06/01/2020

Associations & the Uncertainty Principle

There are a few things organizations can do to navigate these challenging times

We exist in a unique moment in time, and struggle to make sense of both history and what is to come. We have no firm grasp of what the future will really look like, yet in a few months we’ll probably be hard pressed to find anyone who admits they didn’t predict how things turned out. 

Humans are prediction machines. It’s how our ancient ancestors survived long enough to pass on their genes. We have a deep need to feel certain in what we know and what this tells us about the future. But anticipating the behaviour of wild animals, tribe members and potential enemies is massively different from predicting the course of complex, globally interconnected, feedback-looped modern economies, and the mass behaviour of millions of networked groups and individuals. Especially when all our established assumptions and perceptions are shown by an existential crisis to be mistaken!

We are living in the Age of Uncertainty. We have probably already been here for at least 20 or 30 years, but we’ve managed to ignore this fact, by and large, thanks to a combination of self-denial and distraction. We’ve been writing 5-year plans; we didn’t give a moment’s thought to how food arrives on our table; we created complex, detailed narratives to explain past successes and failures, as well as to map out our hoped-for futures. 

Please select this link to read the complete article from Boardroom.