Blog: People (only) change in times of crisis

Excursion

In this context I want to introduce a concept that is about flexibility, change and crisis. The long story short: flexibility is highest in times of crisis therefore allowing to change radically. This holds for most areas in our world – the economy, politics and of course our private life, just to name a few. Before going more into detail, I just want you to think about how significantly the world has changed in the last decades. What was the reason for that? May it be possible that the changes coincided with global crises? If so, why is that? Let me give you two recent examples 1) the climate change and 2) Covid 19.

1) Climate Change: The signs of an environmental crisis have never been more clear. From tsunamis in Southeast Asia, wildfires and floods in Australia to hurricanes in the US. In the wake of these wide-spread events (I mean even here in Germany the agriculture industry has huge problems due to the dry weather which can be seen as kind of a crisis) we needed to adapt and have finally changed our thinking about the environment and the exploitation of our world. Without such crises, we eventually would have continued until the world would not have been habitable anymore. In the course of these events, we have started to explore new ways to produce energy and changed the infrastructure of our economy in order to become “green”. In addition, many of us have shifted to a more conscious and healthy lifestyle. Look at all the vegan and organic stuff we find in our stores or all the new restaurants offering superfoods and meat replacement.

2) Covid 19: At the time I am writing this we are all in the midst of an unprecedented global pandemic. Our whole way of living has changed in the last few months and many believe that most things will never go back to the “old normal”. From changes in the travel & health care sector to shifts in our private & business lives, Covid 19 will constitute another paradigm shift in the world. As devastating as this crisis may be it brought change to us that eventually was necessary. Many nations will have to rethink their health care system given that such worldwide diseases may happen again over the next decades hopefully improving public health. Besides, many corporates were forced to finally introduce WFH policies which will impact our ways of working and therefore our work life balance tremendously in the future. I could go on and on how Covid 19 changed and will change our life, however I leave it there (for now).

The examples clearly show that crisis somehow creates change. But how does it actually happen? Pulitzer-Prize winner Charles Duhigg (author of the famous books The Power of Habit and Smarter Better Faster) said in an interview with Tony Robbins that our flexibility is heavily reduced by our habits since we automatically respond to a situation in a certain way (which we were conditioned to by our environment) and that the perception of a crisis actually creates moments of flexibility. This not only holds for individuals but also for companies or even nations, all of whom are having certain habits (e.g. WFH, public health practices of a country, energy infrastructure of a country, use of old school IT systems instead of the new digital ways, old school marketing vs. social media). Let me introduce the example of the kings cross incident to explain how acting automatically (habits) can be detrimental and that the feeling of a crisis can support to escape our habits and change the way we act.