About the expert: Pavel Luksha, professor of practice at the Moscow School of Management Skolkovo, an expert in the field of skills and models of education of the future.
What’s happening?
We are not dealing with the end of the world, but with a fairly common event in an era of strategic uncertainty. And, probably, in the near future (on the horizon, maybe decades), we will see such processes more than once.
The coronavirus pandemic is showing us many things in a relatively safe (compared to the really dangerous epidemics of the past) mode.
In the second wave of the Spanish flu epidemic, mortality reached 20-30%, during the plague – on average, 40-60%. In some cases, entire settlements died out completely. Compared to this, the coronavirus is the same millennial who wants to make people more responsible and draw attention to public health issues.
The current pandemic is, of course, serious, but imagine what would happen if it proceeded according to past scenarios? We should think about how prepared society is for this kind of situation (spoiler alert – not ready).
Why are we not ready?
Some believe that this pandemic caught us by surprise. Nothing like this. Many serious analysts have spoken of the possibility of repeating scenarios like SARS or other epidemics of the past.
For example, Bill Gates has repeatedly stated in his interviews that he considers global epidemics to be the most serious crisis that can truly disrupt the course of human life.
Jerome Glen, the creator of the think tank and the largest network of futurologists Millennium Project, called the spread of viruses one of the main challenges of the coming years. In his works, he called for the development of a global response plan for such situations, a different approach to vaccination, etc.
We are at the mercy of one of the “black swans” (events with low probability, but serious consequences). Unfortunately, in the decision-making system they are of a marginal nature: they try not to react to them until the very end, continuing to work in the mainstream. But it is the “black swans” that disrupt the course of people’s lives, so we must understand how to prepare for them.
We are in a normal situation in terms of people working with the future. They warn about another 15 such threats – political, economic, environmental, many of which are realized in the next 10-20 years. We are faced with the so-called “VUCA-world” or complex, indefinite world.
People often treat it as a world of surprises, but the economy has learned to adapt to many of them. At the city level, these are fires, floods, snowfalls. However, the main challenges of the XNUMXst century are global in nature.
The world is interconnected, and we live in a global economy, influencing each other.
What will happen to this global interconnectedness?
There are quite a few threats arising from it, and they are not new. For example, there has long been a refugee crisis, political, environmental, financial crises. They are global. And if the desire to separate now arises, governments around the world will face enormous resistance from the economy.
But the nature of cooperation will change. We will solve the pandemic when people learn to work quickly and together on a global scale. We have received a fully sequenced genome in the first weeks of the epidemic, and this is one of the indicators that science is already at a different stage. Several dozen laboratories around the world have launched a search for a vaccine. And there were no analogues of such a systemic reaction in the past. But here you can see that governments that are used to working within the framework of the nation are beginning to “fail”.
World science has been in cooperation mode for 300 years. It and the entire global world are developing according to the schedule, which is often called an exponent: we see how the population, world GDP and many other indicators are growing along it. This process is sometimes referred to as the “epoch of great acceleration”. It is now developing in much the same way as the coronavirus: at first a little bit, then a sharp jump. Such dynamics raises the question of the strategic stability of the model of human life on the planet.
Serious research on the so-called boundaries of the existence of mankind on the planet suggests that the balance of interaction between man and nature is disturbed. There are a lot of red zones where we will not be able to cope with the consequences, and they are primarily related to food production and our relationship with living systems.
Many researchers emphasize that the very appearance of coronavirus is a consequence of contact with living species that were previously isolated from us. The situation has changed due to the fact that we have settled and are very actively entering all the ecosystems of the planet.
What we are facing now is not just a temporary crisis. This is one of the rehearsals that show us the consequences of imbalance with the planet. And there is a possibility that in the future we will face new crises one after another, which will manifest themselves more consistently and more concisely in time.
The current situation is a kind of initiation. Tribal initiation is the transition to adulthood from childhood. Humanity, until now, has been in an immature state and has not faced the possibility of ceasing to exist on the planet. Now we are faced with a choice – either take responsibility for the consequences and act differently, or leave everything as it is, and then all the threats of the current coronavirus will seem like children’s fairy tales to us.
To what extent do we see ourselves as proactive in the future?
This is the key question facing man. The best way to predict the future is to start creating it: an active position and an attempt to program tomorrow with today’s choice and action help to change the situation. For example, those who went in for sports, strengthened their immunity, ate well and slept well, feel completely different in the current conditions. And here we choose what we want – to be sick or healthy, rich or poor.
In this sense, the question of continuous self-development is the question of our own presence in the future that we want to create.
Having gone through a series of crises, we can enter a world in which we will find other relationships with nature, the technosphere, and with each other. The creation of technologies and forms of government, the adoption of social decisions and laws – all these things can be influenced by everyone in the scale of their work, environment and family.
It is important to accept that we are entering a new reality that will be complex, uncertain, but full of possibilities. By learning to work in such conditions, we can succeed. This requires a change in approach to self-education and skills development.
How will the distribution of global competencies change?
Some skills will retain their global character, while others will become more local. For example, I think that soon the whole world will seriously discuss the issue of food security. Now in supermarkets you can find goods from all over the world, but at the same time we do not know how to fully provide for ourselves. When international supply chains are disrupted and the stability of global financial regimes is called into question, states find themselves unable to feed their citizens. Therefore, there will be a relocalization of food production. And this is good not only for the economy, but also for the environment, as many environmental experts say.
The pandemic teaches us to move towards a harmonious, more rational society. We will go in the direction of the model, which is now called “zero kilometers”, that is, zero kilometers from the place of production of products and the place of their consumption.
What competencies will be in demand in the future?
Now a very interesting process is taking place, which we sometimes call “nested doll turning inside out” (using the anecdote about Nikolai Valuev, who can assemble a nested doll in any order). The old models of education focused mainly on so-called hard skills: what am I now being paid for, what is measurable, verifiable in tests, and so on. But it turns out that most of these competencies have a relatively short lifespan. When, for example, the finance paradigm is reset in our country, cryptocurrencies, blockchains, etc. appear, a completely different circle of hard skills is born that need to be urgently mastered. And there are a huge number of such sectors.
We are entering a world where these contextual or hard, specialized skills are temporary. They are a kind of clothing that we put on, but do not wear all our lives.
Soft skills, on the other hand, allow us to adapt to different situations, and they have always been with us, we just did not think that they could be developed. These are the so-called distance skills that allow us to live our lives in a quality way.
Taking this as a new reality, we begin to look at our development in a completely different way.
What needs to be developed to be prepared for uncertainty:
- conscious control of attention.
Now, after the massive release of everything and everyone online, there are much more distractions. Those who know how to focus are already in a winning position.
- the ability to manage a life resource and show perseverance, not giving up to circumstances.
These are readiness to act, determination, initiative, openness and development orientation.
- understanding that one cannot cope with the flow of crises alone.
The ability to negotiate, show sympathy, empathize and build interpersonal connections is the main thing that helps us get through any crisis.
What is important to think about right now?
The reality around you is a subject for practice. Each of us can right now look at our life as a space for designing the future and begin to comprehend ourselves and our activities through this prism. Uncertainty can be treated as a disaster, or it can be treated as a huge number of new opportunities. If we start thinking like “people from the future”, we will see all the many options for action in the personal, family, professional sphere that fit into the logic of the new world that we are entering.
An exercise: think about what a simple practice that will qualitatively change your life, you can perform:
Write down the answers to the questions and try to implement them. These actions will place you now in the future you want to live in.
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