The Brazilian Walking Dead

The brutal recession Brazil is going through since 2014 has made millions of victims. Investment plummeted, jobs disappeared, businesses closed and more than 10 million people are still unemployed. Among the affected, a minority managed to turn their luck around, some have managed to keep the nose above the water while some others literally perished. But I focus now on a specific group of people - the “walkers” – the ones that succumbed and gave up the fight.

By walker, a term allusive to those soulless beasts that wandered searching for a piece of living flesh in the series “The Walking Dead”, I mean those who were unable to keep up, who gave up after many attempts to find a job or to keep a business running amid a terrible never-seen-before recession, who lost the faith in themselves, lost vitality and motivation and, of course, hope, surrendering, in some cases, to depression. Those, who like the biters in the series, can turn the ones that are still fighting into sad creatures not by a bite but by corroding their fortitude with negativism and defeatism.

 Fortunately and differently from the zombies in the series, the Brazilian walkers can be rescued, turned back to life, if they find the proper means of living. In any case, finding it requires that they turn back, i.e. that they recover the will to fight, a pre-requisite for creating opportunities to generate income. For the ones who recover and for those who never gave up the tips below can be useful:

 Be flexible – the “world” transformed (temporarily) and the ones who do not adapt will fall. So, be flexible, be open to accept job opportunities different and less glamorous than your previous jobs, be open to accept lower salary and benefits (and sometimes no benefit at all), be open to new customers and their different demands…Be open.

 Acquire new skills to survive – things are a lot more difficult in the dystopic world. In the series, food is scarce, hazards abound, a peaceful individual becomes a warrior, nothing is like it was… In Brazil, income has fallen (GDP fell more than 8%), basic needs are the priority, a survivor needs to run fast, be agile, brave, strong, practical and, above all, must maintain hope. So, discard the superfluous, acquire new skills and knowledge and think of offering basic services and goods in food and health segments, of providing solutions for cheap transportation, cost reduction and efficiency, of improving customer experience and facilitating customer engagement. Become fond of businesses where the marginal cost of sales – the cost of selling one more unit – decreases or is neglectable (i.e. has the potential to become viral).

Join forces with diverse partners! – In the series, like here, alliances among people and groups are crucial! So, there’s no point in investing heavily to acquire capabilities that you can find in a partner, complementing you, creating a group more capable to survive, more competitive.

 Simplify! – The survivors of the series eagerly look for a place to live safely and carry the minimum necessary for survival. So must you - review and revise processes and get rid of the stuff that can “slow your pace”, i.e. that can reduce efficiency and increase cost – it is time for simplicity. On a personal basis, keep family engaged in the expenses reduction effort. 

Avoid contamination! – Bites won’t turn you! What will do is you allowing the pessimism to take over, is paying too much attention to the news in the traditional media, biased to the negative, or in the internet, where fake news swarm, is losing faith in you, is surrendering to arguments from walkers, is failing to see that recession is behind us. Conclusion - you carry the anti-bodies to the disease and mingling with walkers to rescue them, as you ought to, is safe as long as you don’t listen to them.

 Don’t lose humanity! – “In a house where bread is scarce, all members fight and no one is right” – and not only bread has been scarce here! Patience and generosity also are. Our society is sadly divided, but you should neither let egoism speak louder nor fall in the temptation to obtain profit at any price. Remember – the reason for such a tragedy is the endemic corruption, a cancer, that penetrated our society, our political system, leading to bad decisions, wrong allocation of resources and theft.

Some say that the events in the series are only in the mind of Rick Grimes (protagonist), who is in a coma. If he wakes up, the tragedy ends. It is the same here - whereas there were palpable reasons for a negative shock in the economy after a succession of mistakes by the ousted government, the pain prolonged because of how we reacted to the shocking news day after day, because of the negative mood that possessed our minds, because we all went into a suffocating coma of our own. Reality (and good news) is we still have to tackle public deficit and continue fighting corruption, an area we are making strides, but the basis for growth is partially set – it means that full economic recovery will materialize if we, the protagonists, wake up. So, open your eyes...