Welcome to the Blender

We are facing huge change - but we've faced huge change before. And even if the economy is slowing, it's still enormous and full of opportunity. The future belongs to those of us who accept that things will be different and refuse to play the recession game.

We are in the midst of a set of unprecedented changes that are reshaping our world and which will leave us living in different ways. Things like the global credit crunch, global warming, the spike in worldwide food prices, the spike in oil prices, the spike in commodity prices, war and instability in the Caucasus, technology as a source of social leverage, the dismantling of privacy by Governments and technology, the attrition (in the West) of traditional civil liberties, the growth of China, India, Brazil and Russia, the accelerating erosion of the social contract, the rise of liability litigation and consequent growth of cotton-wool living, the cult of celebrity, increasingly voracious 24-hour multiplatform media, the democratic deficit, nanotechnology, genetic technology, the Aids pandemic, the emasculation of antibiotics, the loss of the idea of public service, famine in Africa - any one of these issues will change how we live.

In combination, well...let's just admit that the law of unintended consequences will apply exponentially. Everything is in the blender, and we don't know what will come out. So that makes many people unhappy and uncomfortable.

But it was ever thus. Sixty years ago, we were climbing out of the abyss of the second world war, the cold war had turned frosty with the Berlin blockade and airlift and (here in the UK) we were hosting the Olympics, and launching the National Health Service. Change.

Forty years ago, we had students rioting in the streets around the World, the Vietnam War, the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, drug culture, the start of civil rights marches in Northern Ireland, the Nigeria - Biafra civil war, the birth pangs of modern feminism and the permissive society.

Twenty-five years ago, we still had the cold war and tactical nukes in Europe, we had boom-bust economics (but we were used to it), we had constant inflation, we had war in the Middle East, we had personal computers and computers in businesses, a few people had mobile phones, we started getting junk mail, we had Japanese industrial quality, we were recovering from race riots in the streets, we had Princess Diana, CNN was still new, we had continued social scandals, we had microprocessor technology, we had drug trials and a new 'cure for cancer' every other week, we had STDs and HIV, we were still aware of the thalidomide scandal and no-one I knew would stand for public office and we didn't trust anyone who did (Jeffrey Archer, Jonathan Aitken, Neil Hamilton, anyone?)

The point is this: at any time in history from the fourteenth century onwards, the nature of human society has always been unstable. The macro factors in our lives - environmental factors, politics, society and technology - have all changed our lives in a complex minuet that carries on continuously and will continue to do so.

We have adapted - and people have thrived. In absolute terms, I will contend that more people are better off, have more opportunities, and live longer now than in any time in history (and yes, I know that there are many millions of people still living Hobbesian lives and that none of us should stop striving to help them, but my point still stands).

We should not be surprised by this: the defining characteristic of Homo Sapiens is our ability to adapt and shape our environment to our purposes - to think about our situation and then to take steps to bring it under our control. And every change offers a new opportunity to do so.

And when billions of people are faced with new circumstances, that's billions of people looking for and taking opportunities to bring their lives under more control. Some will fail - but many more will succeed.

So let's accept that we are all in the blender and that we all have to live with change. There is no point, therefore, in getting unhappy about it. The trick, instead, is to work out how best to live with it, or better, take advantage of it.

As a friend of mine pointed out to me the other day while we were talking about the economy, "Recession? That's just a six months of negative growth. The economy has stopped growing for a while, that's all. It's still going, and it's still huge and it's still full of opportunity."

If you think of the economy as an elephant - then my business, your business or any else's business is just flea on that elephant. Does it matter to the flea if the elephant is a bit fatter or a bit thinner? Not really. The flea can still thrive.

The good folks at BNI have got the idea. That's their badge at the top. An excellent philosophy and one that all of us should adopt.

Mike

Make Yourself Lucky

Luck happens when you do the right things.

The law of unintended consequences states that often the biggest outcomes of our actions are those we did not foresee. One example is NATO's failure to keep the peace in the Balkans ten years ago that led to today's glut of guns used by Europe's criminal underworld. McDonald's foray into salads that unfortunately drew attention to the difference between McDonald's normal fare and 'healthy' food is another. The law of unintended consequences is usually taken to be a bad thing.

When we look at people who think themselves lucky, however, much the same thing seems to be going on. But instead of a negative, it's a positive. Luck happens because people put themselves in situations that maximise the chance of a good outcome - even if they cannot predict what that outcome will be or how it will happen.

As an example, I was at a business networking breakfast yesterday as a guest of the inestimable Mr Graham. This session was very structured, very focused and worked spectacularly well. I was interested in finding potential partners - people implementing change (IT suppliers, for instance) who might need some extra firepower to make the change succeed. And lo and behold, sitting beside me was a leading supplier of software to small-to-medium-sized businesses.

What I wasn't expecting was someone from a prestigious language skills and translation company who also wanted to discuss working together, or my being able to think about new marketing opportunities through conversation with the director of a very high quality communications company.

And because we were talking together, I heard that the IT company and the communications company wanted to find actors as high-quality resources for telesales campaigns - and my sister is an actress and a member of London's oldest co-operative agency for actors, so I put them in touch.

Lucky to meet these people? You bet. But I - and more particularly, they (because they do this every week, and I was just a visitor) - got lucky because we were clear about what we wanted and put ourselves in a situation where this kind of outcome was possible.

The same thing applies to change. Nothing is more corrosive to a change programme than cynicism. Cynics set an implicit expectation of failure. And given that we all know that in business, as in life, you get what you pay attention to, if we expect bad things then bad things we will get. I'm not saying that cynicism creates bad luck, but it makes it much easier.

Wouldn't it be great to have lucky projects instead? Yes? So how would we do that?

First thing - don't debate with the company pessimists, ignore them. Don't talk, act. Get your good folks together (the 'Company Optimists') and be really clear about the things you want to happen. With them, identify events, or circumstances or beliefs that might make these things possible or more likely.

After that it's simple. Do what you can to make these events, circumstances and beliefs happen. You can't be sure that any single thing will guarantee the outcome, but do enough of the right things and the rights things will happen.

If you do this at the start of every project (or better yet, at the start of every week), I guarantee your change project will start being much, much luckier in ways that no-one can predict. And what's more - it'll be a damn sight more enjoyable journey.

- Mike