What is “The Great Restructuring"
To say these are uncertain times is an understatement. Currency collapse, saturation for private, corporate, municipal and sovereign debt at an historic high, top-heavy demographics and collapsing trade blocks oriented to serve 19th century European global interests are all converging at once. And, we have been here before.
We have seen the Long Depression in the 1870s, a Great Depression in the 1920s, stagflation in the 1970s and now whatever this is in the 2020's. There is more than merely a clean cadence to their occurrences (its a course pattern to be sure) and clear similarities between their respective condition, causes and recoveries.
We are in a predictable time-period, a long-duration cyclical-crisis ending one, which takes 10 - 20 years to resolve. Afterwards, societies have emerged into a world that operated on different rules than the one from just a generation past and that would last for a few generations.
By the 1890's enough US citizens had left agriculture to work in industry that its cultural hegemony began to give way to urban culture. Aside from population density and sanitation issues, American society began to assimilate the international influences that are inescapable in mercantile cities, to a greater degree and with greater ease (from the normalization of disruptive technologies like electrification, newspaper print, telegraphy, railroads, refrigeration) than had been the case historically. Germany was unifying, challenging the status quo of English and French dominance in Europe while Manifest Destiny was spreading unopposed westward across North America.
By the end of the 1940s, new trade blocks were being established that suited North American interests (extensions to large degree of European ones) globally, balanced by interests of the USSR. Hegemony in a post industrial revolution, post European empire world was a hugely complicated and lasting endeavor, consuming as much collaboration of thought as it did labor to implement. It contributed to driving the proliferation of strategic thinking throughout governments and business alike and labor would follow management into the office space. White collar labor would eventually displace hands-on work as this thinking work drove humanities education to its prevalence among citizenry.
By the end of the 1980s, industry had largely moved off-shore to less expensive locations, while US citizenry shifted into suburbs to become the largest national housing demographic. Though business would continue to be conducted in person and mostly in cities, back office work increasingly would be moved into corporate parks located in suburban centers away from the high costs of the city. This was made possible largely to affordable petro-fuels, inexpensive automobiles and the wide-spread adoption across all public and private centers of modern telecommunications and computing made for office-based knowledge workers. Suburban culture would become dominant as technological disruptions became foundational, shifting paradigms yet again of how, where and who with business was being done.
By, say 2035, we may have automated enough knowledge work to threaten the largest labor contingency, and the oldest, in human history. The normalization of autonomous AI, quantum computing, robotics, nano-mechanics and biotechnology by governments and businesses will render much human-generated knowledge workers obsolete, generating new trades in their wake (e.g. AI teachers, not trainers; AI handlers; AI coaches; AI facilitators). Thanks to advanced global communications and strengthened by an ongoing global pandemic, the distributed workers in any sector will no longer need be in physical proximity to their stakeholders so long as supply chain and telecommunication security are maintained (as opposed to territorial integrity).
This time is different though. This time the effects of climate change are increasingly assaulting the shorelines where most of humanity lives.
Insurance companies and national security agencies like CIA and the USDOD are taking broad and impactful steps to understand the social, economic, political, and humanitarian costs of weather events that may warrant a 'managed retreat'. Consider also, that unlike in the past, this time the Northwest Passage is expected to become navigable during part of the year. Those land based historic trade block tendencies will be challenged in a new way, as Maritime Russia emerges as one of four Artic powers in a warmer world.
Beyond that we'll see. 🙂
So, our world system is undergoing a Copernican change, as new realities assault foundations that evolved and thrived under a vanishing set of conditions. Whether the existing system is collapsing or correcting (depending on your perspective), the times are leaving leaders and students of history wondering what could provide a sound basis for both surviving now and planning for later.
These times demand New Thinking.
Our world is full of sage wisdom and oracles who based on their knowledge and experiences, seem to have part of the answer. We listen them and so should you. And count us among them. We have part of the answer. We are like many people trying to see where things are heading beyond the hype. We are looking for frameworks that fit the facts while both remain fluid, whereas your interests are not.
In such an environment, we echo the sentiments of economist Mohamed A. El-Erian that Agility and Resiliency are the best advice for navigating your business through a changing world. Here is how we think about it and the themes that permeate our actions.