Last year in January I set out a theme for the year that was about “adapting to change with integrity.” I also set forth a few things that I thought would be sub-themes based on what was happening and would be happening throughout the year.

I wasn’t too far off in my predictions. Globally elections were anti-incumbent and change-oriented. Even though social media platforms didn’t go out of business, they are now marked by decline, grift and Dead Internet Theory. US regulators were indeed stymied in their efforts to protect consumers, and the Courts did indeed undo a major foundation of our regulatory landscape. We continued to see the effects of Covid, growing concerns about avian flu, widespread catastrophic weather events (including the fires raging now in California and Puerto Rico left without power for days), and continued political violence and upheaval. And we continue to struggle with imagined pasts, misunderstood presents, and dystopian futures.

But let’s face it — most predictions aren’t really predicting the future, they’re projecting the past forward in time. If you assume no intervention, no alternate plans, and no deliberate action, that’s a pretty reasonable way to make predictions. So, in that spirit:

2025 will be defined by polycrisis

• Reckless governance and political upheavals.
• Major weather events and environmental crises.
• War and refugees.
• Unstable markets and unpredictable systems.
• Disappearing safety nets (where they existed in the first place).
• Disrupted industries.
• More pandemics, epidemics or outbreaks.

The author William Gibson named a fictional polycrisis “The Jackpot” in his books The Peripheral and Agency.

Well, we’ve hit the jackpot.

What does it mean for business?

Well, I suppose you can carry on as you have and continue to prioritize achieving short-term market gains or mitigating short-term market losses. I suppose you can decide that since nothing is predictable you might as well carry on as you’ve always done. But that just means a state of never-ending crisis and crisis response.

What we need is to intervene, to imagine new futures, to navigate our way through and out of the polycrisis. It’s easy to say that, yet it’s hard to say what that route will be.

Last year, I suggested the job was to respond to uncertainty with integrity — staying aligned with values and mission, remembering who you serve, staying grounded in reality, and preparing for many possible near futures.

I think this is still largely right. But the word I want to offer this year is steadiness.

How do you remain steady in a polycrisis?

Steady things bend, withstanding or absorbing the elements, like buildings and bridges and old-growth forests. Sure, sometimes buildings and bridges collapse; sometimes trees fall down. Sometimes that is for the best. But a lot of times, collapse is preventable – if you’re willing to make the investment to develop steadiness.

Steadiness is not the same as stability. Stability is good, but I don’t want to convey any image of stasis or immovability. We have to bend, move, change. But to get from today to tomorrow safely, we need to steadiness.

These are some questions to help you assess your organization’s steadiness:

• Do you have a three-dimensional or flat understanding of your landscape? Who or what are you leaving out of your analysis — whether it be competitors, vendors, customers, policy-makers, influencers, resources, or rejectors?
• What traps have you created for yourself? What feedback loops are you stuck in because your metrics lead strategy (rather than the other way around)?
• How flexible is your brand? Can it withstand competitive, economic, environmental, cultural, or political shocks?
• Are you able to shift perspectives? Can you see things not only from your shareholder’s point of view but your customers’ — and can you do that honestly and authentically?
• How deep is your footing? What anchors do you need to remain grounded?
• What is creating too much rigidity? How do you excise those parts without losing stability?
• Do you know what you stand for? Do you know what you stand against?

The reality of a polycrisis is there is no One Cool Trick. The good guys in one part of the crisis might be the bad guys in another part of the crisis. There will always be those who find ways to profit off uncertainty; but they aren’t in the prediction business, they’re in the arbitrage business. Gibson calls them “the Klept” in his novels. In our market economy, you will sometimes be the good guy, sometimes be the bad guy, and sometimes be part of the Klept. But that doesn’t mean you lack agency, that there are no decisions to be made. Just because it’s hard to act ethically all the time does not mean you are free from acting ethically any of the time.

The opposite of steadiness isn’t collapse, though. Collapse is only a result of unsteadiness — and unsteadiness is reactivity. Reactivity can be useful; it can also be the only option. But it is not sustainable, for people or for businesses, over the long term to choose reactivity as your standard operating procedure. Making good decisions is going to get harder and harder. Uncertain times call on us to remain steady in both our mission and our day-to-day, to stay as close to unaltered reality as we can, and to act with integrity.

We want to help you find and maintain steadiness.

We can help you understand where your organization stands, especially in relationship to your customers. We can help you find ways to build greater stability while maintaining needed flexibility. Most brands will at best be able to weather the polycrisis, but some will be part of building a new future. We’re here to help you do either one — but we hope you aspire to more than survival.

Because despite the deep pessimism I have for the near future, there are infinite imagined futures we can make real, and we all have agency in deciding which futures we want, and the capacity to make them real, especially when we work together.

We’d love to help you build yours.