Future Here Now: Sea Changes and Megatrends

Selections

I have been hacking away at how to explain the epochal transition that we’re living through — and how it changes the foundations of how we work and collaborate and live — for something like a dozen years now. Far too often we think of “the future” as either something way far away in sci-fi land, or as the gee whiz of “how is Technology X going to upend your industry next year.”

In the process, we totally miss the undercurrents that are carrying us all to someplace very different, very new.

Not 100 years from now, but today.

In our communities,

In our organizations,

and in our lifetimes.

As part of figuring out what’s going on and what it means for us and our choices, now and in the near future, I’ve laid out what I’m seeing several different ways. Overall, I call it the Ground Conditions shaping our future. As I explain in my new talk (edited version in process, livestream version here and here), “ground conditions” is a term used in engineering and construction, and it literally means the condition of the ground where you’re going to build — swampy, rocky, solid, unstable, flat, slope, etc. You don’t need an engineering degree to understand that what and how you build will depend a lot on the ground conditions.

Ground conditions aren’t good or bad. They’re not for you or against you, or your politics, or your world view. They just are.

How we use them, work with them, is the big question.

Over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to lay out two ways of thinking about the Ground Conditions — two different systems for understanding what’s going on, wheher it’s in your community, your work, or yourself.

The first set is what I call the Sea Changes — major shifts in our world that are so fundamental, so ubiquitous, that they might seem well, duh… That’s OK. It’s hard to work together unless you know you’re starting on the same page.

The second set are Megatrends — big changes that are unfolding, largely because of those Sea Changes. These are a little more concrete, but still big issues that you can apply whether you’re looking at the community that you live in, the organization that you work in, or your own experiences and mindset.

The third set takes all of those down to a little more brass tacks — the Ground Conditions ( old timers among you might remember those as First Principles, a term that started to feel skeevy over the last couple of years). I don’t think I am going to get into those here because I spent a lot of time on those last year — you can find those posts in my archives at wiseeconomy.substack.com. I’ll open those up to everyone over the next few days.

I’m also going to keep this series about the Sea Changes and the Megatrends open to everyone. Paid subscribers will get some additional bennies as we go.