moments that follow. What will we do with ours?
The other force rumbling across the Earth’s surface for years has been the world-altering tsunami of age, diversity, and values-based demographic change now breaking upon us. This demographic force’s power accelerated as it traversed 2020, with a beneficial side effect: The systemic failure of many of our familiar institutions propelled new generations of thinkers, speakers, and doers to leap into the public light as alternative solution generators for a necessary new world.
A New Governance
A new governance of things is rising. Its voice is younger, more energetic, more technologically empowered, and more driven by core values. Its generational composition demands new responses to old problems previously accepted as status quo. Such a governing force sees every challenge through the lens of pragmatic, straightforward solutions. Its active “Why not?” voice wonders why so many before were content with inaction, and asking merely, “Why?”
The decision makers of the next ten years will operate from a radically different set of functional values. Economic balance, social equity, and environmental responsibility will no longer be marginal themes. Their day has arrived. These themes will take center stage in the minds and voices of future decision makers.
The new decision makers must not allow their sound bites to be misappropriated as countermeasures to authentic action. Contrary voices must not corrupt their powerful themes nor distort their language to diminish their meaning and outcomes. Politicians are keen to mimic the language of voting segments for momentary campaigns, but they soon distance themselves from the responsibilities such language demands.
The future of governance and decision making will be led by resolute leaders who operate under different attitudes, priorities, and values than those of previous generations.
New governance leaders will prioritize the global community in the decisions they face. Their perspective will be wider, informed by a global data ocean rather than by narrow information drawn from localized industry ponds.
The leaders of new governance will peer steadily into the implication and ramification landscapes to foresee decision-making possibilities prior to offering emotional responses or biased directions. These leaders will avoid the rationalization that defers priorities. They will have witnessed the sad consequences of kicking the hard decisions down the road to a different set of decision makers. They will adopt the neglected issues that demand meaningful leadership and embrace the responsibility of authentic leadership to address today’s issues as tomorrow’s outcomes.
The changing governance of everything is no longer optional. The luxury of nostalgic prosperity has ruined us. We’ve been on a high for so long that we’ve lost the front-of-mind consciousness of reality – we’ve spoiled ourselves and soiled the planet.
The Good
The future of environmental responsibility is in good hands. The new governance leaders will assure good outcomes. They will stay the courses their predecessors should have kept. They will embrace the values of clean air, pure water, and naturally rich loam. They will be ever vigilant for global sourcing, supply chains, and material and product applications. They will demand that disciplined circular economics pervade every consumable. They will never cease in educating every demographic segment about the value of the earth, our placement upon it, and life’s wondrous harmony when we play our part.
The changing governance of everything is upon us — at ever-increasing breadth and depth. The concurrent crises of 2020 will soon be distant memories.
If we continue to forge and embrace a new governance, the future will be nothing short of extraordinary.
Dave Gilmore is President and CEO of DesignIntelligence.