Good Morning my dear friends and colleagues.
It is a cool Saturday morning. I write to you in the stillness before the house awakes, when only my loyal and ever-present Great Danes Tank and Nakia are by my side on my study floor. I am writing to wish you all well for 2021 and to make the effort to tell you that I have a very good feeling about the year ahead. Yes. That’s right. I have a very good feeling. No proof. No science. No data. Just a very good feeling. In previous versions of myself I may have dismissed this feeling. I may have sniggered at it. I may rather have concerned myself about the facts of what we know about 2021 and about the future. But from the perspective that I have now come to enjoy, I can see that this way of thinking is completely messed up at very least at two different levels. Firstly, if anything has become clear to us about the events of 2020, then it’s that there are no “facts” about the future. (otherwise we would have known for a “fact” in January 2020 that the coming months would see all the chaos that come to be caused by COVID-19 and the response to it of governments and businesses across the globe) The truth of course is that there has never in the history of time been any “fact” about the future. There has only ever been speculation and the charlatans and chancers who peddle their speculation to you and to me for their personal profit and (short-lived) fame. The future is unknown. That is its nature. The future does not yet exist. Or put another way perhaps, an infinite number of possible futures exist (so, even if we could see them all at the same time, it would not help us one little bit to plan our day, plan our lives or to give expert advice to anyone, because we would have absolutely no way of telling which one of these possible futures would come to be.)
The second way in which I have come to see things a little differently from my earlier self, is that I now understand that when I say I have a good “feeling” about 2021, what I actually mean to say is that, that part of my brain that runs calculations at such an incredible speed that I cannot possibly follow consciously, has computed from all the data available to it that the coming year has a strong probability of being favourable to me. I have learned that the ability of this “unconscious” part of my brain to run calculations is far, far superior to that part of my brain that will actively, and with my full awareness, try to calculate 546 divided by 19 or the circumference of a circle with the diameter of 1,5 metres. It is this “feeling” part of my brain that runs the complex calculations when I throw a stone at tin can, or use my bow to shoot and arrow at a target (archery, for me, is much more enjoyable when I remove the cumbersome sights that are fixed by the bow and made use of in the competitive Olympic version of the sport of Archery). So, the new improved version of me takes “feeling” a lot more seriously. I know that feeling is not the opposite of thinking, but rather the kind of thinking that is able to draw on a whole lot of data that I may not be able to put into the kind of language that my “thinking” brain understands. Before I release the arrow toward the target, somewhere in my brain I am collecting and processing data from the pressure of the bow string on my fingers, the direction and intensity of the wind as it strikes my face, the distance to the target and the position of my feet and tension in the muscles of my back and arms. Somewhere in my brain I am collecting all this data that I am not even aware that I am collecting and mixing it up with a whole lot of stored data about my previous archery sessions and ultimately delivering a “feeling” that lets me “point” to the target and loose my arrow toward it. I have come to trust this “feeling” way of thinking in archery and I have also slowly come to trust it in other parts of my life too (like taking a view on how 2021 is likely to turn out!)
Over and above this feeling though, I am picking up little clues everywhere that we can come to expect some interesting and exciting changes in the way we live out our lives. I hasten to add that I am not writing to you to give you advice on what will be the ‘top 10 trends to expect for 2021”, but perhaps I can talk a little about what trends I see (from my specific perspective) as having come into prominence in 2020. Perhaps my taking notice of these trends have given me a positive feeling about 2021 – But as I have said. I just don’t know!
What I do know is that 2020 has triggered a shift far beyond the limits of medicine. Let me list below what I see as being the most important of these as they impact on me and the things that are important to me. (and maybe to you as a part of my community) Of course I am very deeply caught up in the world of buildings, property, design and cities, so those are the things that catch my eye and those are the things I would like to chat a little about here, but perhaps under the headings of Four Main “Shifts” that I have come to see in my thinking:
Shift Number 1 – Size Matters
From where I stand it seems to me that size matters. A whole lot of other things matter too, but I can see that size definitely has had a significant impact on the ability of some to continue on after 2020 or not. While it is obvious that some categories of business have done really badly in 2020 (Here I am thinking restaurants and breweries) and other have done really well (here I am thinking delivery companies and PPE suppliers), there is also something to be said about the scale of operations that have had a better chance of surviving. So, while the super big, listed companies see to be able to carry on as a result of the deep reserves and lines of credit, the medium sized operations seem to face greater challenges than the small. From what I have seen this seems to have to do with the ease with which smaller businesses seem to be able to adapt to change. It is one thing getting and an office of 10 or 20 people to quickly set themselves up to work from home via VPN and Zoom, but an entirely different task to achieve that with an organisation of 200 or 2000 personnel. So, if anything 2020 has shown us that there is such a thing as a preferable size and scale for whatever sector of the economy you find yourself in and that the preferable scale is that one that allows you to be flexible enough to change as and when the environment within which you operate changes.
So as an Architect and a creator of spaces my interest has become quite focused on “Future Proofing” because buildings are of course just the shells around businesses or families or other institutions. As the future comes to impact on those institutions the building that house them must be able to change along with them. This required some thought on the part of the architect. Because size does matter and it will definitely matter differently at different times of you building’s future. That we can take as given.
I would like to give this some thought in the course of the year. I would like to give some thought to what is the most effective size of our families, our businesses and our countries. Perhaps Ill share some of that thinking with you.
Shift No 2 – Essentialism
2020 has really brought into strong focus in my own life and I am sure in many of your lives, that which is essential and that which is wasteful. In 2020 we stayed at home, we “social distanced”, but life carried on. I, for one, was not made to be particularly miserable by many of the changes that came to be the “new normal”. Meetings that would have been held around my boardroom table or out of town were seamlessly replaced with “Zoom” and “Teams”. These meetings to me seemed more efficient, better recorded and accessible to more participants than had ever been the case. Before 2020 we thought these physical meetings were essential. We now know that a better way has in fact already for some time been available to us. In a similar way the very real pressure caused my business income being limited has caused me and many other business owners to think very seriously about our expenses. Through 2020, I have had to ask myself on a daily basis to justify this expense or the other in terms of its relative ability to generate income and keep things going. But also on a personal level, I used to think that a stop in at Seattle Coffee shop was an essential part of my morning routine, I now know that I can make a perfectly good cup of coffee with my stove to Belini espresso pot. I used to think that the only way to get good Pizza was to book a table a Charlies Pizzeria on Saturday night. I now know that its huge fun to make Pizza from scratch at home (even though the skill took me many, many weeks of practice to begin to master.) So I see that we have been pushed in 2020 not only to focus on the essential, but to realise that a lot of what we had been routinely doing prior to 2020 was being done out of force of habit and not because we had necessarily consciously chosen the way in which we had come to spend our time. I would guess though that the challenge is to not re introduce the unnecessary as soon as the immediate pressure to do so has passed and then to somehow benefit from the “leaner and meaner” business or lifestyle in the good times.
Shift No 3 – Location, Location, Location and Zoom Towns
While it has been the case for quite some time that where we are in the world does not really impact limit us in where we choose to do business, the last 12 months has brough this truth more clearly into focus for a great number of people. What I can see already is that a number of otherwise pleasant places that before were considered to be to remote and too far removed from the centre are now being considered as completely viable options for the location of our business or our homes or our factories. The last 12 months has made places like St. Francis Bay, Knysna, Hermanus and many like them see like serious options for people that may certainly have dismissed them before as anything other a place to visit for two weeks of the year in summer.
Shift No 4 – South Africa is OK
Despite all the noise coming from those on to the left or to the right of Cyril’s government the truth is that South African has been as clumsy as handling 2020 as most other governments in the world. Even our big brothers, the UK and the US have had their fair share of falling about, while our President has been dignified, firm and clear even when taking away out cherished freedoms and our treasured personal pleasures. So, the shift I am beginning to see is and acceptance of “Yes – South Africa is not great, but where in the world is great!!”. The vibe I am picking up is “Lets push ahead and make the best of what we have here”. Perhaps you feel it too? I certainly didn’t pick up this vibe in SA in 2019 and most certainly not in 2016!
Perhaps many of the other “Shifts” that I am picking up can fit in to the above four categories. There are many such shift and strangely this excites me. The possibility that the world that we face in this coming year and the years that will follow it will not be “business and usual” coupled with the very, very exciting technologies that are advancing every year at a mind boggling exponential rate make we very grateful to be alive in this era. I am braced for the spectacle; I continue to do as much as I can every day to prepare for it. So…… “Let the games begin!”
TimberTiny 