Pub. 1 2020 Issue 3

5 ISSUE 3 | 2020 In Uncertain Times, You Have More Control Than You Realize BY DANIEL BURRUS T raditionally, when an individual or organization fears change, it has something to do with digital technology disrupting their status quo. Will something autonomous replace my job? What if something is created that puts me completely out of business? Aside from digital transformation, another wave of fear comes from new, fast-moving competition and the threat of loss of relevance and market share. I have discussed at length these fears and many more, and how to become more anticipatory, paying attention to the Hard Trends that are shaping the future both inside and outside of your industry, how to see disruption and change before they strike, and most importantly how to identify and act on the opportunities they represent. Few would have thought in the early stages of 2020, our economy would be in a downturn, we would be instantly converted to remote work or, unfortunately for some, laid off, and we would be quarantined to our homes due to a global pandemic. Real-World Dystopia Whether you’re in business or not, ever since the Great Recession about a decade ago, it seems the majority of individuals will not admit to their tendency to sleep with one eye open on the economy. This “hope for the best but expect the worst” attitude can be useful, but it can also be dangerous, both for your health and well-being, and for your entrepreneurial ability to see and act on the many new opportunities disruptive change presents. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has, to a great extent, suppressed our positive, innovative mentality as a species, and has sent many of us into a primordial tailspin of trying to get back to the way things were — the status quo. Due to fear, we are finding ourselves in a real-world dystopian society, where individuals buy in bulk unnecessarily, prepping for the end of the world. The pandemic will end and we will recover to another new version of normal. What if we made the new post-pandemic normal much better than what we had before? Is that possible? It sure is, if we get past fear and reacting to the next disruptive problem and become anticipatory, using the power of disruptive change to create a better tomorrow for all. Keep in mind that while times are highly uncertain in an all-encompassing way, this global disruption on a massive scale is also creating new ways to have a positive, significant impact on the present and the future. Going Remote, No Matter Who A global pandemic, shutdown, and quarantine are very similar to digital disruption: They know no boundaries and will disrupt every industry there is. However, what this pandemic disruption is showing us is that many organizations are quickly shifting to reposition their workforce to new roles or remote roles by digitally banding together and working efficiently from a distance. It is easy to consider going remote when you have a desk job or a career that is already rooted in flex-time industries. However, what about those that don’t have it as easy? Virtual reality and augmented reality (VR and AR) are two technologies that have started gaining traction in recent years, given the exponential changes of the Three Digital Accelerators of bandwidth, computing power, and processing power, which I have discussed since the early 1980s. Now more than ever, we can see industries — which ordinarily are unable to go remote because they were based on Continued on page 6