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Weathering personal adversity means confronting challenges before they happen
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TODAY, we live in a VUCA world — one that is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. As businesses and economies grow larger and more interdependent, the exposure to risk is magnified many, many times.
While established businesses have mechanisms and strategies to mitigate risk and to deal with crises, individuals find it hard to deal with such situations. For one, our individual capacity to understand risk is relatively low. While we perceive some risks, such as those from poor environmental quality, or financial losses from bad investments, other risks seem quite remote. These include the loss of a job during the peak of one’s career; or losing a family member when he or she is only in their forties.
Even as reports speak of potential job losses of nearly two million people in the steel and coal industry, we think “I’m not in that industry, so it won’t affect me.” In a recent study done by the marketing communications firm Ogilvy, 91 percent of Chinese surveyed and 80 percent of Indians expect real improvements in their own conditions over the next decade. These people scarcely believe that recent turmoil in Britain, Europe and the Middle East will affect them in any way. As humans, we are often in denial about our personal vulnerability — this is why many of us have the feeling that “bad things will never happen to me, or my immediate family.’
As someone once quipped, it is when you’re walking tall that you don’t see the banana peel on the ground. Economists and politicians have plenty of time and data to predict or deny hard landings; not individuals. Shouldn’t common people, with families to look after, mortgages, fees and insurance premiums to pay, prepare and plan for contingencies?
In the VUCA world we must. No matter which stage in our careers or business, what age we’re at, which part of the world we’re living in, we should know and be prepared for the worst.
Such an exercise would involve asking a lot of “what if?” questions. These are indeed uncomfortable questions: What if the main earning member in a family lost their job, or a business collapse places the family under a huge debt? What if one parent died, leaving the other to look after very young children? What if the family was forced to migrate, relocate to a place where they knew no one — by war, disease, or natural disaster? What if one family member fell seriously ill and treatment costs wiped out the family’s savings?
While financial prudence might seem to be an obvious preparation, in most situations it is not the solution. The consequence of such dramatic life-changing events is too prolonged and can be too emotionally charged to solve through money.
Survival strategy
Being aware of the risks is the first step. One of the biggest transformations in the economy in this millennium is the absence of job security. The lifespan of most businesses is short-lived, and so is the expectation that employees will devote their entire career to an organization. Entrepreneurs do not expect to run one business throughout their lives: they move where the market is. To devote a lifetime to acquiring, nurturing and deploying one skill or competence in today’s environment would be suicidal — having and cultivating a passion on the side is becoming a survival strategy.
Many of us treat a medical examination as an inconvenience — going through the motions because the employer requires it. But when you consider the dizzyingly high incidence of heart disease and diabetes amongst the world’s largest populations, families should get themselves prepared for extended periods of being away from work, loss of income and medical expenses — simply because large proportions of the working population are not covered by medical insurance. Most of the fatalities from road accidents — some 150,000 annually in India and 200,000 in China — happen to young, productive family members. No matter how uncomfortable it might be, it is imperative for families to have the discussion — and find their own solutions, drawing upon the extended family’s support, identifying who to turn to in the hour of need.
A contingency plan can allow a firm — or a family — to bounce back from adversity, to survive and emerge stronger. In these testing times, it is always better to be prepared than sorry.
Kunal Sinha has over 25 years of unearthing and commenting on consumer and cultural trends, and has been based in Shanghai for nearly a decade.
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