Cuomo Says No Going “Back to Normal”—Fortunately, “Normal” Is Fictional
On April 1st, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo gave a speech in which he said, “I don’t think we get back to normal [after this pandemic]. I think we get to a new normal.” But according to the laws of nature, as beautifully articulated by Buzz Hollings’ Adaptive Cycle, “normal” has never existed.
With COVID-19 having profoundly disrupted the day to day lives of almost all people, globally, a message like Cuomo’s makes sense. Essentially, he’s encouraging people to focus on adaptation. We couldn’t agree more with the need for thinking and acting adaptively, and letting go of the illusion that we can all soon be back to business as usual.
But it occurs to us…maybe this message could be articulated with less grimness if we all took a step back and remembered how the world actually works. Which is to say: normal has always been an illusion. Constant change—sometimes jarring and disruptive, sometimes barely perceptible—is the truth. And it’s actually how our systems remain healthy.
So, could a quick tour through the renowned ecologist Buzz Holling’s concept of the Adaptive Cycle be comforting in these times? It certainly is for us. Hence, we’re sharing a short passage from our book Disrupted: Strategy for Exponential Change, in which we discuss this illuminating theory, which has applications for everything from ecology to business to interpersonal relationships.
Holling’s thinking reminds us that the “normal” we clung to was never truly our reality. And even if our world could have remained the same as it was prior to this outbreak, it wouldn’t have been a truly healthy, vital world.
Note: we are not suggesting that the illness and death wreaked by COVID-19 is simply a “natural” process that we should accept without grief. We are absolutely not comparing human beings to trees lost in forest fires! But, we do see the multi-systemic disruption driven by COVID-19 (which likely has its genesis in environmental destruction) as a harbinger of profound change. There are ways in which we live, do business, and socially and politically organize ourselves that must evolve.
That’s normal. And it’s the only thing that’s ever truly been normal.
So, as you read through our description of the Adaptive Cycle, ask yourself: “What is being released during this pandemic…and how might it potentially be re-organized? What kind of resilience could I actually gain through this ‘backward loop’ that’s occurring?”
Larry and David
Grow and Conserve—But Not Without Releasing and Re-Organizing
In many ways, the ecologist Buzz Holling has revolutionized the concept of change simply by being a good observer. His contributions to industries and schools of thought as diverse as change management and the sustainability movement are based on noticing how nature appears to actually work—as opposed to the way we assume it should.
Traditionally, ecologists believed that ecologies worked like this: plants take over an area (growth) and then they work for their own survival by slowly accumulating energy from and within the surrounding environment (conversation). So, for example, a tree grows, storing up energy from the sun and rain and nutrients in the soil, and it conserves all of that energy in its leaf and wood-mass and root system. This tree is an entity set to grow and survive. Growth and conservation.
But Holling saw two other equally important forces at play in thriving ecologies: release and reorganization. When ecologies like forests develop, certain species (eg. large hardwood trees) become dominant. But the energy that these dominant species accumulate also represents the potential for new ecologies, new species, and new kinds of environments. All of that accumulated energy is always ready to be released into startlingly new forms of life. For example, occasionally the energy in the wood becomes fuel for a wildfire that transforms the landscape, making it more hospitable to different kinds of plants. If you like, this is nature’s version of creative destruction.
Holling’s ‘adaptive cycle’ envisions change moving in two directions: a forward loop of growth and conservation, and a backward loop of release and reorganization – helping us to understand when to reap rewards, and when to foster destruction and innovation. Some of the energy of a thriving ecology will always be directed towards breaking down the system to create something else completely new. This backward loop doesn’t result in disaster because these episodes of breaking-down-to-build-back-up are nested within larger patterns of stability and forward looping. If one part of the forest succumbs to a landscape-transforming wildfire, there is still plenty of hardwood forest in the world that keeps growing and storing up energy in the form of towering foliage, wood-mass and mighty root systems.
As usual, we can learn a thing or two from nature. In the bigger picture, ecologies thrive because of ‘disastrous episodes’ that lead to novel outcomes, not in spite of them. A wildfire is part of the natural cycle, not an aberration within it. Disruptive or ‘destructive’ change, therefore, is just accumulated energy being expressed in novel ways. It’s never, as we like to say, ‘the end of the world’. It is, in fact, the way of the world, and ever has it been.
Hollings’ adaptive cycle applies equally to social and economic systems. The Roman Empire and many empires that followed fell into the trap of holding on too long to the benefits of colonization and ultimately became victims of their own greed. The huge business empires of the past have also succumbed to similar fates by thinking they could lock-in and control markets and customers through strangling competitive innovation.
A Series of Insights from Disrupted, the Book
Written in 2015, Disrupted was, and still is, both a book ahead of its time, and a timely guide for those committed to understanding and addressing the complexity of disruptive change, preparing for disruption, and critically, leveraging disruption to generate sustainable value.
This series of articles are extracts — some with comment from the authors — from the book and are intended to highlight some of the key concepts captured in Disrupted.
A must read (if) you want to understand the world of today and tomorrow, and look forward to the future rather than fearing it.
- Phil Ruthven, Founder, IBISWorld
To find out more visit: www.resilientfutures.com/disrupted
