The subject for our blog posts and newsletter this month is “Prediction and Foresight.” This could certainly be considered a hot topic right now—as the top example, nobody saw the pandemic coming, or the radical changes in the business climate that came with it. We have an environment right now that is very hard to predict, and possessing ways to predict events and changes, both positive and negative, is certainly something that all businesses need.
Even now, as we are beginning to come back out of the pandemic, we can see from day to day, week to week, things change so rapidly that we seem to go from one crisis to the point of relief—and then head right into another crisis.
At the end of 2019, business and commerce's short-term future was looking extremely optimistic. We were looking forward to 2020 with great anticipation, and we all thought we were in for a truly banner year.
But then, out of nowhere, the pandemic sprung up. As covid-19 began to spread, there was definite worry in the business world, especially as news of the pandemic affected financial markets and, by trickle-down, many others. That was one change, and many of us took measures to deal with it.
Just as we evolved measures to deal with news of the pandemic spreading, travel between the US and Europe was temporarily curtailed. For the first time, then, the pandemic directly impacted some businesses. That was yet another change that we took on and made allowances for.
Just as we were taking that change in, yet another hit: we were all suddenly living in quarantine. Workplaces closed. Restaurants shut down. Movie theaters were temporarily dark. Companies that managed to continue in business had to adapt to having many of their employees operating from home.
In April or May of 2020, it began to look like we would be able to open back up and have things return somewhat to normal. We began to be hopeful that relief was in sight. But just as quickly, covid-19 numbers shot out the roof, and everything that had started to open back up shut very firmly down again.
In each of these instances, we went from crisis to some degree of relief, and then right into another crisis.
The shutdown, for many of us, held fast for nearly all of 2020. Working from home, wearing masks and social distancing became “the new normal.” Adapting to it was what we all did, and there were even businesses that sprung up to take advantage of it. While this temporarily stable environment was not a relief, it was at least a stability…although we hoped that it would change as soon as possible.
On a positive note, as 2021 started, areas of the world did begin to open up again. Then many of us, still a bit gun-shy from the earlier time things were going to open up and then did not, tentatively began to become hopeful. Another relief…and maybe this one is for real?
Crisis, relief, crisis, relief. We now come to the point where all of us need to predict at least some of these changes before they happen and take measures to adapt to them and survive them.
It may be true that no one could have predicted the pandemic itself. But let’s build up our skills and forecasting abilities to the point where we can predict other crises that might affect us, to be able to survive them and even thrive in them.
In this newsletter, we are going to get to specifics on how we might do this.
