The Weekly Distillation No.20
War; Institutions; Entrepreneurs; Social Media; Posthuman; Legacy Thinking; Plutonium; Leadership; Coronavirus; Whisky
Photo by Brendan Church on Unsplash
This newsletter is written for entrepreneurial organisational leaders and aims to help identify themes of our current context and provide questions, tips and tools that can help in navigating these times.
“We’re the product. Our attention is the product being sold to advertisers.” - The Social Dilemma
Skim it in a minute
Thematic insights from the news and the web to help you think about potential future and current contexts and how to be productive, creative and successful in your work now
Coronavirus
Photo by Peter Forster on Unsplash
I remember when we used to think 2014, 2016 and 2018 were grim years. 2020 is the year that just keeps on taking. Are you feeling exhausted? Maybe you and everyone else. I didn’t leave my house at all from Tuesday morning this week until Saturday morning. I have a good friend who went eight weeks in a row without leaving his house between Monday and Friday. It’s not even risk - it’s the pace of work having accelerated incredibly, as well as having nowhere to go to and do that work. Time for daytime naps to come back.
Five thoughts on how to approach risk currently.
The UK figures keep getting worse. Conversations are shifting to death figures over case rates, never a good sign. There is a lot of speculation on a one or two week ‘circuit breaker’ where the country is forced into complete lockdown over the October school holidays. The problem with this is the school holidays vary by region. And is two weeks really enough to break the trend?
Globally, GDP has fallen by $3.5 trillion. That is about $500 per person.
This week I was asked to speak in a closed-door call to a group of people in their 20s and 30s and talk about leadership in these times and what 2021 might look like versus 2020 (haha). I talked a bit about rhythms and practical applications, but the macro themes that stand out for me right now are:
The bifurcation and the K shaped economy - some parts of the economy are seeing record sales, are hiring and running flat out. Others are collapsing, restructuring, stressed out and even closed down.
The hidden problems of the collapse of our social networks - we’re rapidly losing our friendships, leading to a rise in loneliness
Productivity has risen, but so has the pace of work. meetings are shorter but people are working longer hours. Planning cycles are now 90 days.
The digitalisation of anything isn’t going to go into reverse. Distance as a barrier has gone. If you provide any form of content or service that can be digital, your market got 100 times bigger and your competitor pool is now every single company in the world in your industry
The debt burden for Governments means that their ability to provide solutions to injustice is very limited for the next decade. Charities are battling funding challenges in most nations. So where do the solutions come from? The private sector? Social enterprise?
With an asset inflation bubble you can expect a rise in major fraud cases - there’s just too much money sloshing around. Integrity in leadership is critical.
Political division, authoritarianism, interventionism and manipulation - this grows regardless of Brexit, Trump, Hong Kong or Covid
The rapid spread of movements - #metoo, #Arabspring, #blacklivesmatter, #plandemic, #Icantbreathe, #qanon, - what does it look like to think well in the face of these and jump on board with those that bring truth and stand up to the falsehoods in others. Where can you support and create these, where might you be under threat from them and what does it look like to stand up to a movement?
How technology is changing our world
This week my wife and I watched The Social Dilemma. I don’t think I heard anything I hadn’t heard previously but it was a good reminder of the dark side of social media.
Businesses and Politicians desire capturing an encoded memory - which is best driven by triggering an emotion. You can’t trigger an emotion unless you garner attention, which is in decline. You now have just 2 seconds to capture attention. Social Media broke Britain? A bit harsh - but it definitely exacerbated some pretty negative trends.
Amazon created a flying camera for security in your home. Given the poor cyber security of most home protection and home linked devices, this feels like a recipe for disaster. America and Europe are waking up to how many governments around the world use social media - as a weapon against their citizens. It’s all going to be ok though because now you can binge watch TV with your friends.
Changing culture by creating it
Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash
Twenty two months ago, I started a side project with a friend. Creo exists to help Christian entrepreneurs (the definition of a micro-niche!) create and scale impactful ventures. We’re now annualising six figure income, operating in Myanmar, India, Uganda, Tanzania, South Africa, Qatar, US, Canada, England and Scotland. We’ve trebled in a year and are seeing strong growth as a result of rapid digitisation and rapid pivoting and innovation by entrepreneurs.
I’m currently coaching ten people as part of Creo and it’s one of the most fun parts of each week. I believe that we change culture mostly by creating new things, not by changing existing institutions (although that does also impact culture, just not to the same extent). I’m currently coaching entrepreneurs who are building:
A UK digital edtech platform for teaching and learning classical music composition, broadening and deepening the access to the art of creating quality, beauty and knowledge
A non profit in a poor township in South Africa that is tackling high unemployment, imprisonment and addiction through building character and creating vocational skills of carpentry
A non profit providing a route to market and employment for low income people in Northern India
A UK charity tackling addiction and homelessness on the streets of Glasgow
A web design and branding studio in India seeking to bring great design to the market but also to create opportunities locally to enter the design workplace.
A process automation business in Kenya
A Kenya-based leadership development consultancy for business leaders
A UK charity seeking to provide upstream support for families to avoid children going into the care system
A UK business seeking to create a range of products that will tackle single use plastics and provide employment for disadvantaged communities
A UK publishing business that seeks to train new people in the industry, create high quality products and honour the authors in the way that it works
These people are my heroes right now and it’s a privilege to get to help them in a small way.
Entrepreneurship remains overhyped at points. One of my friends wrote a good article recently on the need for more creators, not more heavily venture backed 1 in 10,000 unicorns.
This is what it feels like when you find product-market fit. The holy grail of any entrepreneur.
The rising geopolitical threat
In the US, the election mania continues to rise, are these the last six weeks of American democracy to are American Militias going to rise up after the election and launch a civil war?
I listened to a fascinating podcast in the last few weeks on China vs the US by a conservative American think tank. In it, they talked of China’s increasing focus being to dominate the standards setting bodies of the global system. Australia remains heavily reliant on China for export market opportunities (mining, agriculture) but remains a heavily relucant trading partner, with more signs of the relationship fraying. One of the key global narratives post the election in the US will be is China a strategic competitor or a Clear and Present Danger.
In India, Amnesty International is stopping operations due to opposition from the Government.
In Europe, you have the challenges in Belarus, Putin’s aspiration to influence the US election, the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the potential collapse of any hopes of a trade deal with the UK and EU, and the Home Office planning to ship migrants to volcanic islands in the South Atlantic.
One writer believes that the collapse of legacy thinking is behind all of this, and that the 2020s and 2030s are seeing the end of an era. Similar to the fourth turning theory I wrote about previously. Time to build some new institutions? Or build and rebuild the existing ones?
A long read for the weekend
It’s raining outside, it’s October and it’s Saturday. So instead of a long read, here’s 57 minutes on a posthuman future. What’s the definition of a human? When do you become a machine? Is there a point where this integration of technology goes beyond the pale?
The other weekly distillation
“the action of purifying a liquid by a process of heating and cooling.”
In the south west of Scotland, near the Solway Firth and the border of Scotland and England lies the town of Annan. This is the town where Thomas Carlyle was schooled, where the De Brus family made their home (who later were known as the Bruce family, hence Robert the Bruce). In the 18th century it was home to Robert Burns, Scotland’s poet and exciseman for the Crown.
And yet to me, this place has a different narrative. My mother’s side of the family came from just outside Annan and I spent many days visiting relatives, working here and playing. My Grandparents had acquired a Georgian House, built in the 1820s and came with a farm and forestry and fishing rights in the River Annan (and an amazing island for exploring). Its 45 acres of secluded woodland grounds were also next to Chapelcross Nuclear Power Station, now decommissioned, whose primary purpose was to produce weapons grade plutonium. They had the most amazing cooling towers there - the explosions to blow them up were pretty spectacular.
By the time I reached my teens the family house had been turned into a small hotel. Sadly it was later sold, and I believe has now been allowed to lapse into a really poor state. It remains a memory of a happy part of my childhood.
I was therefore very interested to see the resurrection of the Annandale Distillery within half a mile of Warmanbie. Built in 1836 by George Donald, bought by Johnnie Walker in 1893 (for £2,000) and closed in 1924 (when they decided to focus on the Johnnie Walker blend - that worked out well for them!). The Thomson family acquired the site in 2007 and apparently after spending a healthy £10.5m have nursed it back into fine fettle. It began distilling in 2014, one of the first of the new distilleries to reach this milestone, and its first whisky hit the market in 2018. There is a strong link to Burns in the branding (Man O’Words), and the owners also own The Globe Inn in Dumfries, which has been providing Burns and more with drink since 1610 (that’s the year, not the time). Imagine starting a pub business that was still going 410 years later….
I’ve not yet had the privilege to visit but it’s on the bucket list. In the meantime, you can acquire their malts in their online shop or at Master of Malt.
In the space of half a mile you have tranquil fishing and a legacy of children playing, a whisky distillery and weapons grade plutonium, as well as the history of Burns, Bruce & Carlyle. If that’s not a recipe for brand building, I don’t know what is. It’s great to see these buildings restored to what they used to be.