The Troll under our bridge

I am seeing our world through three horizons at this time… The really scary thing is that I’m only hearing leaders talk about two and it’s the middle one that's the real gotcha. 

What do I mean? ... I'm seeing these three horizons …

• Now: next 6 months – its about survival
• Next: 6-24 Months – Its about rebuilding
• After: 24 months + - Its about thriving

It’s as if we are just hoping that we can simply build a bridge between Now and After. Between Uncertainty and Prosperity, Fear and Safety.

Its like we are ignoring the monstrous troll of ‘Next’ that can’t be dodged, jumped over or ignored. It’s under the bridge that we have to cross.

Now is pretty clear. It’s the health oriented pandemic and our responses to it. Its ISO, work from home, exercise by yourself. We are already seeing alert levels relax and people re-emerge from their bunkers. The death toll and sickness is already awful and, if Ebola, SARS and MERS are anything to go by, this pandemic will be declared past crisis once enough developed countries have a less than .5 community transmission rate – it won't take into the account the 100,000s that will die or the millions that will be infected in the undeveloped world. For the rest of us. Crisis over.   

When ‘Now’ is declared over we will move into ‘Next’ …. this is where the Troll lurks.

People will be allowed to resume functioning. However this won’t be what many people are thinking right now. It won’t be that we will step out of our bunkers back into the day light and all the toys we left behind are still sitting on the lawn where we left them. People may be able to come out of their homes but the jobs they had may not be there or may be significantly changed. The hospitality and service businesses that made up their daily routines may not re open. Retailers will be gone, shut because they went broke or having been replaced by online versions. We may try to kick start our old lives, and whilst many of our daily routines will re-establish themselves, some won't and we will keenly feel the loss of them.

Businesses that have survived will be changed. They will either not be able to do the work they once did or, this isolation forced them to do things in new ways, in digital ways, and they may chose not to go back to the old ways, not needing the old jobs and not employing the same people. Their investment will be constrained by their constrained income as will their expenditure. No tax incentive scheme will be enough to jumpstart this engine, only the tried and true path of consumer expenditure – which from above will be stymied or redirected. At least over the Next phase, the Troll phase.

Government will not be able to continue to spend future generations entitlements to prop things up. We will see fiscal and monetary tightening. Red stained ledgers will be shoe horned into future projections of budgetary surplus under the banner of risk management and financial prudence. Other policy levers will be used to help resuscitate the economy some of which will see extractive business models and environmental exploitation permitted in the name of people over planet – just for now you understand.

Wow, cheery hey! My aim here is not to create fear or make you sad. It’s simply to make you think … Why aren't we talking about the fact that the non-health part of the catastrophe hasn't happened yet and maybe more importantly, what can we do to prepare for it …  

1. As humans (not just consumers), its time to double down on connections in our communities started in this Now. Pay-it-forward by helping those around us because the next two years will be really hard. We will be forced to step back from consumerism and towards human connection and community. Lets start the work on ourselves to be both resilient to whats coming as well as open to connection with others (thanks Celeste Halliday).
2. As business leaders let's realise that extractive business models are not going to work when people have less to spend and will spend more time picking out their how they will spend or donate their limited money (after all the endless credit card of equity in their homes will have taken a hit). They will also need create workplaces that are much more mentally friendly as we struggle with the changing world of work and learning around us. They will be expected to step up even more to help address our social needs at a time shareholders will be telling them to focus on revenue.
3. Leaders in finance will need to stand up and call out the growing sham we call impact investing and convert greedy money (market return +) into 'good money' (patient capital, low return no return) for while– come on people how much is enough already.
4. Political leaders across the board so far have done a good job. Now we need to use this time where we can’t just spend our way clear of the Troll. We need to think of regenerative, to think of innovative, place based and person centric redesigns of our very social systems. As Alex Hannant at the Yunus Centre provokes, we have a choice... "apply rescue measures that seek to get us back to where we were and likely achieve a degraded ‘business-as-usual’ economy, with a significant fiscal hole to fill. Or, we could intentionally design these measures to reshape our economy for recovery plus regeneration. This would mean an economy in better shape to withstand the longer term effects of the pandemic, and also deliver a broader range of outcomes for people, places and planet into the future"... nicely put.... in short leaders... lead us to a better place not the old place.

Lets not try to run away from the Troll or defeat it. Lets acknowledge it is there and think of ways to change our bridge to a better After…