9/1/2023 0 Comments Business as usual meme![]() All the way down until individual bubbles collapse. ![]() This can be understood in terms of nested normalcy fields: constructed equilibrium illusions within change processes.ĩ/ Normalcy collapse is like a big bubble collapsing onto smaller ones, which then collapse further. But it is non-response, not hidden strategic preparation.Ĩ/ We've been saying "normal is over" for a while now, but the process isn't actually all-at-once. In business, in most sectors, the calm continues. ![]() The spell of surrealism has been broken.ĥ/ I've noticed a similar delayed reaction in my consulting: management cultures inside organizations don't seem to be factoring in the new political environment correctly (or at all).Ħ/ It has felt surreal, having the same old organizational psychology/software-eats-world/innovation conversations like nothing's changed, like violins being played on the deck of the sinking Titanic.ħ/ In the market, the impact finally became visible as volatility returned after a year or more of preternatural calm. Ģ/ Takes like that are mostly a matter of opinion of course, since it's hard to tell whether an emergent market non-response to events is a systemic blindness or an inscrutable judgment of unimportance by the Efficient Market God.ģ/ Still, recent events, such as the return of volatility to the US stock market, and clear market reactions to Trump's trade wars and attacks on businesses, have at least moved beyond an emergent "no comment".Ĥ/ My interpretation is that the market is finally waking up (two years into Great Weirding) and doing what looks like pricing political risk. So here is a cleaned up, fleshed-out version, complete with a real 4-panel comic strip, featuring my famous characters, stick figure, stick figure, and everybody's favorite, stick figure.ġ/ Until a couple of months ago, people were commenting that the market was not pricing in political risk correctly (or at all), and arguing that the very idea of pricing in such foundational risks was meaningless. But when the accumulated stress of unaccommodated change gets to be too much, the normalcy field collapses, and we experience this as anxiety-provoking "weirding" of normalcy.Ī couple of days ago, I sketched out an application of this idea to the concept of "business as usual," and how it is falling apart under the stress of the Great Weirding, in a live tweetstorm that proved pretty popular. The thesis was simple (and hopefully intuitive): we are always in the grips of uncontrolled evolutionary change unfolding at a nauseating and volatile pace, but we manage to construct a "normalcy field" around our lives to help us create an illusion of stable equilibrium. In it, I introduced the concept of a manufactured normalcy field. A few years ago, in 2012, I wrote a post that proved to be one of my more enduringly popular ones, Welcome to the Future Nauseous.
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