How To Thrive In A World Of Chaos
Is The Joker alive & well in your neighborhood? It just seems that the supervillain, created by DC Comics in 1940, is busily sowing havoc in the unleashing of his insatiable desire for unbridled chaos all around the world. In this 39th issue, we call The Joker's bluff.
If the Covid-19 pandemic, that almost caused a total shutdown of global economies at the beginning of the 2020s, has not been enough to give 8-billion people a collective whack on the side of the head, then nothing will! For many, something has drastically changed in the world, seemingly overnight!
Where most people just want peace, stability, predictability and order in their lives, today, to those many, it seems that CHAOS can strike at any time. An acronym first used in 1987 to describe the chaos that can strike large organizations at any time - VUCA (Volatile, Unpredictable, Complex, and Ambiguous) - seems now now applicable to the individual.
If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs..
Rudyard Kipling <--- (refer this link for a comprehensive biography) provides the clue to the 1idea for today in his famous poem - ' If ' .
In this article I will posit that 'CHAOS' is perhaps a misleading, negative, fear-mongering term for what is confronting most in the world today. Whilst this article's header might have a certain emotional pull for assuaging the fear of 'chaos' that haunts many, the 1idea I want YOU to take from this article is that whenever you see the title - How To Thrive In A World of Chaos - YOU reframe it to read - How To Thrive In A World Of Accelerating Change & New Opportunities.
Full disclosure: I am 1/3rd (one-third) of the WISDOMS™ co-founders team who have invested +150 collective years of extraordinary Life & Business experience, and spent decades in the Personal & Business Development fields (both Corporate & Entrepreneurial) acquiring & developing 'tons' of unique life-changing content in the WISDOMS™ vaults.
Our specialty (see The WISDOMS™ Manifesto), and second nature, has always been to train, provide, and share, information & skills for change.. particularly in our 6 Pillars of WISDOMS™ journey.
From the above experience, it is my firm opinion that, for most: CHAOS is a state of mind.
And that, what most might term CHAOS is actually not chaos at all (certainly not cataclysmic chaos - the type of global flood event that wiped out the dinosaurs), but often it is a term given to a jarring event that knocks the individual out of their normal personal habits, patterns of behavior. and comfort zones, making things seem chaotic at the time.
From our 6 Pillars of WISDOMS™ journey, at WISDOMS™, we know that 'state of mind' (mindset) can be positively reframed.
For instance, my personal reframing mindset statement for 'chaotic' events that occur in my life is: Inconvenience happens at the most inconvenient of times. Where 'inconvenience' implies that the event has a short-term duration (from 3 minutes, to 3 hours, 3 days, 3 weeks, 3 months, maybe even to 3 years), albeit as luck would have it, often at the worst of times, to which a positive mindset & solution can be applied. Ideally with a sense of humor.
This is not to disparage the serious nature of the 'inconvenience' (it can be as serious as a death in the family, or a tragic accident, or a sudden loss of a family home to floods or a tornado), but is proposed as a stimulant to prepare one's mindset to think positively and creatively (despite the pain) to move on from the 'inconvenience' as quickly as possible.
I am also firmly of the opinion that what presents as 'chaos' (disorder) and 'chaotic' to many, actually presents with patterns and trends - i.e. a semblance of order - that can be identified when taking the time to calm down and think through the unexpected event that presents itself at the most inopportune of times.
To this end, we developed an intro to The DifferenceMakers™ program where we isolated ten (10) simple, yet profound, principles that allows the participant to recognize what it takes to crack the code and prepare for How To Thrive In A World Of Accelerating Change & New Opportunities. Read about our program and get your 12- page intro copy here.
It is interesting to trace back to the days of the Greek philosophers, where it is clear that humankind's quest has always been to discover the natural laws of things.. to find some sort of universal order. Also interesting to note various authors use of the term 'chaos'.
In Laws Of Man And Laws Of Nature, Marcelo Gleiser writes: 'We humans are an unruly bunch. So much so that we need laws to keep order, to make sure we stay on track. Without our laws, society would quickly descend into chaos.'
'The laws of Nature are very different from the laws of man. While the laws of man seek to order and control individual and social behavior so as to make communal life less risky, the laws of Nature are deduced from long-term observation of repeatable patterns and trends.'
Follow this link for an interesting general walk through the time progression of Natural Law (laws of man) philosophies
For the curious who enjoy an academic work, this from Stanford: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Laws of Nature - First published Tue Apr 29, 2003; substantive revision Mon Nov 16, 2020. The bibliography of references will blow you away.
Yet, despite all the progress in philosophical studies and massive technological advances, never before has our global population seemed so in need of some light & solutions to a troubled world. People today, everywhere, are feeling bombarded by negative news, crises and chaos (there's that term again). It just seems to be getting so personal.
Any wonder, given the current devastating images and sad consequences of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, crime & corruption statistics across most nations, murder & mayhem, school-shootings, political in-fighting & protests, unemployment, strikes, energy- & water-shortages, climate-disasters, tornados, hurricanes, tsunamis, all brought into your lounge for your viewing 'pleasure' courtesy satellite, TV, and social-media.
And then, of course, and most importantly, every family has their own internal trials & tribulations and sad events. Sooner or later, 'CHAOS', seems to strike every individual, every family, every community, every nation, unexpectedly at the most inconvenient of times.
So, having said that I'd like YOU to reframe the title of this article to read - How To Thrive In A World Of Accelerating Change & New Opportunities - let's see how others address the topic of How To Thrive In A World of Chaos. First, some definitions:
thrive - defn. - 'to become, and continue to be, successful, strong, healthy, etc.'
chaos - defn. - 'a complete lack of order'
chaotic - defn. - 'without any order; in a completely confused state'
cataclysmic - defn. '(of a natural event) causing sudden and violent change'
unpredictable - defn. - 'that cannot be predicted because it changes a lot or depends on too many different things'
Technologist, David Weinberger, Harvard lecturer, fellow and senior researcher at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, author of the iconic 'Cluetrain Manifesto', author - Everyday Chaos: Technology, Complexity, and How We’re Thriving in a New World of Possibility - says simply: 'Embrace the chaos.' '..one of the themes of the book is that we are learning to embrace, and even just acknowledge, the chaos that's always been around us, throughout our history. We're now coming to be able to acknowledge and embrace it, because we have technology that enables us to thrive with it.'
We’re beginning to accept that the true complexity of the world far outstrips the laws and models we devise to explain it.
Which takes me back to information I was reviewing and sharing some 30 to 40 years ago - included as Ch.13 in Another Great Day In Africa - 'My personal interpretation of information written and produced by some of the finest minds in the world on the subjects of simple economics and the future of business.' In this case, an economist: Paul Zane Pilzer.
Of his book: Should You Quit Before You Are Fired? I wrote: 'This book continued from the foundation laid for his work on Abundance Economics and took a futuristic look at the opportunities that would arise in the 1990’s as a result of unfolding technologies.'
'Here Pilzer predicted the wholesale downsizing of companies with many millions of people losing their jobs. He showed how to turn this bad news into good news by getting his reader to understand what was really happening. In fact, more and more entrepreneurs were being born out of necessity which in the long term will create many hundreds of new dynamic corporations in the future, albeit of a smaller size.' This was already being noted in the early 1990s.
I highlighted: 'The successful ones are those who understand the phenomenon of new and changing technologies, and how they can displace and replace entire organizations and industries on a global scale.' Pilzer pointed out how 20 million blue collar workers were terminated from their jobs during the 1980’s, and how these people were totally unprepared to fend for themselves.
A quote of Pilzer's, from back then, that I will never forget: “What we are seeing are massive shifts in the economy which don’t occur over 60 years.. they occur over six years. The speed with which technology changes has accelerated so greatly that this isn’t something you can read in a book and tell your kids about next week. You’d better tell ‘em tonight!”
“Today, we find the career-shifters.. the people who go into one industry and learn something, and then move on to a totally different industry carrying with them what they learned in the other industry. The person who’s lost his job is the best person because he’s got experience in one industry, and he takes it to another one and gets rehired, and he brings in new things and most important.. he’s open to change! Today, that’s the most successful person in our society.”
The key point, I summarized back then, being: 'Pilzer leads us to understand that in order to be successful today, with our rapidly changing technologies, we have to be open to change. We have to learn how to accept new information and learn new things more quickly, because the speed with which we learn new things is the overriding determinant of success.'
Skip forward some +- 30/40 years and we meet Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva who warns: '88% of all the Titans of business – the original Fortune 500 list – do not exist today. But the future looks even worse: recent research by Innosight suggests that 50% of S&P500 companies will disappear in the next 10 years. Whether it’s your career, your organization, or your community, disruption is here to stay.'
Takes me back to another comment I made in the introduction to Confessions of a SERIAL Entrepreneur: 'Lest you should be caught gob-smacked and open-mouthed when you discover my fee please bear in mind that in 1990 I launched the first independent business consultancy in South Africa to offer a 100% money-back guarantee. A simple offer that has seen this consultancy being in business for over 15 years (written in 2005 when most business start-ups in South Africa were struggling to get past their first 3 to 5 years). In that same time, it seems that 90% of all listed companies on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange have disappeared forever.' An amazing similarity to the preceding observation (above) made some years later by Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva in the U.S.
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My observation continued: 'Writes Ann Crotty – Business Report 9th March 2005: ‘‘So it seems that the average life span of a JSE Securities Exchange-listed company is not much longer than that of your garden variety pop group. Anyone who didn't see Monday's edition of Business Report should really try and get hold of it. It contained a comparison of the share prices page on the publication's launch day, which was March 7 1995, with that of March 4 2005. According to our markets editor Renée Bonorchis, only about 60 of the companies that are listed in March 2005 were around in a roughly similar guise in 1995. That's about a 10 percent survival rate.’’ I lamented at the time: 'How I wish we could have implemented some simple business principles in just a few of these companies. Sigh..!'
Back to Nadya Zhexembayeva.. for me, she gets it spot on correct about the future of uncertainty, unpredictability & disruption in this must watch post-Covid interview:
Some takeaways from Nadya:
'It took me 40 years to figure out why I do what I do.'
'How do we thrive in constant uncertainty and disruption? That brings us to this current disruption, this pandemic, and what's coming as well. I think many of us have the illusion that we will go back to some sort of normality. But, I really believe there is going to be no more normality because apart from pandemics.. we are going to see disruption from artificial intelligence, automation and technology that's going to totally disrupt the tectonic plates of the socio-political landscape and business landscapes.'
'..in the 20th century the average life cycle of a typical company was very long, anywhere between 60 and 75 years on average.. today 60% of companies have to reinvent every three years or less.. every three years or less to survive. This is a remarkable shortening of life cycle and exceptional exceptional acceleration. The rules of the game of living in a cycle of 75 years to living in a cycle of three to seven years, these are completely different rules.'
'..chaos is not the absence of order.. it's a presence of more than one order.. it's each individual person moving purposefully.. but there is a multitude of orders.'
'The life-cycle of success is shrinking. It used to be.. you become a success, you become an expert, you become a professional.. this was excellent idea in the 20th century. Professionally, if before, (I come from academia, my background is being a professional) you come in as an expert,, the expert is the one who knows the answer. Today the person who knows the answer is one of the markers of low expertise.'
'If you know what's going on you're definitely not a professional.. because there's not a single person right now, who is thoughtful, reflective and deep, who can say I know what's happening. It's too much uncertainty. It's too many complicated feedback loops. So the sign of the expert, right now is.. I don't know the answer and I'm willing to find out, and I'm willing to unlearn. I'm willing to give up successes of the past, and be the one who looks at everything from a fresh point of view.'
'Ride the wave of change, rather than be crushed by it.'
'..companies that are able to reinvent again and again are the ones who understand that change is a process, change is a system, and if I build a system that asks itself on a regular basis: "..okay, time to renew, time to reinvent, time to shell off the business models, the products that simply are not performing It doesn't matter how much I love them or how attached I am to them, it doesn't matter, I'm letting them go because they're not performing."
'..it's okay to allow certain parts of your strategy to dissipate and certain parts of your strategy to emerge in the process, and it doesn't make you unprofessional or undisciplined or unfocused, it makes you adaptive and agile and ready to reinvent.'
Listen to Dr. Nadya Nadya Zhexembayeva on this illuminating & chaos-confirming podcast - How to Reinvent Your Business Story to Thrive in Chaos
See how Nadya reinvents herself and her information here:
Writer Dan Bigman - Exclusive: Jim Collins on ‘Thriving In Chaos’ - asks the question: 'What does it take to create a truly great, lasting company amid historic uncertainty and volatility? Based on decades of research, Jim Collins, best-selling author of the business classics Good to Great, Built to Last and Great by Choice, has some answers.'
Extract: 'Now, as the world faces yet another round of volatile, unpredictable challenges, from inflation to war to climate change to poisonous politics to a reshuffling of the post–World War II global order, I decided to talk with Collins again, this time to ask him about the nature of resilience. What do great companies do right in the face of severe challenges? What do others get wrong?'
'For him, there’s no more timely question in business. “The primary reality of history is uncertainty, turbulence, chaos,” says Collins. “As Edward T. O’Donnell, a history professor, puts it, ‘history is the study of surprises.’ So, I actually feel we’re heading into what is more normal, rather than what is less normal. In some various form, this level of uncertainty is more likely—nobody can say with certainty—to characterize the rest of our lives than not.”
'Number one, we observed that you learn how to exert self-control and self-discipline in a world that is out of control.'
'The second thing that we also saw in our companies is that in an uncertain world, there’s this very weird paradox of, on the one hand, placing really big bets, and, on the other, protecting your flanks against downside events, and putting both of those together.'
'There’s a wonderful Edward T. O’Donnell quote, “Your ultimate hedge against uncertainty is your people, people who can adapt to whatever the world throws at you.”
'..simply by asking, “What are the brutal facts?”—the very best people tend to get really inspired, because they would like nothing more than to confront them and to overcome them. There’s very little that’s more demotivating than feeling that your leaders are failing to confront the facts that you see so clearly. One of the most engaging things you can do is present the brutal facts. And yet people fear that, “oh, the brutal facts will demoralize people.” No, exactly the opposite.'
In a very useful exercise (at the end of an excellent article), Dan Bigman describes '..here, distilled from all of Collins’ work and arranged in order, are his key principles to building a Great company that can take a punch and thrive for decades.' In the 11th of eleven very good distilled pointers, he quotes Collins: “Great organizations keep clear the difference between their core values (which never change) and their operating strategies and cultural practices (which endlessly adapt to a changing world).”
At the beginning of this article I mentioned the need for a post-Covid collective whack on the side of the head for us all, which is perhaps a perfect way to end.. by referring to Roger Oech's - A Whack On The Side Of The Head - which aligns with my/our thinking on the creative ideas/strategies needed to thrive in the coming decade, such as some here (as he asserts):
Related reading:
If you're new to us it is recommended that you read issue 1: One Idea is All it Takes
About: Trevor Nel is an 'ideas-generating machine' and co-founder of WISDOMS™. You can connect with WISDOMS™ and become: 1. a PATRON and/or; 2. a PLAYER , and/or; 3. a PARTNER - follow each link for more info.
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Trevor Nel is author of One Idea Is All It Takes and numerous publications & articles, including :
Connecting investors to Business and Investment opportunities.
2yAnother very insightful article Trevor. Thank you! 👏👌🙏