What ever happened to civil discourse? Where it was okay to disagree and argue in search of common ground? What ever happened to meeting in the middle?
Everything has become politicized and polarized. Facts are considered irrelevant. Science is stupid. Thinking is bad. Wealth is increasingly concentrated in the .1%.
Joseph Stieglitz talked about the dangers of the growing inequality. At some point – if not now – our systems are going to snap.
With our crumbling infrastructure – roads, healthcare, environment, education – we’re losing our edge as a great society. We’re at risk of losing our ability to innovate as country as we slide backwards with protectionism. Making it harder for talent to immigrate to the U.S. makes it harder for you to invent the next big thing if you can’t find what you need locally. And if we’re making this harder along with reducing investment in science and education, we’re hurting our ability to compete as a country going forward.
Just like in business when you lose your way, get complacent and take your eye off the proverbial ball, opportunities open for upstarts to win against you.
Also as a business, these dynamics contribute to potential instability in the markets and society that make it tough to forge a stable, competitive path forward. At the very least you need to be vigilant about your strategy and nimble in order to change course quickly when necessary. That means plans need to be more malleable and long range planning shorter.
This isn’t a political blog but I would be naive to suggest that the current climate won’t impact your business, our jobs and how we all work. That along with technology changes most everything.
How is this impacting you now? What do you see on your near term horizon? Opportunities or challenges? For some, I believe this opens up opportunities to build new businesses to address this type of climate. It’s a matter of how you look at it. I advocate though for balance in society. Stability creates the space to innovate and test and thrive.