Future Here Now: more interesting Signals
Signals
Many of you seemed to like the last grab bag email, so let’s try again.
Remember, “Signals” is a term that futurists use for pieces of information that appear to point to a new practice or trend or technology coming. No one Signal is the answer to everything. They’re not oracles. But as you start to see more and more Signals - and become more attuned to looking for Signals all around you, you may start to have some pretty good hunches about what the future will look like, and what you can do to best surf that wave.
So here are three more Signals that have crossed my desk recently.
Where are new co-ops emerging? Not necessarily where you thought they were.
https://nonprofitquarterly.org/where-are-new-co-ops-emerging-the-changing-map-of-co-op-development/
I’ve been watching the cooperative business scene for quite a while now, because I think it might actually be the future of a lot of types of business. As I wrote recently, employees are expecting — I’d say, increasingly, demanding — a level of honesty and transparency from their employers that would have been unimaginable in the Organization Man era. And they fully expect — scratch that, demand — that they receive a fully equitable share in the company’s proceeds. And both of those pressures logically find their best resolution in a cooperative business, where the workers share equitably in both the control and the proceeds.
Setting up a cooperative business is NOT easy. They require structures for decision-making, information-sharing, bookkeeping and more that look nothing like our Industrial Era-formed mindsets assumptions. And for that reason, structuring and guiding the development of a cooperative business has become a cottage industry of its own. For one thing, you have to develop conflict resolution skills that go well beyond the social behaviors most of us stopped learning once we finished kindergarten.
This article is a deep read, but a good one. It’s comprehensive, running the gamut from credit unions to cooperative manufacturing and service businesses. And it should give you a clear picture of this fast-growing alternative to traditional top-down business management.
What does AI do for a Gen Z business owner? A lot more than for the oldsters
https://www.fastcompany.com/91172546/millennial-gen-z-business-owners-adopt-ai-use-tools-differently-than-baby-boomers
I’m seeing the trends that this article outlines play out in real time, as my younger colleagues show me ways to use AI that are completely different from myself (and I’m a relatively strong adopter compared to some of my age colleagues)
Among younger respondents, the most common uses were for task automation and cash-flow analytics, whereas older respondents’ main use was for chatbots, virtual assistance, fraud protection, and workforce management. Overall, the most common use of AI among all respondents was for analyzing customer data, deploying chatbots or virtual assistants, and content creation.
How many tasks have you automated lately? Speaking for myself… nowhere near enough.
The Aid System Whack-A-Mole
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/jan/04/were-playing-whac-a-mole-why-the-aid-system-is-broken
International aid distribution systems are in crisis. And not only is it going to get a lot worse as climate change-driven disasters and conflicts accelerate and funds available decline, but at least some experts are saying that the way international aid is distributed now can’t solve the problems, even if funding were greatly expanded:
Yet everyone agrees the system needs to change. In January 2016, a UN panel concluded that the aid sector lacked transparency, was financially inefficient and was bad at measuring the impact of its work. It also identified a lack of joined-up thinking between humanitarian and development agencies as a key issue.
“Almost everyone with whom we spoke said that finding more money will not solve all the problems, and may even entrench some of the current dysfunctions,” the panel said.
Little has been done to fix it, however. In May 2016, a landmark UN conference of 9,000 delegates pledged to increase the proportion of aid given to local humanitarian organisations from 0.4% to 25% by 2020. Today just 3.3% goes to national NGOs, even though they are cheaper, nimbler and more effective than international agencies.
Despite facing multidimensional protracted crises, we still have aid agencies that were designed to provide short-term support during droughts, floods and wars, says Edouard Rodier, from the Norwegian Refugee Council….
In places such as Lebanon, O’Callaghan says, donor countries and multilateral institutions such as the World Bank need to do more development work that strengthens national systems and deals with the root causes, so humanitarian agencies are not forced to treat the symptoms.
She also calls for “super-local actors” to be integrated into the global aid system and an increase in cash-based assistance, which is cheaper and usually more effective than giving food.
“This is where the future lies,” says O’Callaghan. “Having big, expensive international aid agencies running things for year after year until the money dries up won’t work.”
Industrial-era problem solving focuses on solving the problem that’s in front of you, not on digging into the root of the problem. Industrial-era problem solving also assumes that the “experts” (especially white/European experts) know how to solve problems better than local people, and that problems that happen to someone else — externalities to our own actions — can be ignored or given lip service, because they will never really affect ourselves.
And of course, none of those assumptions work anymore.