It could just be a ripple, before the next Tsunami | Jeremy Ghez | TEDxHECParis
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJRkCEhsJtM Video ID: GJRkCEhsJtM ============================================================ [Music] [Applause] [Music] my story starts with a painting a painting that you've seen everywhere i'm sure a painting that has come to symbolize chaos and turbulence how appropriate for the time we're going through right now right now before the pandemic and the subsequent disorder lockdowns days of misery i often use this painting to try to convey a clear message to my participants and students namely the tsunami is coming you may wish it away hope for some biblical miracle and see it split into and ignore you or you may acknowledge it and start changing your ways start designing new approaches to business into life in order to surf on this coming wave rather than suffer from it passively now in my experience as a business school professor that i tried to describe in a book as a privileged person who meets 500 students in of different ages enrolled in different programs from a wide range of nationalities both ways of thinking are pretty well represented and i must say those who believe in miracles well are probably bound to be disappointed to put it mindly now of course when i said that tsunami's coming in september 2019 a few months before the start of the pandemic i had no clue what was about to hit all of us i just had the intuition that the business environment was apoi as the french would say that is to say ripe for disruption look something had to give i thought the probability that we could face severe challenges to our very way of life was basically not zero of course saying that to tsunami was coming did make me very popular in some student circles who started to think that i had the ability to tell the future a reputation i probably didn't deserve and i still probably don't deserve but it got me thinking why did i say such a thing using especially this picture why was i always drawn to this picture why did i find it so fulfilling i'm not a great critic of art but somehow i had this intuition that i was holding the most appropriate and the most telling illustration of our time so yes it got me thinking and after weeks of confinement weeks of trying to bear with quite unbearable news well it hit me it hit me because i understood that if i was in this frame say on this boat well i'd be throwing up i'd be thinking to myself how humongous of a wave this little ripple was uh how it could be the cause of my death worse i was probably going to think once i survived it uh that you know this was a real miracle and i was probably going to feel very empowered and quite invincible completely blind to the real enormous wave coming just behind that real existential challenge that somehow i had copiously overlooked so what is so appealing in this painting why is it so satisfying it's that it gives us the big picture the one we fail to see in our daily lives it gives us the impression that we are omniscient that we are omnipotent that we have all the force that we need to survive the coldest the most turbulent and the most chaotic business environment out there it gives us a view of reality that we really have access to and that we rarely seek to be honest when we're in the real world because we think we don't have time or the luxury to actually get it why don't we seek this big picture that could be so incredibly helpful as we try to get ready to fight some of humanity's most pressing challenges well first and foremost it's because we're dogmatic we love slogans and 280 character sentences because they're easy to remember and they're simple to digest when it's time to unpack and analyze them to get closer to the truth well that can actually be a little bit more uh challenging especially when that vision of the truth basically contradicts that of our tribe things get uglier why well because we live in bubbles that are so hard to burst in fact research has shown how tribal the world was getting in particular because the influence of social media was getting increasingly big this means that if you have a facebook account what you read on that feed is most likely going to confirm what you already think nothing will get you to change your mind so probably it's going to be the same thing with me and if we belong to the same tribe we'll be just fine if we don't well we may never meet sad human reality but that might actually be better than a meeting with a lot of blood on the wall because of our disagreements right getting the big picture demands that we burst these bubbles that we go see what is going on elsewhere how people see the world in other places that we climb in other people's skin to see the world through their glasses through their prism this means showing empathy an understanding of what the other is seeing this is by no means a comfortable exercise at the beginning it's like trying to get prepared for a marathon when you're completely out of shape getting ready can feel like a huge effort but once you're ready to do it how satisfactory is it well getting the big picture is kind of the same it can be very challenging it can be painful but so empowering when you're basically ready to get it why don't we seek this big picture well in addition it's because we're short-sighted the equation yesterday equals today equals tomorrow is the most comforting equation humanity continuously believes in but there's a problem it's plain wrong this health crisis has reminded us about the meaning of the word risk risk isn't just about a world or the world choosing a different path from the one we anticipated it's not just about facing changes at the margin that may make our business slightly less profitable or put us in a position that is slightly less desirable it's about the possibility for non-linear change to happen abruptly it's about the possibility of yesterday's marginal phenomenon say a few cases of contamination in a very limited uh part of a region to grow exponentially and to become quickly sometimes very quickly almost everyone's reality tomorrow it's about the possibility of a swift unanticipated and abrupt tip over into completely uncharted waters that will change our world as we know it and boy did we experience this in recent weeks when you're short-sighted well exponential can be very scary try driving your car without glasses it's kind of the same experience there's absolutely no way in the world you're getting the picture when you're short-sighted so you need to broaden horizons you need to shed light in places where there is no light you need to basically explore avenues that you may not have ever explored before when i get to this conclusion i always think of the same joke that you probably heard quite a few times the joke of this guy on his knees in the middle of the night looking for his keys right under a lamppost a policeman comes by and asks did you lose something sir and the guy said yeah i lost my keys and the policeman is a little surprised he said did you lose him here under the lamppost and the guy says no i lost them over there but the lighting is a little bit better over here so i'm looking for them over here now this may sound ridiculous right and yet think about it when was the last time you looked for solutions where there is no light when was the last time you explored avenues that you've left unexplored out of lack of curiosity out of lack of a willingness rather of lack of confidence until we do that we'll remain short-sighted and until we do that well the big picture will remain completely and accessible to us why don't we seek the big picture well finally because we lack imagination our world is supposed to be linear it's never supposed to be exponential why well because our human brains are not very well wired to deal with exponential anyway what used to be true for us is supposed to be true for coming generation for coming generations or at least just marginally different this may be why while we inescapably disappoint our parents from time to time and this may be why we are doomed to never understand our teenage children the state of the labor market from this standpoint ladies and gentlemen is in my opinion particularly telling this is a rare moment when boomers generation x millennials and generation c are all on the labor market at the same time talk about chaos in cacophony right well here's one thing that i think i'm observing as i interact with a lot of these generations in different education and training programs now this is just a hypothesis that needs validation but in my opinion the newcomers the youngest millennials and the generation z are getting to the labor market with aspirations that are quite different than those of their predecessors of course they want to make a living but not at any cost and not working for any company they have values to defend they don't appreciate firms managing their reputation in a hypocritical way they smell green washing miles away does this last may you ask when they have a mortgage to pay a family to raise or food to put on the table well guess what they're not buying homes anymore and they're delaying having kids because it's a scary world because climate change is not a hypothetical anymore to them it's more of a it's not really just a threat or just a scenario to think about it's going to be their lasting reality they believe the aspirations of previous generations aren't fit with today's reality you name the reason but in the end that makes their will to actually choose their company all the more so credible now if older generations and current employers can't fathom what is going on in their minds they're they're gonna have real trouble hiring and they're gonna have real trouble managing these new generations coming on the labor market they may think that the current climate of urgency forbids them from taking the time to imagine the time to rethink what they expect from these younger human resources and yet those who will may get that big picture and those who will might actually get a peer advantage over all of their competitors look some very smart people have argued that humanity has experienced similar periods of turbulence and darkness in the past and what came immediately after well what we now call the renaissance or the rebirth of the world and this may be exactly what comes after this period of turbulence and darkness a rebirth of the world ladies and gentlemen one driven by scientific knowledge a better understanding of social complexity and a political compromise this won't happen overnight we'll need people willing to act on this opportunity ready to rethink and redesign our approaches to the world to the world's most pressing challenges and we'll need these architects of change so back to this painting why well because it's so satisfactory because it gives us the big picture we often miss because we think we don't have the time to get it because we're dogmatic because we're short-sighted because we lack imagination this painting gives us the chance to step back in our an opportunity we value so much and we so rarely cease but in this coming world we may not have the time nor the luxury not to seize this opportunity so remember at times you may feel your boat is rocking you may feel sick as a result but as uncomfortable as it might feel this is precisely the time when you should start looking for your keys or the key to the problem where you've never looked before where there is no light you can't decide to run a marathon overnight in particular if you're out of shape the same way you can't carry this type of thinking overnight you need to practice it but this is also precisely the time uh that you should burst your bubble as a result and try to talk to people you never talk to or you never listen to those who don't have the same age as you do those who aren't from the same professional or personal background those from different social or demographic groups people who are not you in any way and that will never be you but people who can shed an incredible amount of insights on the world things that you're basically not seeing today this is precisely the time ladies and gentlemen when you should realize that this business environment is a pua ready to unfold and ready for meaningful action even begging for meaningful action this is precisely the time ladies and gentlemen where you should try to do some red team analysis of your strategy that is ask yourself how your peer competitor your enemy or just the person you are not would be reacting to what it is you're doing this is the type of mental gymnastics that could actually be very enlightening in fact this is precisely the time ladies and gentlemen when you should look beyond what seems to be the immediate threat and what could turn out to be just a ripple before the real tsunami thank you very much bye