The Why
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Our culture mythologises creativity while, simultaneously, putting up barriers which prevent people from reaching their creative potential.

As much as “innovation” has been put on a pedestal, enshrined in corporate vision statements and funded by private, state and transnational investors, most companies still do the thing they have always done, in the way they have always done it. We keep hanging on to the coattails of the status quo, for good psychological reasons – fear of failure, various biases – but also because most people, most of the time, do not really understand the direct connection between business innovation, imagination and creativity.

We applaud the achievements of star artists, musicians, designers, architects but that is as far as our appreciation, and our understanding of creativity usually go. The process is reduced to admiration of talent and awards for spectacular success. Creativity is for the chosen few. With talent. And special abilities. It’s just not a thing for average people. Right? Wrong.

We celebrate creativity and applaud the achievements of those star artists, designers and entrepreneurs, but when it comes down to it we accept the new and exciting only once it has been well tested by others.

In the meantime, instead of trying the untried, dreaming up the new, we continue to attend fabulous events and reading blog posts by thought leaders, who continue to tell us that innovation is a good thing, and we must all do it. Yay! It really is like putting lipstick on a pig.

It’s a wonderful idiom “putting lipstick on a pig.” Trying to make something that is too difficult and too ugly seem better by pretending that if you put gloss on it, you’ve done the hard work. Lots of effort, lots of shine, but practically no real effect.

Somehow, putting lipstick on the pig has become the central activity to such a degree that we no longer see the pig, just the lipstick.

If a business is to survive the next five years and then thrive for the subsequent decade, assuming it is in an industry that has a future and that it is run by competent professionals, it has to draw on the collective creativity of all of its people, and all of its customers. It has to see fishing in this collective pool of ideas as a strategic asset, not a thing you do on team building weekends. Can you remember the last time when you spent a week working on something completely new, doing things in ways which were different from the usual ways of doing things, connecting with people outside of your normal circle of colleagues?

Creativity is in part about connecting what is in our heads with ideas from “the edge” and seeing patterns and linkages which may not be apparent to anybody else at the time.

What is required are ways to release the inherent creativity of your people and a system which builds on people’s natural strengths by centering on the psychology of individuals and groups. It needs to be simple in its fundamentals, and a “natural” thing to run. The point of innovation thinking is to allow people in your organisation to have insights about what can be done better, with a system in place to inspire them to do so, collect those insights when they come, and work with them.

Creative professionals have very real value to the business world just beyond that boundary line where art and commerce ordinarily meet.

The value which creative professionals can bring to the table, in addition to providing their specialised services, is in assisting executives in being able to look into the future and to train their people to work in this quickened, confusing, rapidly changing digitally transformed context that surrounds us. Creative professionals can answer the call when someone asks “take me, where I haven’t been.”

Creativity is not about finding new ways to put lipstick on a pig but about ways to make the pig a better pig.

This is the reason why I do what I do – or rather a number or reasons, all pulling in the same direction.

This text is an edited version of a talk I have given several times at conferences large and small, including gatherings of hundreds of bankers, and a dozen or so telecommunication executives. The message is always the same – to innovate you need new ideas, to get new ideas you need people and places you do not necessarily meet or see every day, and the best people here are artists and creatives of all kinds.

20 Mar

Posted at 10:34h in Uncategorized

What kills creativity and, importantly, how can it be preserved and enhanced? In the series of articles examining creativity in the work place, here is a neuroscience perspective in a guest post by Dominika Pikul, an Art in a Place of Work partner. 

Teaching creativity and enhancing creative thinking are the most useful things you can do in your organization, if it is at all interested in coming up with new solutions to solve problems. Oh, that would be every organization…

George Land was a trailblazing researcher, inventor and founder of an institute to study the enhancement of creative performance. In the 1960s, NASA asked him to to assess the creative potential of its engineers and scientists, to measure their divergent – non-linear, out of the box thinking, Land designed a series of tests which typically involved asking participants to come up with as many different ideas or solutions as possible in response to a given prompt or question, within a set time limit.

The Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (also developed during the 1960s, by other researchers and commonlty used to test for creativity) involves asking participants to come up with as many uses as possible for a common object, such as a paperclip or a brick. A typical answer for a glass jar would be a candy holder, a pencil cup or a paper weight if filled with sand. A less typical answer: a prison for snails, a space helmet for a teddy bear or a device to extinguish candles. You get the picture. But Land didn’t stop there, as his study bumped up against the crucial age-old question – where does creativity come from? Is it nature or nurture? What Land’s researchers found, has not sat comfortably with education experts ever since.

To answer this question, with NASA’s help, Land administered tests of creative thinking to both children and adults, to measure their respective creative thinking abilities. The results of the study were surprising. It turned out that creativity declines dramatically as children progress through the education system. While 98% of 5-year-olds were able to think creatively, only 30% of 10-year-olds, and only 12% of adults were able to do the same.

Since then these results have often been cited as evidence that our educational systems and societal structures may be stifling creativity. As a result, learning experts such as Sir Ken Robinson (**cite) have repeatedly sounded alarm bells, calling for substantial revision to our education systems. Such claims may be considered controversial but one thing is certain: we are all born creatives!

What happens as we grow older? Yes, most experts agree that the education system takes its toll on creativity. The great writer Ursula Le Guin put is most elegantly: “The creative adult is the child who has survived.” But that is not all there is, or at least it’s not quite as simple as that. Neuroscience research has been demonstrating that the explanation lies in the brain itself, and the clues as to potential fixes to our loss of creative thinking abilities can also be found there.

NATURE GIVES, NATURE TAKES AWAY….

What kills creativity lies not in the number of cells adults and children have; that number stays the same throughout life. The secret lies in connectivity between those cells and whether such connetivity is retained and grown – or not.

When you are born, your brain develops at an extremely rapid speed. Synapses, connections between neurons, are formed at an astonishing rate. By the age of two, a child has over one hundred trillion of those, double the number of an adult. What comes next is the process of neuronal pruning as unnecessary connections between neurons are eliminated. What is deemed as unnecessary? The connections you don’t use. Hebbian synaptic plasticity theory tells us, when two neurons are repeatedly activated together, the connection between them becomes stronger. Over time, this repeated firing and strengthening of synapses can lead to the formation of neural networks, which are the basis for learning and memory. If those synapses are not used for a while, they are discarded. Simply put – use it or lose it!

As neuroscientist David Eagleman writes in his book “The Brain: The story of you”, “in a sense, the process of becoming who you are is defined by carving back the possibilities that were already present. You become who you are not because of what grows in your brain, but because of what is being removed”.

THE POWER OF CREATIVE HABITS

How does this knowledge help us foster creativity? Let’s see…

So, we know we are born creative, therefore creativity is not reserved only for artists, writers, musicians, and inventors. We all possess it, at least to begin with.

There is a distinguishing feature, however, that all those people have in common. They are always painting, writing, inventing or making music – they are practicing their creativity! By engaging regularly in their chosen creative activities, individuals can develop a range of skills and habits that can enhance their ability to think. Here, too, practice makes perfect and repeated work on generating new ideas leads to, well, being able to generate new ideas more rapidly and more efficiently. Corpus collosum, that fat piece of “neural rope” which connects the two hemispheres of the brain, has been found to be substantially fatter in musicians! Combine this with critical, analytical skills which we get taught in later life and your ability to solve problems increases.

Further, the ability to “think out of the box” (divergent thinking) is one of the key components of creativity. To foster creativity, we must train ourselves to move away from what have been deemed “correct answers” and start to explore multiple solutions to a given problem. This can lead to breakthroughs and innovations which likely would not have been possible through more traditional, convergent thinking approaches. Artists have often commented on the need to experiment, and to learn from the process of experimentation so as to expand their field of expertise. Picasso put it simply “Go and do the things you can’t. That is how you get to do them.”

Divergent thinking is a fundamental skill and research has shown that it can be developed and enhanced through various techniques which include brainstorming (if done correctly), mind mapping, and various creative exercises. Listening to music has also been shown to increase divergent thinking. There is more to it than just turning on the local radio station, of course, but it is something that can be easily integrated into daily life to enhance creative cognition in various settings, whether at home or at work.

Lastly – remember the “use it or lose it” rule? Creativity needs to be cultivated and refined on a regular basis. As painters are always painting and writers always writing – you should also engage in creative activities regularly. Set aside dedicated time for creative activities of your choice. It can be writing or drawing sketches to visualize material you just read. Interestingly, walking and daydreaming have both been shows to be a remarkably effective cognitive enhancers, so go for a walk and let your mind wonder for a change, without listening to that business podcast or feeling like you are wasting your time if you are not consuming another audio book. Consistency yields results, and before you know it, you’ll end up with unexpected, creative outcomes that exceed many of your expectations.

References:

Land, G., “The failure of success”, TEDxTuscon

Eagleman, D. “The brain: the story of you”. New York : Pantheon Books, 2015

Pierce, D. “What Neuroscience Teaches Us About Fostering Creativity”

03 Mar

Posted at 14:57h in Uncategorized

On the importance of art in business:

Without constant investment in developing the creativity of staff, companies will stagnate and eventually fail. Yet, while business leaders have been lauding the importance of creativity for a long time, and despite widespread recognition of its importance in business, many companies struggle to effectively nurture it in their employees. 

The routine of corporate life can dull the sharpness of people’s creativity over time. Further, those employees who are naturally highly creative are often easily bored and require challenges to keep their energies engaged. Not having enough of such stimulus can lead to burnout and ultimately result in them quitting, determined to find more stimulating work. (Lack of sufficiently engaging challenges has been one of the factors in the current “Great Resignation”.) Talented individuals seek out opportunities to work for firms that offer them a chance to be part of interesting projects and to participate in an environment that fosters creative thinking – companies that are perceived as creative and innovative naturally attract higher-grade recruits. In contrast, companies that fail to prioritise creativity risk being seen as stagnant and unattractive to top talent.

All this makes it all the more important for companies to emphasise creativity in their L&D, recruitment and retention strategies. But how can companies foster creativity in their employees? One proven approach is to provide extended periods of interaction with working artists. Such interactions, lasting weeks rather than hours, can have a measurable impact on the creativity of staff and ultimately improve the performance of the company as a whole. It is not enough to pay lip-service to creativity. An occasional “creative thinking” workshop or brainstorming session is worse than useless as it has the effect of appearing to be useful while actually having practically zero effect on either individual creativity or team engagement. A waste of everyone’s time and effort, really. To truly foster creativity in employees, companies must create a culture that values, encourages and rewards creative thinking. This means providing resources for professional development, recognising and celebrating creative achievements, and encouraging collaboration and experimentation. Such a culture also makes allowances for the fact that most experiments are learnings, and often they simply provide another demonstration of assumptions being wrong and goals needing to be reassessed.

The benefits of working with artists are multifaceted but there is one fundamental common denominator: artists usually possess a unique perspective on work and working methods and their ways of thinking can stimulate new ideas and approaches to problem-solving. By exposing employees to these different ways of thinking, companies can break down the routine and structure that often stifles creativity in the workplace or ameliorate anxieties, such as resistance to accepting new technologies as vital tools. Noah Weinstein, senior creative programs manager at Autodesk defines this ability like this – “Artists are great explorers and discoverers when it comes to using technology.”

A single workshop will likely not be enough to produce lasting change in a company’s culture, so some leaders have begun to experiment with longer-term engagements with artists. These residencies, which last for several weeks, allow employees to work alongside artists and either observe or, at times, participate in a range of artistic activities, from painting and sculpture to music and dance. The results of these longer-term engagements can be far more impressive than those of shorter workshops. In a recent study published in the Journal of Business Research, researchers found that employees who participated in extended artist residencies showed a significant increase in their levels of creativity and innovation. This increase was not just self-reported; the researchers were able to measure the impact of the residencies using a variety of objective metrics, including patent filings and new product launches.

Of course, we must to note that not all artists are equally effective at stimulating creativity in the workplace. Companies must carefully select the artists with whom they work, and design the engagement to fit the specific needs of their employees. It is also important to recognise that these engagements are not a panacea for all of a company’s problems; creativity is the fuel that powers innovation but is just one of the factors that contribute to success in business.

The evidence suggests that extended periods of interaction with working artists can have a measurable impact on the creativity of staff in companies. By breaking down the routine and structure of corporate life and exposing employees to new ways of thinking, companies can foster a culture of innovation that will pay dividends in the long run. It’s time for more companies to recognise the value of working with artists and to invest in the creative potential of their employees.

 

30 Mar

Posted at 10:53h in Uncategorized

To say that NFTs are overpriced jpgs purchased with magic internet money by fools drunk on their crypto windfalls is to misunderstand – or wilfully ignore – a fundamental shift now underway, in how brand relationships will be built from this time on. Conceptual ecosystems are the next wave of strategic brand development.

For the first time really, brands can connect into areas that only touch on their primary activity. With relative ease, and at a cost much reduced as compared to previous options, brands will become activity hubs and not just “sellers of stuff”, and their upstream suppliers, cross-sell partners and ambassadors will be hooked up with fans of the product. Concepts such as “food”, “glamour” and, of course, “sex” will see connections tied across disciplines in order to build communities where until not long ago there were only loose groups of enthusiasts.

For example, a Bosch or a Whirlpool or a Samsung can position the products of its kitchen appliance division at the centre of a conceptual ecosystem called “food and cooking.” Yes, of course, appliance and cookware manufacturers have been trying various formats around this idea for years. The Whirlpool Cooking Academy is one good example, as is the co-publishing of cookbooks by barbecue makers. This, however, is an opportunity to connect not a few people but a whole lot of them, not physically present to one locale like a cooking school or connected with a physical object like a cookbook (and I love cookbooks) but distributed globally with no reliance on physical artefacts. They are not encumbered by the limitations of physical deliveries but rather empowered to weave together elements of the physical and the virtual in different combinations, as innovative ideas dictate and according to branding strategies yet to be devised.

Conceptual ecosystems can be built around consumer durables just as logically as around FMCG, alcoholic and non-also drinks as around sport and fitness brands. Food and cooking, however, is where this experiment will play out soonest, and with greatest impact, and here is why. Food is by far the most universal of all human experiences, and kitchen appliances appliances come in all types and at every price point. The appliances used the most – cooktops, ovens, fridges – have the broadest reach so, likely, will form the hubs around which such ecosystems will be built, though there are of course outliers which have one specialised function only but whose cultural significance overshadows their narrow scope of functionality.

The best examples of the second group are rice cookers (in most Asian countries) and coffee makers (for pretty much everybody who loves coffee anywhere.) The cultural importance of rice cookers in, say, Japan, and coffee makers in Italy and other countries of the Mediterranean, cannot be overstated.

So, let’s imagine what such a conceptual ecosystem might look like and how might NFTs drive its creation and empower ongoing relevance and growth.

Primary drivers of behaviours often fall into the category of “culture” which has grown around its objects over time. We drink espresso from tiny cups. They are adorned with the livery of the coffee roaster because, back in the day, they used to be adorned with intricate glazes to reflect the pricey nature of the drink inside. Same reason for their size, going all the way back to the deserts of the Middle East, and bedouins pouring the precious liquid into tiny cups for their honoured guests.

I tend to wax lyrical about espresso cups, forgive me, but they are a particularly elegant example.

Now, imagine that Kenwood, or Bialetti or Breville or any other producer of high-end coffee makers decides that they are going to play the game of extending their conceptual ecosystem beyond putting art on their cups, say, as has been done by Illy with excellent results.

Imagine, the brand gurus decide that the idea of “coffee culture” can, and must, be extended beyond portraying smiling plantation workers in exotic locations on their retail shop walls. This has been done by Tchibo and countless others to the point where the merchandising materials are interchangeable save for the company logos.

Imagine, someone came up with the idea that the conceptual ecosystem of “coffee culture” can, and must, be extended far more broadly, and unified under one large umbrella. If they follow Steve Jobs’ famous adage that everything is a remix, then they will soon realise that the remixing needs to take in far broader scope than has been done so far.

And here is where NFTs come in. Because there is nothing fans love more than being rewarded for their fandom and incentivised to grow it.

Imagine, a coffee giant called Galactic Coffee were to decide to play this game. How might they begin? Well, if you purchased one of their special edition coffee makers (the Black Hole, the Milky Way, the Ursa Major) you would be given a corresponding NFT which would give you the usual promotional access to a range of discounts, special merch purchases, and so on. That is where loyalty programmes usually end, but for Galactic Coffee that would be just the start. Their endgame would be a global community of enthusiastic, engaged fans, all working hard to make their belonging to this club a rewarding and fun activity. An activity that reached well beyond the mid-afternoon espresso pick-me-up, and connected coffee lovers regardless of whether they drank their double espresso at three in the morning or a flat white at breakfast.

NFTs’ most usually overlooked aspect, ignored by branding and marketing people, is an ability to build a global community. Having a community is of course a brand director’s wet dream, as they know that no advertising spend can match the power of an engaged cohort of passionate fans.

So, in its inestimable wisdom and with deep insight gained form reading this article, Galactic Coffee would start with a vision of a global club, whose members all carried their membership cards in the form of NFTs (and traded their various collectible versions.) The tokens would serve to unlock access to special events tailored to the tastes of various subsets of the membership body – from “Chamber Music at the Uffizi” (the flat white crowd) to“Rock Around Midnight” (the 3 a.m. double espresso hit) – all powered by Galactic Coffee. They would run the ultimate in User Generated Content programmes – where the community would figure them out for itself, with little or no input from the company. Before you ask, no, NFC membership cards could not offer any of that functionality given that they are physical objects, tied to a particular hardware ecosystem, with its geographic limitations. And they don’t get accepted in the metaverse.

Seriously, the list of activities, projects and off-shoots that could be grown with the NFTs at the centre is limited only by the imagination of those starting the programme. Whoever places the right pebble in the right place, will watch an avalanche build before too long. Ultimately, if grown large enough, the community would end up running its own economy – further incentivising people to come in and existing members to stay engaged.

It would be an interesting question to consider at which point the company might care to engage the community’s leaders in more formal ways, whether or not they might even be interested, and if such an approach and the resulting change in status of the leaders might not have precisely the opposite effect to what was desired. If business is 90% psychology, then community building is 99%.

Then, if we take this further, to reflect what is already happening in the NFT world albeit only in a limited way, the next logical step would be to build a community of communities. Coffee lovers, wine lovers, lovers of Italian food and passionate fans of Renaissance art would be able to mix and mingle, and build value together, on the back of their respective communities enabled by for example, Bialetti, the consorzio Chianti Classico (a wine industry group), the paste maker Barilla and one of the globally recognised museum brands which are, in reality, publishing brands but that’s for another article.

18 Jan

Posted at 18:35h in Uncategorized

“ProbablyNothing” is a favourite expression among NFT enthusiasts. As you can imagine, it means of course an event that is “AlmostCertainlySomething.” Two such events have occurred in the last few days, signifying that this nascent technology, known primarily for making ape owners substantially better off, is about to enter popular consciousness in ways that point squarely towards broad adoption at a retail level.

Over the last twelve months or so, a long line of “weak signals” emanating from over the NFT near future horizon have been getting stronger. Porsche has dipped its toes (expensive tyres?) in the water, netting 30+ Ether for charity from the sale of a drawing (as NFT and original art) by its exterior design chief. While we’re on the subject of cars, Lloyds Auctions is releasing muscle car NFTs including the Aussie classic Holden Torana A9X (be still my heart.) Playboy has released – can we call it a brood – of bunnies (of the long-eared kind) and Australian Open is selling championship points as an NFT accompanied by the physical tennis ball (in an attractive, handcrafted case, apparently.) It’s getting pleasantly hot out there, but we are not quite at retail level adoption – or have not been so far. That is going to be changing very quickly over the coming months, thanks to two weak signals that are very strong indeed.

Arguments over NFTs’ aesthetic appeal and social signalling value aside, two touchpoints are key to adoption and UX friction needs to be minimised in both of those for mass adoption to come running faster than a throng of Poms chasing a cheese round down a hill.

The first touchpoint is “how do I buy these things?” Right now, this means dealing with all of the intrinsic “delights” of a crypto wallet. If you have one, it probably means you’re a nerd and you find the delights actually less of a pain. For “crypto civilians” this is a major barrier to entry. Making the purchasing process simple and, ideally, dovetailed into their existing financial arrangements, will certainly entice “normal” people into the arena. (Yes, of course, one needs a wallet. The barrier to entry is the level of anxiety in setting one up.)

The second is “what do I do with it?” Yes, you can put the picture up as your social media mug, assuming the NFT you’ve bought is of the profile picture kind. But that functionality is not going to get millions of people excited, and getting millions of people excited about NFTs is the generally accepted definition of “mass adoption.” (Plus, profile pictures are, really, merely scratching the surface of what NFTs can be used for.) Of course, if your NFT happens to be of the Aussie Open-winning backwards lob by Djokovic (OK, maybe not Djokovic) then in all honesty, displaying it to your mates on a phone screen is not going to have quite the intended show-off value.

Around a month ago, as I was setting up Urban Symphony, I described the project to my friend Matthias Röder – musician and culture-tech entrepreneur. He got it immediately, and remarked in passing “I’d love to throw that on my big-ass TV and just immerse myself in the projection.” Of course he would, and that is indeed the intended use case for the art, if I may mix vocabularies from the worlds of art and business.

And so, to the two very strong weak signals. Coinbase has just partnered up with MasterCard to enable customers to purchase NFTs with their credit cards and Samsung has announced that a number of its 2022 smart TVs will have NFT functionality built in. So, yeah, #ProbablyNothing, and Matthias will soon be able to throw Urban Symphony up on his super-sized monitor straight from his wallet.

OK, so this is going to require regular updates with those signals coming in thick and fast now. For the sake of brevity and efficiency, I’ll just be posting the links down here:

Walmart to sell virtual goods and NFTs

The US tax man has already figured out how to tax NFT-related income

The AP is launching its own photo NFT marketplace on Ethereum sidechain Polygon, which will feature Pulitzer Prize-winning shots.

Celebrities are hopping onto the NFT train

When the big consultancies write about it with an air of breathless fascination, it is “most certainly something.”

Crypto is no longer required to purchase NFTs on the world’s largest marketplace

Shopify flows merchants to sell NFTs directly through their storefronts

09 Dec

Posted at 09:55h in Uncategorized

Back in the day, when it was normal for artists to collaborate and present their work in public, and nobody carried an iPhone because they did not exist, my old pal, guitar virtuoso Nigel Gavin and I worked together on a series of gallery / festival gigs where he improvised his (awesome) guitar loops / jazzy feel / ambient music to a projection of my photographs. The result was an experience in sight and sound that took the audience on inward journeys of a meditative kind. It worked well.

Now the swelling wave of digital art is upon us. So, Nigel and I are getting the band back together and creating a new sight and sound experience, powered by NFTs, streaming technology and other such good and exciting things. The name of the project is as it was then – Urban Symphony – at which link you will find a quickly evolving project site..

(With thanks to Chris Rea for the title idea for this post..)

26 Oct

Posted at 20:23h in Uncategorized

The fabulous Stephanie McGann Jantzen is one of the leading voices in the Fireside community and it was a pleasure to chat to her about Boma Global, the Sonophilia Foundation, creativity, politics, leadership, play and the very serious role which art and the artists have to play in this, defining, moment in human history. You can pack a lot into an hour…

Have a listen HERE

15 Oct

Posted at 16:47h in Uncategorized

“To survive we need food, sex, and creativity – and you need the last one to get either of the first two, so we know which is most important!”

I did a thing with the Sonophilia Foundation. It was a lot of fun!

Check it out HERE

22 Jun

Posted at 15:11h in Uncategorized

It has been my pleasure and privilege to talk to some remarkable people in my regular Fireside chats, be it as part of the Boma Global Studio series, The Creative Farm (making sense of life through conversations with artists) and other programmes. The live recordings, warts and all, are listed HERE.

08 Oct

Posted at 19:15h in Uncategorized

There is an interesting, and growing, body of research which supports new ways of looking at recruitment. Generation X and Generation Y will select their place of employment according to how a given company ranks in terms of its social values, and whether or not the potential employer is interested in providing people with real opportunities for personal development and meaningful work. Suddenly, dance, music, visual arts and writing have taken on a meaning deeper than “merely” artistic expression. They must be part of an HR Director’s bag of tools.

Towards the end of 2016, the software maker Adobe carried out a broad survey of over 5000 adults of various ages in the US, UK, France, Japan and Germany. The aim was to measure the sentiment people had towards broadly understood creativity, especially in relation to broadly understood success. The survey, titled State of Create 2016and released under the headline “Creativity Pays” found that investing in creativity bears measurable benefits. Let’s take a closer look since the survey addressed the young, and the not so young, coming from many professions, not just the creatives.

A post on the Boma Poland blog.

01 Sep

Posted at 19:23h in Uncategorized

The first thing to realise about working in a VUCA world is that it is not possible to “deal” with a VUCA reality and continue business as usual.

That course of action will only lead to the world becoming increasingly more VUCA, and given the exponential nature of the pace of change, further attempts to “get back to normal” will only result in exponentially greater change. “Formulating strategies” and “developing tactics” to “deal with” these qualities will bring about precisely the opposite result to what is desired. The one way to create a reality which goes beyond VUCA is to work towards reducing the volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.

The world is VUCA because our systems of economics, our labour structure, environmental laws (such as they are), investment priorities and political practices have made it so – and to even begin to get a fix on a possible course of action means having to understand that all of those vectors are intimately connected. We have been living under the mistaken impression that we could compartmentalise them – management over here, politics there, healthcare around the corner and income disparity way over the horizon. It has been possible to live under that impression because all of those pots had been on a slow simmer, and appeared unrelated. As a whole, the world may be getting richer but over the last decade income disparity has exploded leading to both stunning misery and resulting social unrest. Climate change has finally pierced the comfortable veil of the world’s middle classes (such as they remain) when deadly storms and floods have become recognised as parts of a pattern and not isolated “natural disasters.” Hundreds of thousands of people have been escaping regions of the planet where it is no longer possible to make a living and soon it will be hard to even stay alive. Environmental degradation and the immediate influence of man’s encroachment into wilderness are now playing themselves out with COVID-19.

READ MORE on the Boma Poland blog