Aside from inventing the sewing needle and shoes, humans are really different from the rest of the animal kingdom by our having “created the Plan B.” Successful people usually also have a “Plan C,” “D” and “E.”
We are hardwired to look into the future and have multiple options at our fingertips to adjust to changing situations. Other beasts of the field are hardwired to “fight” or “flee.” In the horse world, foals can stand, walk, and trot a very short time after birth. Ideally, a foal should be standing up and nursing within two hours of birth. For us, we are still flat on our backs trying to figure which way is up.
We are constantly forced to adapt to our environment using our brainpower. However, we constantly run the risk of failure because we believe that incremental rather than any sort of radical evolutionary change is better.
There’s some validity to that idea, since incremental change works well in a stable environment. When times are good, modest reform is what is needed to maintain a beneficial status quo. By that we are talking about times of economic growth and prosperity; periods characterized by high levels of stability and predictability.
Since World War 2 and in spite of the Cold War, dramatic and steady increases in terrorism and near-constant serious regional armed conflicts have been normal for 75 years. As a result, institutions—both public and private—and conventional thinking have been optimized for incremental thinking.
That is, in fact, the attitude and thinking of the political and economic elite as long as they are making money and prospering. The groupthink has become “why risk big changes when everything’s working fine?”
We know that in nature species are forced to change even genetically to a changing environment. Darwin’s finches are the embodiment of evolution. The scientist discovered that birds on various islands had different types of beaks depending on the seeds they ate. The birds with larger beaks were better at eating the large seeds than those with smaller beaks, so only the birds with larger beaks got enough food to survive, reproduce, and pass the trait of large beaks to the next generation.
Once the environment stabilizes in “the new normal,” the evolutionary pressure lets up. Therein lies the fatal problem: radical adaptation is never absolutely necessary in human organizations and conventional thinking, until it’s too late. Nobody gets fired or demoted for agreeing to do more of what has already failed.
The administration responded quickly with the “Covid-19 Inter-Agency Task Force” even with some missteps and confusion. But that was—as is human nature and usual—a reaction to a crisis.
Where is the Inter-Agency Task Force on Changing the Rules for Foreign Investment? Or the task force on nuclear power or mining? We have been kicking these issues around for decades. Do we wait for action until crude oil runs out and we have to power our homes with coconut husks? Of course, that is a silly example. But then a pandemic that would destroy economies seemed silly a year ago.
Waiting for the mango to fall from the tree is not going work any longer. Building the first ladder to climb the tree was radical evolution, rather than waiting for the fruit to fall to the ground.