CHAPTER 1 THE STATE THE WORLD IS IN (SPOILER: IT’S A MESS)

Anybody who’d have interviewed Russell Ackoff when he was still alive would certainly have stumbled into a depression afterwards. Ackoff was a celebrated systems thinker, scientist, architect and an American organizational theorist and Professor Emeritus of Management Science at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Had you asked him what state the world is in today, he’d have treated you to his standard reply: “It’s a total mess!” Exclamation point included. Today, thirty years further down the line, the consensus is exactly the same – except maybe Ackoff used to be all alone in thinking the world was a mess but he has now been joined by a lengthening parade of colleagues nodding in agreement.

The world is a mess. But the point of stating so in the very beginning of this book isn’t to lure you into a depression. Au contraire. Looking at the world around us, we see things that are a mess: yes. We also see that many things have improved. But mostly, we see how things could be even better. Much better. We see potential.

What would depress us, is to see all this potential forever untapped. However, unleashing the potential requires us to first understand the mess we’re in. Allow us to untangle the mess’ many tentacles and define what ‘better’ looks like before we begin to look at possible answers.

Tech-no-logic

Since 1995, every decade has come with a wave of change infused by new technological developments, kick-started by the global breakthrough of the internet. We found ourselves trying to navigate the digitization decade when Facebook, Twitter and the like made us rethink communication altogether. Next, the transformation wave had companies question their value proposition and invent entirely new business models. Technology changed how we dress, move, communicate, eat, sleep, get sick, get better or get old. Talk about a driver of change!

The tricky thing with technology is, for every solution we create, we get a handful of new problems back in return, unwanted side-effects so to say. Take the car. A genius solution to the question of mobility: it’s faster than horses, allows you to travel without getting wet and definitely produces less manure. None of the engineers could, of course, predict CO2 emissions, traffic jams, car accidents and sad coffee poured in gas stations around the world.

The problem doesn’t lie in the intention, which was to create a better means of transport. The problem hides, quietly, in the result that only appears once the solution becomes a success. So, while technology allows us to leap forward and advance at a faster pace than ever before, these kinds of unwanted side-effects are precisely what adds to the world being a mess.

Back when social media was still shiny and new, it made us feel enthusiastic about the possibilities it opened up. Today more and more questions arise about the omnipresence of social media and the perverse effects it might have. A decade has passed now and while apps have made our lives easier in a wide range of departments, many aspects of new technologies feel complex and hard to grasp. Artificial intelligence, robotics, cloud and quantum computing are all forces which drive up the speed of change. Part of their appeal and their speed is in their DNA, which is programmed to join forces and grow exponentially.

Timing is everything

If time were a currency, we’d all be bankrupt. It is not and we are not, but that shouldn’t make us underestimate the immense impact of time on every fiber of society and business. We are in a constant race against time. Technological possibilities, developed and rolled out at a crazy pace by disruptive, tech-first companies, are nearly impossible to keep up with for most traditional businesses. Adopting new technologies is no longer a one-man job, if it ever was. The clock speed of companies today is slower than the market and will further slow down.

On the one hand, there is a gap between the possibilities offered by technology and the actual readiness of companies to adapt and adopt. On the other hand, there is a gap between the solutions created and our ability to prevent their unwanted side-effects. Both need to be bridged, as they too add to our feeling of temporal bankruptcy. When, from the solutions we create, bigger problems arise than those we originally wanted to solve, we are officially wasting our time. And we didn’t have that much left anyway.

We want it all and we want it now

The old ways of big companies dictating the market pace and consumer needs like a drill sergeant addresses his platoon are over. Along with smart technologies, the smart consumer has arisen. While we’re startled by the speed at which new technologies enter our lives, we cannot live without them anymore. And we don’t want to either. Why would we accept disruption, unwanted side-effects and radical change if we can’t benefit from the initial solutions first? Instant gratification and seamless experiences are the minimum conditions we want met.

We don’t want a car, we want to get from A to B, fast. We don’t need a light-bulb, just give us light. Because we know it’s technologically possible, we won’t settle for less. Mobility, travel, payment… We expect solutions in the shape of a package deal, not a single product from a single company. We seek unburdening, ultra-convenience. And frankly, we don’t care which company services us.

THE SMART CONSUMER WANTS

No man is an island

If you’d zoom out a little, you will see another challenge coming at us today that is infused by technology. The threat of disruptive tech in the shape of a few small and young companies and many big all-in solution providers comes at us from both the West and the East. Europe is squeezed in between forces that drive up the pace, make up the rules of the game and have found ways to better service the new consumer.

Today, the European continent is much too scattered to play along with the big guys. Every industry today, be it food, pharma or automotive, is under pressure from the likes of Amazon, Airbnb, Uber, Facebook, Google or Ali-baba.

Since writing this book in quarantine during the global COVID-19 pandemic, it has become pointedly clear that health is no longer a subject to be ignored. Being as interconnected as we are today, we cannot unsee the fact that the world is one system. If your body isn’t in the best shape it can easily be blown away by a flu. Other systems, too, have a level of immunity. Take a company for example, if it’s up to par, it will absorb change and take any setback. But a system whose resilience is feeble will be shaken to the core by global or local challenges. We have experienced the effects of living in an unhealthy system first-hand with the corona crisis. It could only hit us this hard because the systemic immunity of our world was at a low point.

As humans, we feel a natural resentment towards complexity or complex systems. (Even systems in general, since their complexity is what makes them a system.) The sheer immensity of their scope and impact causes a cognitive closure in those of us who can’t keep up. This reflex acts much like a defense mechanism: if the problem at hand is too big to handle, we shrug, turn away in denial, and fool ourselves into thinking we can opt-out. This is an unfortunate paradox. There is no opt-out and our inability to take action will only slow us down more. We don’t even want to go into the scenario where we slow down so much that technology actually passes us by. Nor do we want to think about our inability to react as the global system we are. It will cause our vitals to shut down one by one.

Wicked

Analyzing the world today requires boldness and a sharp mind, especially when facing ‘wicked problems’; problems that span countries, industries and stakeholders and don’t have a clear root cause, nor a clear solution. The type of problems that make up this mess we’ve been on about. Take climate change. It is a global issue that impacts households, companies and institutions alike. We already have a lot of scientific data pointing us to the root cause of this phenomenon’s damage, yet there is still controversy about the exact drivers, their impact and how to turn the tide.

Identifying problems is necessary, but tends to isolate them, extricate them from the complex system that is the world, in which problems are interconnected. Some solutions even conflict with each other, or – and this is typical for a wicked problem – have a negative impact on other challenges, like social inequality or unemployment. Despite these intricacies, we’ve made progress in compartmentalizing problems, allowing us to clearly distinguish their drivers, effects, solutions and actors. This has uncovered another distinguishing feature of systems: they are man-made. From pollution to the financial system, we have built the monster ourselves. The good news is that if we built it, we can manage it.

However, individuals cannot manage wicked, all-encompassing problems all by themselves. We are powerless on our own, as wicked problems are far-stretching, collective problems in need of collective solutions. You can’t fix climate change by becoming a vegetarian, especially not if you’re the only one. You can’t cure cancer through a fundraiser if you’re the only one donating money. And you can’t fix the question of privacy in the digital age by simply not using any social media, while all the others still do. If you look at it from a metaperspective, the fact that small and traditional players in Europe are competing with each other, is pure madness. We are much too small and slow to operate as silos, throwing hurdles at one another.

The same goes for our approach to wicked problems. Climate change, inequality or health care can’t be contained within national borders or continents. A man in China makes the wrong choice in eating a bat sandwich and the entire world goes into lock-down as a result. The connectedness of all nations and the people living in them is a fact of life. To ignore this and play solo can endanger the existence of our species. This means that it is beneficial for both companies and governments to collaborate on a global scale if they want to be part of a future worth fighting for.