I want to offer you five principles for the future, starting with a curious observation. Organizations, whether they’re cities, towns, governments, corporations, are doing a strikingly poor job of solving what you might call real problems. Inequality. Stagnation. Inopportunity. Indignity. Distrust. Misinformation.

As a result, these primary — what you might call first-priority — problems are igniting secondary ones. Extremism, rage, authoritarianism, xenophobia, scapegoating, and so on, as a result of indignity, misinformation, inopportunity. People are losing trust in a system that cannot solve the problems they have — all of which fall under the rubric “our quality of life is declining, and no one seems to care very much (except that bellowing bully).” Only natural — no mater how wrong and foolish — to blame it all on the nearest scapegoat, shaking your fist as the nearest tyrant commands. At least that way there is something the system doesn’t give you: hope.

Do you see the problem? A vicious cycle of problems is kicking off. What are the later tertiary and quaternary problems that will result from our primary problems? Climate change? Waves of refugees, conflicts, upheaval. Extremism? Torn alliances, shredded social contracts, instability, war. Stagnation? Something like a reversion to a feudal caste society, replete with nobles and peasants. A dark of regress looms — all because we are not solving the real problems, the primary problems, which, like Pandora’s Box, are giving birth to a swirling hurricane of later ones. So: principle one. Solve primary problems (before they become secondary, tertiary, quaternary ones).

But why don’t we, if it’s that easy? Let’s consider the very same issue — a vicious cycle sparked by unsolved primary global problems — from the perspective of organizations and leaders. What do they think about these primary problems — stagnation, inequality, distrust, and so on?

Well, they tend to think two things — each of which is mistaken, foolish, and wrong. First, that today’s problems are not problems at all — that they are instead moral just desserts, to enjoy. The lazy deserve to suffer, the weak deserve to die — only the strong survive. Second, even if they do consider the above problems, they throw their hands up in the air, crying, “but these problems are insoluble!!” Let’s take these one by one.

To consider the world’s primary problems not problems at all is where most of our centres of power stand today. Silicon Valley doesn’t care about the homelessness, inequality, despair, meaninglessness, loneliness, futility, and stagnation in its midst — but neither does Wall St or Washington DC. And yet those problems do indeed threaten the very organizations that downplay them — because people are losing faith, hope, trust, in the system, as their lives fall apart, and turning to strongmen, extremists, and fanatics.

(Better to be a corporation, party, or fund in a democratic society than a tyranny, no? After all, even if you get rich in a tyranny, you probably don’t want your kids to live there. And so the problems that organizations and leaders don’t think are problems are in fact the biggest ones of all. Ignorance of a troubled world, and how its struggles are linked into chains of bondage, is not an excuse that can be pleaded anymore today.)

When they do admit that these are real problems, organizations and leaders often cry “ah! Forget it! They’re insoluble!!” This isn’t just wrong. It’s shatteringly wrong. Principle two: primary problems have elegantly simple, blindingly obvious solutions (now, yesterday, historically — the solution to servitude was freedom, remember?). Homelessness? Give people homes. Inequality, poverty, falling incomes? Give people cash. Falling life expectancy? Give people functioning healthcare. Climate changing? Tax, limit, regulate carbon. Do you see the principle at work here? Big problems. Simple solutions. The great problems of today aren’t insoluble — quite the opposite. They have the simplest solutions of all.

My friends. We are very lucky that the primary problems of today have simple solutions. They’re the ones that are going to kick off the secondary, tertiary, quaternary problems of tomorrow — and they might genuinely have been insoluble, impossible, and then we would have been rogered. They’re not. They’re simply fixable. That means our grandkids don’t have to live in a dark age of feudalism, misery, and upheaval. But only if we — as organizations and leaders — really do the work we should and must be doing: solving today’s real problems.

So why don’t we get out there and do that work, enough? Well, it can’t be because today’s real problems too hard, too difficult, or too dangerous. The reason must be something else. Principle three. What stands in the way of us really fixing primary problems is ourselves (today, yesterday, and throughout history). Either we moralize, and say, “those people deserve these problems!” That way, we fuel extremism, authoritarianism, and sociopolitical collapse — does that sound like a very intelligent morality to you? Or we decide they are insoluble, and give up — and that way, we fuel the loss of faith in the system to improve anyone’s life, also leading to collapse.

Or worst of all, perhaps, we buy into the myth — so tempting, because it is comforting, soothing, reassures of us our own grandiosity — that solving fake problems is the same as solving real ones. “But Uber’s making people’s lives better!” “But people need Facebook!” “But Google makes people so much more intelligent!” Really? Maybe all that’s true in a tiny way — but also in a totally trivial and meaningless way. None of these forms of “making people better off” are staving off collapse, despair, and ruin, by fixing a single one of the world’s real problems, or even addressing them — hence so it’s dubious whether in fact such “improvements” are anything of the kind at all. Let me make that sharper and clearer.

Here’s a list of fake problems. Efficiency. Productivity. Speed. Performance. Profitability. Growth. Revenues. Why are they fake? Because we know how to do all that, in spades. I can hire a million investment bankers or consultants, and they’ll do all that for your corporation, city, town, country, world. Or you could just look at Jeff Bezos, Walmart, or a hundred other industrial-age monopolists. Now here’s a list of real ones. Inequality, stagnation, climate change, distrust, misinformation, despair, loneliness, meaninglessness. How are these linked?

Going on solving fake problems (to assuage our egos and please our shareholders and boards and bosses) will only make our real problems worse — faster, harder, and fiercer. That’s principle four. More efficiency — lower prices? Shrinking incomes, more inequality. More productivity — more output, from the same input? Worse climate change, fewer jobs, more stagnation. Faster speed? More stressful, pressured, unhappy lives, living at the edge of survival, readier to take that turn towards extremism. More profitability? LOL, so what — today’s profits don’t reflect higher living standards in the first place, only, ironically, lower ones. And so on.

Solving yesterday’s problems will only make today’s worse. And making today’s problems worse will make tomorrow’s that much fiercer, more intractable, longer, and difficult. More efficiency — shrinking incomes — more inequality — collapsing democracies, economies, and polities. More productivity — fewer jobs — more stagnation — more extremism, authoritarianism, a loss of trust in the social contract. See the link?

The first job of organizations and leaders is always solving primary problems — because that breaks the causal chains of tomorrow’s instabilities, ruptures, and upheavals. That’s principle five. Now imagine the chains above being undone. Not more efficiency, leading to shrinking incomes, and collapsing democracies — but organizations solving the problems of dignity and opportunity. What’s the causal chain there? Something like this: more dignity and opportunity — higher incomes — more meaning — trust and cohesion. Authoritarianism and despair are thwarted. Imagine organizations not solving the fake problem of productivity, but the real one of stagnation. The chain? More jobs, better jobs —less insecurity — more risk-taking, more innovation, organizations who do things that matter again — renewed faith in ourselves. Extremism is averted. Do you see how solving today’s primary problems can undo the secondary ones? The links in the chain?

Breaking the chains of human bondage — and liberating people to realize them selves — is the first, last, truest, and deepest job of organizations and leaders. That’s my sixth and final principle. It always has been. Only today we’ve forgotten it.

Umair

April 2018