Closing Note: Last Chance Century

As crises add up for human civilization, we have no choice but to face them and resolve them – if not for ourselves, then for our children’s children

By Howell J. Malham Jr.
Founder, GreenHouse::Innovation

The 20th century was hailed as an age of progress.

We know now the wages of that “progress,” remarkable and accelerated as it was. We see it in the degradation of our environment; we see it in the extermination of the middle class; we see it in the mounting inequality in our communities and the persistent injustice in our streets.

Such is the tragedy of progress.

What, then, shall we name the 21st century? While some argue it’s too soon to tell, it is fast becoming the Last Chance Century to me – the last chance for humankind to take a meaningful crack at getting it right together, here and now.

And we’d better hurry, as there’s no “planet B” as the line goes. Though the technocrats believe that artificial and human intelligence working together will save us in the end, the cold, hard fact is that we may run out of a habitable Earth before anyone figures out how to colonize – and ultimately vandalize – another planet.

We have no choice but to get it right.

Here’s the problem: We talk about change, and the need for it. We talk about new ideas, and the demand for them. But somewhere along the way, we’ve mistaken the talking – and the posting, and the blogging, and the podcasting, and the sharing – for the doing.

What makes me so sure? For all the claptrap about change in the ever-expanding innovation bubble, it took a pandemic to get us off the dime and start using the digital tools we’ve designed and developed as they were meant to be used.

Will any of the changes stick?

Already we’re seeing leaders in some industries running back to the old way of doing things in offices and schools when we know that so much of the “old way” has been rendered obsolete.

And as America remains violently divided over something as simple – and, once upon a time, non-politicized – as a mask, we are seeing just how difficult it can be to build consensus around change regarding what should and shouldn’t be now, especially in a country that no longer shares the same values and where the spirit of an increasingly aggressive, albeit empty, individualism still presides.

As Andy Dufresne from “The Shawshank Redemption” might say in response to all of this, it’s time to “get busy living or get busy dying.”

Assuming we choose the former, we’re going to need to think about collaboration in new ways and with new kinds of actors – we won’t make it alone or in silos, that’s for certain. A logical place to start is with the present generation of business leaders whom, we know, are likely focused on how to keep their businesses afloat, though many of our insights can and hopefully will be used to serve that end.

Next-generation leaders must be at the table, too – those who want to make sure that there’s some kind of economy when they step up to the plate. They’re going to want jobs – but jobs that do no harm to the environment…or to others.

Together, we’re confident that these groups can design a road map for the immediate frontier, the challenges of the now, leaning heavily on the domain expertise of those in healthcare, wellness, architecture, civil engineering, design, insurance and social work to discover ways to solve the social conflicts we have identified that are thwarting efforts to lead us out of this modern dark age, this age of plague—where facts don’t always change minds, when texting, Tweeting et al are substitutes for meaningful human communication—into an equally modern renaissance.

“It’s renaissance or ruin,” as Paul O’Connor, an urban strategist in Chicago, remarked.

This doesn’t mean corporate social responsibility, which must include a commitment to preventative health and wellness, is in opposition to or something separate from shareholder value. It means CSR can promote sustainability that is absolutely essential to the long-term maximization of shareholder value, provided it is integrated with, not set apart from, business strategy. That insight alone just might be the biggest business takeaway from the pandemic so far.

One can have the social component as we define it without the financial, but one can’t have the financial without the social – that is, without people to invest, to produce, to buy, to consume, to recycle, to profit. Simply put, social forces now dictate the financial. The social drives everything on this planet—wherever there are people.

This will not necessarily require the next gen of business leaders to become the equivalents of philosophers or kings, but it will require what we call an elevated C-suite; one that can and must make evidence-based decisions to address the new conditions of work, wellness and space if only because it is not in any company’s interest to kill off its customer base or the environment upon which that base depends; or to harm or hinder one’s workforce.

The answers aren’t the hard part; we already have many of them. It’s having the courage to forge new relationships and establish new collaborations – essentially to do whatever it takes to start applying the answers that seem to be tripping us up, if only for fear of ridding ourselves of old, comfortable conventions that were not even of our own making.

We can get it right by siding with Andy Dufresne and seizing this time as a time to “get busy living” – not recklessly, with a pathological indifference to the health and wellness of others and our earthly home, but with empathy, with intention, with hope.