All tagged Predicting the future
There’s a ton of debate these days about whether a recession is looming (or not), followed by just as much debate about whether we’re already in one.
Each side puts forward plenty of data and evidence to support their position - and if you listen to what they have to say, you can be convinced either way. So, who’s right? What’s the actual truth?
Back in the 80’s, my dad bought our first personal computer, a thing of beauty at the time that would now be viewed as a hulking monstrosity. I don’t remember the brand and have only a rough memory of the specs - either an Intel 286 or 386 microprocessor, probably about 512KB of RAM and a 20 MB hard disk.
Many times, we tend to think our problems emerge out of nowhere.
Suddenly, the growth stops as those sales meetings cease to convert. Or our quality issues become overwhelming as the returns pile up.
The world has changed! The old order is out! Things will never go back to the way they were!
There’s no shortage of pronouncements about how the coronavirus has fundamentally changed the way we live, work and play. No more cruises, no more constant flying, no more of the large scale social gatherings that we’ve become so accustomed to. It’s (apparently) a whole new world out there.
And so it goes with Working From Home (WFH).
When we went through the Great Recession of 2008/2009, I remember thinking to myself (perhaps consoling myself) that I would never see an economic downturn as bad as that ever again in my lifetime. I mean, the scale of the trouble at the time was such that multiple markets around the world, multiple sectors, multiple categories, all got hit at once, and the resultant economic malaise took years to overcome. Surely, something at that scale could never happen again?
Well, never say never, I guess.
