2023 FUTURE OBSERVATORY
2023 FUTURE OBSERVATORY
The confusion and uncertainty, caused by so many revolutions coming along at the same time - from the 'IT Revolution' though 'Postmodernism' to the 'End of Ideology', have resulted in a great deal of pain for some of us. In Thomas Kuhn's famous words - from the field of science - a paradigm shift is under way. His concept encapsulates much of what is now happening around us. According to his observations, there is almost always a period of great uncertainty; as the defenders of the old world order, the old paradigm, dispute with those of the new. It was thus during the first Industrial Revolution, which was literally accompanied by political revolutions around the world. In a speech, made in Edinburgh in 1867 even as the United Kingdom was at the height of its power, Disraeli stated "Change is inevitable. In a progressive country change is constant."
The uncertainty is magnified in such periods of great change by the fact that it is not clear just what the new order, the new paradigm, might be. All that can be observed is that the old order is breaking down. We are currently in the middle of such paradigm shift; on a massive scale - across the whole of our lives. The pain which accompanies this is, therefore, understandable.
More than a quarter of a century ago, Alvin Toffler predicted the problems we would be facing in his book 'Future Shock'. In that influential tome he coined the term 'future shock' to describe the shattering stress and disorientation that results from too much change in too short a time. A quarter of a century on Toffler's predictions have come true, but we still do not know how man will cope. More surprisingly, in view of the impact of his original book, most of us still do not recognise the symptoms he predicted for what they really are. Indeed, our leaders often are unwilling to admit that such stresses exist.
These themes have also been central to much of Toffler's later work. For instance in 'Powershift' he added that individuals, organizations and even nations can be overloaded with too much change too soon, leading to disorientation and breakdown in their capacity to make intelligent adaptive decisions. I couldn't explain the phenomenon of 'revolutionary pains' in better terms than this - yet, despite the proven accuracy of his previous predictions, most of our leaders remain obstinately blind to what is happening around them!
The confusion which results from these 'pains' - pervades the 1990s. It should be noted, though, that the seminal event of the decade, described by almost all of the commentators, actually took place at the end of the previous decade - in 1989. This - the fall of the Berlin Wall - signalled, for many of us, the start of a global revolution in politics.
As might be expected, though, the establishment - which derives its power from, and owes its allegiance to, the old order - is desperately fighting against the tide of history. For the 'crisis decades' - using Eric Hobsbawm's phrase - of the late twentieth century, they have been adopting ever more reactionary measures to try and return to earlier and - in their view - better times. They have had some success, in that - during the 1980s in particular - governments around the world succeeded in taking many of their voters with them, 'a silent majority returning back to basics'. This too is understandable. Revolutions are disorienting, even if they ultimately promise better times. If the politicians wanted to return to more comfortable times, why should one expect the people to be any better informed; in the short term at least.
In particular, in the confusion - simply not knowing how to handle the changes taking place around them - many politicians around the world have chosen to focus on the one simple measure the believe they do understand - inflation. To control this they have increasingly induced recessionary forces. The test of good government has now become its ability to keep its economy in a mild form of recession. Any undue expansion is seen as a failure. The result has been a return to past times; but perversely to the worst of past times - the Depression! The politicians may welcome the return of problems they understand, to replace those they can't comprehend, but all the lessons of economic management - most notably those developed by Lord Keynes - have been lost in the gadarene rush to regain these past certainties. On the other hand, it seems unlikely that - once they realise what is happening - the population as a whole will agree to spend the rest of their lives in such an artificially induced Depression. This poses a major problem for governments, which are now required to provide inspired leadership rather than authoritarian rule.
Indeed, the electorates are already starting to move ahead of their governments. For their part, however, politicians of allparties - under immense pressure from a rapidly changing world - are increasingly showing signs of defensive 'groupthink'. They are clubbing together to reassure each other that their own, now largely artificial, world is more real than the disconcerting one outside. Corruption is endemic, not so much in terms of financial gains but in terms of desperate measures to retain power against the unwelcome changes which are sweeping that world outside.
It has to be recognised, though, that the politicians still have their supporters in other parts of the establishment. In particular, despite the new realities of employee power, and of the massive investment in people, senior managers unwisely used the recession at the beginning of the 1990s to ruthlessly reduce their workforces. The 3Rs - Restructuring, Re-engineering and Redundancy - came to dominate Western management thinking; and took their toll on investment in people. It is interesting to note that, at precisely the same time, the comparable Japanese 3Rs were Restructuring, Re-engineering and Retraining! They, at least, never lost sight of the importance of their workers; and are still as committed as ever to the lifetime employment which optimises their investment in people. Our research indicates that it is the Japanese corporations, rather than the Western governments, which will be proved correct in the longer term.
Charles Hauss summarises the position as "The peoples and governments of the world today face a global crisis. War. A decaying environment. Economic uncertainty. Racial, ethnic, and religious strife. The list goes on and on." and Barry Minkin nicely summarises the position as "...the world we live in is confusing because an epic transformation of our world has already begun. By 2005 we will be in the middle of a number of transformations of which the outcomes are highly uncertain."
Charles Hauss, this time more positively, points out that the etymology of the word ‘crisis’ "...yields a second, and more intriguing meaning. It can be traced back to the Greek ‘krisis’, which simply means ‘turning point’...In this view, a crisis has its frightening and dangerous side but also brings with it new possibilities."
Peter Kassler, describing Shell’s global; scenarios in the mid-1990s, reports that "The period from about 1980 to the present day has been one of profound change over the world...[with] revolutionary political and economic reforms."
No less a management guru than Peter Drucker suggests that "Some time between 1965 and 1973 we passed over a divide and entered ‘the next century’. We passed out of creeds, commitments, and alignments that had shaped politics for a century or two. We are in political terra incognita with few familiar landmarks to guide us." As we have already seen, other commentators date the transition to 1989, or to some time in the near future, but the thing they share - with us - is an acute awareness all our lives are changing dramatically; as a result of perhaps the greatest paradigm shift of all!
Indeed, Henry Minzberg - another of the leading management gurus - stresses the psychology of the moment, in his comments on the ‘turbulence’ of the times "It’s an imagined condition: We glorify ourselves by describing our own times as turbulent." He has a point, since there is often now an element of ‘moral panic’ in the stories featured in the media - but, even so, I suspect he underestimates the very real changes which are taking place.
Though Henry Minzberg might recognise this as a natural outcome; since he suggests "...the real curse of this so-called turbulence may be planning itself, which by imposing formalized procedures on organizations has desensitised them, and made them vulnerable to unexpected changes."
Alvin Toffler predicted the problems we would be facing in his book 'Future Shock'. In that influential tome he said "I coined the term 'future shock' to describe the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time." He went on to make the related point that "In the most rapidly changing environment to which man has ever been exposed, we remain pitifully ignorant of how the human animal copes."
Morris Miller, too, says that "...these cries of crisis are symptomatic of painful adjustments..." but the outcome he predicts is more pessimistic "...and may well be regarded as rumblings foretelling a really massive domino-style breakdown of an interdependent global economy." In this respect he mirrors the doom and gloom shared by many other commentators (who he then proceeds to quote).
Henley Centre for Forecasting, Stewart Lansley - for instance - states that "The crisis of the nineties is not confined to the problem of political and economic adjustment in Eastern Europe nor to the impoverishment in large parts of the developing world. Despite claims of the final triumph of western liberal capitalism, the democratic west is facing its own deep-seated crises of identity and management. Western values seem increasingly out of tune with the needs of modern society". Compounding the problem, Charles Handy suggests that the discontinuous changes now taking place are "...confusing and disturbing, particularly to those in power."Václav Havel - one of the leaders of the revolutionary changes in Eastern Europe - adds some clarity "The distinguishing features of such transitional periods are a mixing and blending of cultures and a plurality or parallelism of intellectual and spiritual worlds. These are periods when all consistent value systems collapse, when cultures distant in time and space are discovered or rediscovered. They are periods when there is a tendency to quote, to imitate, and to amplify, rather than to state with authority or integrate. New meaning is gradually born from encounter, or the intersection, of many different elements...In short we live in the postmodern world, where almost everything is possible, and almost nothing is certain."
15 May 2003
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