The COVID-19 pandemic has caused us all to take a different look at our business methods at personal, corporate, national, and global level.
On the one hand, there are baby boomers who say, “All you need to do is to know one thing very well, instead of know some things about everything.,” and on the other, there is Gen X and Y, understanding that boomers’ concept is doomed to fail, so trying to develop different sets of skills.
And finally, we have Generation Z who believes that none of these efforts will achieve success in the face of rapid change.
As a person who worked with different generations, even acted like their supervisor, I have adopted this principle of reconciliation instead of coercion, persuasion instead of giving orders.
As a matter of fact, the process we are currently in, that we might call contextual fragility, inadequacy or, in harsher words, crash, has begun a long time ago. However, it became even more apparent with the pandemic outbreak.
During the pandemic, millions of people who thought they found the right person or made the right financial decision have quickly realized that their decisions were wrong as soon as mandatory stay-at-home orders were lifted.
Not only did they changed their business and working methods but they also moved away from the things they used to do when they were feeling lonely and socially isolated.
The Great Reset
In fact, the „Great Reset“, drawn up by the WEF, was a combination of „small resets“ designed to make us think differently than before.
Throughout the pandemic, technology helped people understand that they are capable of living alone and they also realized that, when they had to spend more time as couples, their relationships are not actually as strong as they have been showing them off on social media. As they say, ‘reality always prevails”.
Let’s rewind ten years to 2010, a decade before the COVID-19 pandemic. After years of watching or listening to news, sports or our favourites shows on traditional media platforms, we have realised that it is a quite comfortable experience to be able to watch anything we want on our mobile phones, or tablets.
It took us a very long time to understand that the value-added activities undertaken before and after the manufacturing process are more precious than the manufacturing itself
This experience has showed us that a design’s accessibility is as important as its excellence. But we failed to see it because we were blinded by the things that happened over the last three decades.
On the other hand, it also took us a very long time to understand that the value-added activities undertaken before and after the manufacturing process are more precious than the manufacturing itself.
Survival reflex
You might find this interesting, but I have always avoided steeping myself only in a single thing since my 20s, because the things we know and understand a lot about might prevent us seeing the mistakes we make or accepting the possibility that a certain talent or skill might not be as valid in the future as it was in the past.
So, all my life, I tried to gain experience in music, art, economics, management, and other social sciences and put my experience into practice. This is something I call my survival reflex that I had all my life and it helped me make a living.
The timing chooses you. That’s why you need have your interdisciplinary skills readily available when the time comes
Individuals, social groups, and countries have to get out of their comfort zones so that they can survive, since they might become the victim of this sense of grandeur and extreme comfort.
You have to have your inspirational powers alert and alive at all times, because not every inspiration is capable of creating a flawless design. So, we need to try to have more of these rare moments.
More importantly, you can’t choose the timing sometimes. The timing chooses you. That’s why you need have your interdisciplinary skills readily available when the time comes.
Context collapse
What we are experiencing today is context collapse, amplified by the pandemic, where our boundaries blur when different areas of our life combine.
Our arrogance and our egos are the two reasons why we are trying to give a new meaning to ourselves today.
In a world where the oppressed think they are entitled to oppress others, a world where people give priority to their personal gains over serving the community, we can only develop contextual skills and capabilities by defining ourselves correctly.
There is lack of strong and ethical leadership in the world. Today’s leaders are rising by the power of majority, mathematical calculations
In today’s world, countries, political organisations, and international institutions do not recall their founding principles. Unfortunately, they do not know or have forgotten their own definitions of themselves and got caught in others’ expectations of them.
It is apparent that there is lack of strong and ethical leadership in the world. Today’s leaders are rising by the power of majority, mathematical calculations.
They are corrupt and blinded by envy, arrogance, and self-interest. But we all know that a leader must never give up the basic ethical principles.
Do the right versions of all the things you are lecturing about
So, I have one important piece of advice for young people: You should do the right versions of all the things you are lecturing about. Otherwise, you won’t be convincing at all.
Also, you need to have democratic qualities to achieve contextual strength and become able to make something extraordinary, outstanding, and ground-breaking. When leading others, you have to know that democracy is not a solo performance, it’s a chorus.
We need to avoid fatalism and use our minds instead to discard outdated and detrimental perspectives. Otherwise, we will all get caught up in these backwards ideas and fall into a darkness of narrow mindedness - Emre Alkin
Always remember that you are not the only ones who got upset by all these pandemic-related problems and you are not the only ones that are looking to find a solution.
A lot of people are experiencing the same things. In democracies, big changes are made by the majority. You don’t need to convince anyone that some things are not right.
Sadly today, most political leaders are trying to increase their popularity by opposing to something and anything, and they are attempting to impose the idea that diversity does not offer us a richness of collective intelligence.
So, we need to avoid fatalism and use our minds instead to discard outdated and detrimental perspectives. Otherwise, we will all get caught up in these backwards ideas and fall into a darkness of narrow mindedness.
Without different skills, it’s simply not possible neither to lead a self-sufficient life nor express our contextual strength.
What should we not do?
The pandemic has also revealed a very promising trend towards awareness of oppression. People saw with their own eyes how wrong it is to prevent society from having access to art and science, how wrong it is to impose restrictions on people, to oppress them.
Now, it can be clearly seen that societies with poor digital infrastructure, outdated human resources practices, incapable of distinguishing between wants and needs are incapable of being self-sufficient, hence, they are suffering from financial troubles on individual, corporate and national level.
What we need to do is to ask ourselves “What should we not do?” instead of “What should we do?”
So, what we need to do is to ask ourselves “What should we not do?” instead of “What should we do?”
As a man of science and author of numerous books, my ultimate goal is to help you, today’s young people, not make the mistakes we have made.
Obviously, in life, you will make mistakes. That’s unavoidable. But, if you keep making the same mistakes that older generations made in their lifetime, especially now there are millions of signs, past experiences warning you to take another course of action, you will realise that constant repetition has nothing to do with the nature of human intelligence and making the same mistakes again and again will only show that you are no different than our generation whom you are holding responsible for your problems in the first place.
I do believe that you will be different and better than us.
