”Weather passes, weather comes,
All is old and new;
What’s wrong and what’s right
Thou wilt ask and judge;
Hope not and fear not,
What’s wave as wave passes;
If it calls you, if it calls you,
Thou art cold to all.
(Gloss, Mihai Eminescu)
It’s the end of the year and, as most of us are probably in the habit of doing, we look back at what has been and look forward to what could be. December is a month in which we are like the god Janus.
Janus was one of the oldest deities in Roman mythology. After his death, he was depicted with two opposing faces: one looking forward, the other looking back. He was the god of the door, of celebrations and rites of passage and of transitional phenomena.
With one face turned towards the past and one looking towards the future, we analyse, project, make personal and professional plans, in the companies where we are.
But the context in which we operate is quite challenging, uncertain, volatile, sometimes hallucinatory (“hallucinate” has been designated the word of the year 2023, after the term got an additional definition related to the production of false information by artificial intelligence (AI)).
Experts and researchers are striving to unravel the uncertain territory of the contemporary world. Pandemics, the ‘work from home’ or ‘from anywhere’ movements, ‘quiet quitting’, corporate efforts to ensure diversity and inclusion, the war in Ukraine, then the war between Israel and Gaza, global warming and its effects, the erosion of trust in the institutions that govern continents, countries, declining purchasing power, so many different generations with such different needs in the workplace, make predictions less than accurate.
There is talk of BANI, a term that replaces VUCA (or D-VUCA-D). The acronym used until recently stood for: Disruption – Volatility – Uncertainty – Complexity – Ambiguity – Diversity.
An increasingly chaotic world
BANI is a term introduced by American futurist Jamais Cascio in his essay “Facing the Age of Chaos” and describes reality in an increasingly chaotic world, a kind of Vuca on steroids.
The acronym is composed of:
Brittle – Fragility goes beyond volatility; it refers to the likelihood of sudden, unexpected shocks, the destruction of a seemingly stable system, which can have domino effects.
Anxious – Fragility comes with feelings of helplessness, fear, rigidity; fake news, intentions to spread certain information to scare people, lead to increased anxiety.
Non-linear – Non-linearity means unpredictability, variability. No more talk of cause and effect, at least this type of mechanism is no longer easily visible. We can no longer say that a particular action is good or bad in the short term. A decision that may seem legitimate immediately may turn out in the long term to have totally inappropriate and undesirable effects. One only has to look at the geopolitical field, at the decisions taken over the last 15 years at the global level, to realise that it is becoming difficult to say immediately what the long-term impact of the action will be. I am talking about wars, invasions that may have seemed one way at one time and turned out to be quite another over time.
Incomprehensible – How much can the human mind comprehend? Complexity, the plethora of information, of events, makes it difficult for the human mind to find a right path, to keep itself in balance, to make sense, to be in the flow. FOMO (fear of missing out) can take hold of individuals’ minds, which of course leads to increased anxiety.
What to do?
Here are some ideas, some starting points.
As an individual:
Develop critical thinking
This helps to check, multiply and then select information sources more carefully. It is important to ask what the purposes of those who are passing on certain information are, what is their ‘Why?’
Continuous education – you can’t develop critical thinking if you don’t educate yourself continuously.
I remind you of a principle from the book by Tony Hsieh, founder of Zappos: personal improvement by 1% every day. Here’s what that principle is: if on January 1 you have $100 and every day you add 1% to the previous day’s amount, at the end of the year you’ll have almost $3,800.
Someone more critical will say that’s impossible in the area of individual development. Possibly at some point we will stop. Possibly we don’t grow that much in a year. But better we stop halfway and pick up at some point than not start at all.
The need to be relevant in the labour market.
Companies are hiring younger people. If you’re over 45, it will be hard to find a job. Studies show that between someone with 20 years’ experience and someone with 6 years’ experience, most companies choose the latter. Why? Perhaps greater flexibility and adaptability, different salary expectations, greater openness to learning, greater relevance, especially in the context of the digitalisation of companies.
Cultivating relationships with others.
I recall the longest Harvard study on what makes people happy. At the top of the list is the quality of relationships with others. The hybrid or even online-only work environment doesn’t help in this respect at all. So a high degree of intentionality in this regard helps.
What companies could do
Continuously invest in people development, from individual contributors to top management.
Managers at all levels need to be supported in this development. You cannot increase productivity, turnover, profitability, revenue per employee or other performance indicators if you are not relevant, if you are not constantly searching, developing, if you do not become like the snake that leaves behind its shredded skin and grows a new one with which to face life. Some skills need to be adjusted. I would add a flat here: we adapt, we learn new things, we add skills, but values, ethics, principles, need to be non-negotiable.
Invest in digitization.
Here is a trend that will grow, we cannot oppose it. There are European funds for this. It is amazing how few companies in Romania are open to these issues. Perhaps an equally relevant direction here would be digital education. You may say that the generations now entering the labour market do not need this because they were born in the middle of the technological revolution. But let’s not forget that at the moment there are several generations with very different digital exposure and know-how, and the average digital literacy in our country is still quite low.
Have or develop the exercise of strategic thinking and rethinking.
I don’t remember the general saying that no strategy can withstand the first cannon shot. It’s important to strategize, but it’s vital that the people who are responsible for making the strategy and implementing it think strategically. This means that after they have thought about what and how they will do in the coming year, if they have to, if geopolitical, socio-economic conditions demand it, they should change their minds and adapt, look for other ways to achieve their objectives.
To have an adapted policy on diversity and inclusion.
I mean diversity in all its aspects: gender, race, age, way of thinking.
Take the example of generational diversity.
There is a lot of talk about the challenges that Generation Z brings to employers. Young people want flexible working hours, time for many other activities in addition to work, flexibility of working hours and location, they want to know that the employer respects the environment, diversity. Of course, we are talking about people in the aesthetic stage of their existence, as Kirkegaard called it; it remains to be seen what their needs will be when they move to the ethical stage, when they will have responsibilities not only towards themselves but also towards another person with whom they form a couple, possibly towards their child/children.
At the same time, it is also good for organisations to take into account the needs of Generation X, who make up a large percentage of the workforce and who, in 10 years’ time, will be thinking about retirement, about how to remain relevant in the context of increasing life expectancy, decreasing government capacity to provide pensions for large numbers of people. On a related subject, I heard an economist on TV the other day saying that “Romania is getting older faster than it is getting richer”.
Mentoring initiatives.
Companies might think about how they can introduce mentoring initiatives so that those with a lot of experience can support young people to become better as quickly as possible. In Western Europe and the USA there are many initiatives in companies where people close to or after retirement have been invited to mentor employees who wanted to enter such a development programme. I know the example of a large FMCG company that has implemented such a programme in several developed countries; it has not yet succeeded in less developed countries such as Romania. Should it be a mindset? Or education and attitudes to education? The outdated way of thinking that after college we don’t learn?
Beyond all this…
I have a wish for every individual and every company, a wish that I have heard from very old people in the neighbourhood and in the block: “Sănătate!”, which means ”health” in Romanian.
Oh, how that eulogy annoyed me! It seemed to me that you can wish for something else, love, money, happiness, lots of oxytocin, but health is for old age.
You realise it’s what matters most only when you no longer have it and realise that anything else is possible if you get well.
So, HEALTH for every company:
People’s physical and mental health.
Financial health – what desired profitability means.
The health (mind and values) of the country’s and the world’s greatest, to find purpose beyond themselves, to respect each other, to see beyond the blinders that absolute power puts on, even to the point of blindness. To be vocal when it comes to laws in the country; laws have a major impact in attracting investors. Laws and tax incentives can influence changing mindsets about how we prepare for our future financially, how we treat our elderly, how we relate to work and all of these have an impact on business.
The relational health of employees at all levels. I want a world where trusting people is higher, taking responsibility for mistakes, forgiveness (he who has never been wrong should be the first to throw stones) are healthy habits, honesty is a sine qua non.
And, of course, healthy thinking, both for companies and individuals, because critical thinking that is always exercised is an unbeatable asset.
You stay cool,
if it calls to you;
What’s wave, as wave goes by,
Hope not and fear not;
They ask thee, and they judge
What is evil and what is good;
All are old and new:
The time is passing, the time is coming.”
via: Revista Cariere