Four forces for the future
Where is the world going? In his recent book "The Future is Back" Belgian professor Fons van Dyck explores the four driving forces of humanity - which therefore also shape our future: the human needs to explore (learn), to connect (bond), to defend, and to conquer (acquire). Those four forces correspond to the Competitive Values Model that we use to assess organizational culture. What drives your organization toward the future? Especially now that we can expect, according to Van Dyck, a "mental winter" approaching?
After comparing a variety of scientific disciplines, Van Dyck arrives at four universal forces that drive our behavior:
- Exploring (to push boundaries)
- Connecting (to be in harmony with our environment)
- Defending (when we feel threatened)
- Conquering (of power, status and wealth).
This corresponds to the biological drives on which the Competitive Values Model is based. This results in the four culture types based on the need to learn, to connect, to defend, and to acquire (Paul Lawrence, Nitin Nohria, 2002).
Explore: The Create Culture is a dynamic and creative work environment focused on learning, change, openness, innovation, and entrepreneurship.
Connect: The Collaborate Culture is friendly, focused on people, relationships, connecting, trust, deciding and doing things together, supporting each other, belonging, and tradition.
Defend: The Control Culture is structured, and clear, with positions, processes, and procedures, everything is controlled, planned, recorded, counted, and calculated. Certainty is important, away with risk, safety counts.
Conquer: The Compete Culture is results-oriented, wants to achieve goals, and loves being the best. More, better, bigger, keep going!
We need all four forces and culture types for long-term success. Which strength we prefer to use depends on our personal preference and context. The same is true for organizations; organizational culture is often dominated by two of these forces.
However, periods of major crises cause shifts between the four forces. At such a turning point we are now.
A big pile of crises
All kinds of crises are currently coming together; it feels like the end of an era. After the banking crisis of 2008, the pandemic hit in 2020, the war in Ukraine in 2022, more and more extreme weather between 2020 and 2024, the war between Israel and Gaza since 2023, and the geopolitics between the US, China, Russia. Everything was getting more expensive, and inflation in Europe was unprecedented. The new term is "poly-crisis" or perma-crisis: the many challenges are permanent.
The World Bank projects that by 2030 the growth of the world economy will fall by a third to 2.2 percent a year. The world's population will stagnate at 10 billion people, resulting in labor shortages, declining economic growth, and thus a threat to the business revenue model.
In addition, we are struggling with the climate crisis, aging populations, and therefore
depopulation in rich countries, loneliness, the deterioration of education, the debt mountain of the global economy, the end of the fifth technology wave, the future of work in a world with artificial intelligence, the open versus closed society (more and more nationalism), the rise of populism and attacks on the democratic rule of law.
These topics are relevant to all companies and organizations because we all work and do business in a society where these challenges and feelings are at play.
A few quotes from Van Dyck's analyses:
Climate fever: 2.7 degrees of warming is what's about to happen with unchanged policies. If that comes to pass, by 2090 one in three people worldwide will be living in an "unlivable place," where the heat or water, as appropriate, makes living unsustainable. That means some 3.7 billion people will have to migrate.
In the coming decades, there will be an additional 1 billion over-65s worldwide. An aging population and a sputtering labor market pose major financial challenges, especially the affordability of pensions and health care will be at stake.
A replacement rate of 2.1 percent is needed to maintain a population at "natural" levels. Unless migration offsets the birth gap, a population with a birth ratio below 2.1 is a population that dies off. This is happening in many developed countries and is jeopardizing the level of amenities and markets for businesses.
32% of people in wealthier countries feel lonely - partly due to globalization, urbanization, growing inequality, disruption from new technologies, austerity, and most recently the coronavirus. Lonely people can live shorter lives, but also be more easily influenced by fake news, distrust, and conspiracy thinking.
Debt has increased worldwide. A higher debt ratio hampers the future agility of an economy because it limits a government's ability to borrow.
The fifth wave of technology is coming to an end. Internet giants such as Meta (Facebook), Alphabet, Amazon, and Salesforce took hits in 2022. Together, big tech lost $4 trillion in stock market value.
Work is going to change. Any repetitive, difficult, or dangerous job in the secondary sector that can only be automated is going to be replaced by a production robot or software. Even jobs that require knowledge and creativity will soon compete with artificial intelligence. 300 million jobs would be touched by AI.
Open versus closed society: more and more countries are becoming dependent on migration to keep their economies and societies running.
Rise of populists: they claim to stand up for the "silent majority. Populism leads to an exclusionary identity politics of "us" against "the other. Those who disagree no longer belong.
Pessimism about progress
All these challenges create a climate of pessimism about progress. In developed countries, a majority of the population no longer believes that their children will be better off in the future. People experience a loss of control and certainties, too much complexity, and feel insecure and afraid. Many get the need for a strong leader to solve all that for them....
An affluent society has much to lose... A possible loss makes us more anxious than we are happy at the prospect of gaining something. Psychologists call that phenomenon loss aversion. Van Dyck predicts that the defending force is gaining strength: wanting to keep what you have, playing it safe. The conquering force is also strong: more and bigger is safer in an uncertain world full of challenges.
Yet the connecting and exploring forces are also at work. Exploratory forces seek innovations and new technologies, openness, and new ways of living and working. Connecting forces seek cooperation, diversity, and inclusiveness (for people, animals, and nature).
So these forces "compete" with each other. They are competing values. They can go either way.
Wanting to play it safe can create a need for a strong leader, perhaps even the authoritarian CEO again. With everything becoming more expensive, organizations may want to cut back on everything that does not directly contribute to efficiency and profit. Does that mean less attention to ESG, to inclusiveness in the workplace, to a positive culture? Van Dyck, too, wonders. Predicting is difficult, but keeping it in mind makes people better prepared.
But exploratory and connecting forces work against it. We must solve the challenges together.
We may also see this struggle between the forces in the divisions in our societies. Look at the recent election results. Are we pro or against more integration in the European Union? The population is divided. The same is true for voters in America.
Prepping for a mental winter?
Finally, a word about the phenomenon of "mental winter." The Belgian professor Helmut Gaus put forward the theory that history, like the economy, moved on waves of about 25 years, based on psychology, that is: our collective mood. So those waves give a kind of summer and winter in human history - seasons.
A previous summer was situated around 1971, the height of what is collectively remembered as the golden sixties, characterized by a great belief in progress, freedom, and economic prosperity. Those were the heyday of Woodstock, the student revolt, flower power, and the hippie movement. Everything was possible, it couldn't be done!
From summer it then moves to autumn (the mid-1970s in the wake of the oil crisis) to reach a mental low in the winter of the 1980s (neo-liberalism, unemployment, threat of nuclear war, Chornobyl nuclear disaster, AIDS, implosion of the Soviet bloc). A mental atmosphere of social anxiety reigned.
The 1990s then ushered in a new spring (the fall of the Berlin Wall, borders opening, apartheid in South Africa abolished, and the Internet connecting people), only to slowly transition into summer in the first decade of this century. Obama became the first black president of the United States. It is the time of "Yes, we can".
In 2010, Gaus predicted that "around the year 2021, the long ascending wave will have peaked. From then on, the long-term wave will go downhill again and systemic anxiety will rise sharply."
We are at a tipping point in the long-term wave. What goes up, must come down. We are heading into autumn, Van Dyck says, and we can prepare for a mental winter. But, by way of reassurance, we have experienced and survived those in the past!
In transition, we are looking for a new balance between the four forces. Van Dyck's advice to the reader? Use all forces to help shape the future. Keep exploring (because knowledge helps us find solutions and innovations), connecting (against polarization), defending (our democracy and personal freedom), and conquering (your control over your own life: can you live with fewer stimuli and less stuff, but with more quality and attention?).
- Which forces are dominant in your organization?
- Which ones could you develop further?
- Which future trends could you better prepare for?
- If the organization is going through a mental winter, how could you make that transition easier?
© Marcella Bremer, 2024
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