Upside Down and Downside Up

We are living at a crossroads, our own Copernican revolution that will turn entire worlds upside down. I deliberately choose to write ‘worlds’ in the plural form, because it is not only the world of ‘this politician’ or ‘that company’ which will be turned upside down. All our micro and macro-worlds, whether social, geopolitical, economic or technological, will be shaken up in a way we have never experienced before.

Companies are still insufficiently aware that we have reached this societal turning point. They know that technology is changing. They see the emergence of new competitors. They feel the impact of additional legislation. However, they fail to realize that these are signals of underlying forces that are revolutionizing the world. And so they fail to appreciate – and extrapolate from – the coherence of these forces. They neglect to change their world view – the way they look at the world – with sufficient thoroughness. They fail to notice that their model is being undermined by newcomers, who seem to be offering the same as they are, but are, in fact, doing something radically different. They completely overlook the fact that customer and market behaviour have been transformed in recent years. Power is now in the hands of consumers and they make decisions very differently than in the past. Things used to be so well-ordered, so neatly arranged, so familiar. Not anymore.

If you recognize this attitude in your own environment, it is time to give the people around you a wake-up call.

?History is full of turning points where everything that was once familiar suddenly seems changed, where top becomes bottom and bottom becomes top. The main difference today is that the speed of impact of this process is greater than it has ever been before.

Change hits us like a bolt from the blue and before we know it has become irreversible: BOOM! Overnight, we need to think in terms of a new paradigm.

These turning points have a number of common characteristics that can help you to identify them.

They are always preceded by a period of fluidity and transformation. The dice are already rolling. However, at a given moment the dice finally come to a stop and change kicks in. From this moment on, the old ways cease to exist and are replaced by a new reality that turns everything upside down. Perhaps not unsurprisingly, this is followed by a period of turmoil and unrest. The old rules no longer apply, but the new rules are not yet sufficiently well-known or accepted.?

A turning point requires people to think and act in new ways – and that is never easy. You can think of it as the need to make a jump. There are some people who make this necessary jump. There are others who cannot understand why people are jumping at all. There are yet others who want to make the jump but do not have the courage to do it. Finally, there is the group who are simply unwilling or unable to jump.

Another key characteristic is that important turning points are never initiated by the existing order. People who owe their power to the ‘old’ view of the world have nothing to gain by turning this world upside down. As a result, the ‘old guard’ will fiercely resist any attempt at change by persisting to apply prevailing rules and regulations. When this fails, they will continue to deny the existence of change for as long as they possibly can. In the end, this usually results in bloodshed of one kind or another. Most people will fight to try and ensure the survival of their own view of the world. Those on the losing side of this battle often run away from the reality of their defeat, burying their head in the sand in the hope that things will ‘somehow’ get better. You often see this kind of thing in the business world. Some companies attempt to ride roughshod over the new trends; others simply ignore them until it is too late, wrongly believing that their position is invincible.

These are moments when for one side their world collapses, while for the other side a whole new world of possibilities opens up. Our common past is full of instances where new ideas, new inventions, wars and revolutions have created a completely new way of looking at – and responding to – the world around us. The familiar way of doing things comes to an end, giving way to radical and dynamic alternatives. The old is dead; long live the new! Such moments do not always need to happen on a grand scale. A series of smaller turning points can sometimes be enough to trigger huge change. However, the reverse can also be true. The effects of major turning points often continue to filter down for many years as a number of smaller but nonetheless significant developments.

Turing points always provide an ‘aha!’ experience, the feeling that things will never be the same again. You can recognize this from the look of disbelief or fury in the eyes of those who thought they had everything under control and from the outbursts of joy from life’s underdogs, daredevils and revolutionaries. You can see it in the powerlessness of the former arbiters of ‘truth’ to come to terms with the new disruptive forces that are sweeping them away. Faced with this incomprehensible topsy-turvy situation, their only options are to surrender, run or fight. But it makes no difference: their defeat is certain. However, this does not mean that every turning point is necessarily all good. There will certainly be good bits, but bad bits as well. Every action leads to a reaction