Doing business in the permacrisis

The re-election of Donald Trump reminds us that the bonfire of the incumbents is ripping through our political systems. Will our businesses be the next victims of the permacrisis?

You’re nearly there, folks. Just a few short weeks, and you’ll have survived 2024. Sure, it was no 2020, with its global disruption and upending of supply chains and working patterns. But it was still a heck of a year. In the background, the permacrisis rumbles on. But we always knew 2024 was going to be different, due to the sheer percentage of the world’s population that were going to the polls.

And it’s been a dramatic year, as a result of the decisions they made. Some results – like the UK’s – seemed to represent a return to a more traditional, stable model of politics. Many others, like the US result, seem to suggest continued disruption. And the collapse of the French government after a successful no-confidence vote — not seen since the 1960s — just reinforces that. Germany has its own issues.

It seems we are entering a world where politics looks very different from what we would have considered “normal” a decade ago.

The bonfire of the incumbents

Stepping back, though, a clear pattern emerges. As John Burn-Murdoch wrote in the Financial Times a few weeks ago, what we’ve actually seen is a bonfire of the incumbents:

The reason I make these assertions is that the economic and geopolitical conditions of the past year or two have created arguably the most hostile environment in history for incumbent parties and politicians across the developed world.

This is less a specific direction of movement on the left/right political axis, and more a rejection of the current paradigm:

The incumbents in every single one of the 10 major countries that have been tracked by the ParlGov global research project and held national elections in 2024 were given a kicking by voters. This is the first time this has ever happened in almost 120 years of records.

Results like this should give all of us pause: people are not happy.

Don’t forget the permacrisis

Much of this should not be a surprise: we’ve explored these ideas before. The series of events around the pandemic triggered a polycrisis, which in term birthed a permacrisis. The unhappiness with this state of flux can manifest in multiple ways:

It turns out that disruption is neither comfortable nor easy.

Disruption disrupts

We spent most of the 2010s worshipping at the altar of tech-driven disruption. And during the early part of that decade, we were delivered wonders. The advent of the smartphone — probably the most significant device in recent human history — changed our lives, often for the better. But its sheer pervasiveness, its ubiquity, has changed our lives in ways we couldn’t predict — and which many people dislike.

We wrote just a few weeks ago about the backlash coming against children’s use of tech, and social media in particular. It’s now found its ultimate expression in Australia, as it votes to ban under-16s from social media. It’s hard to see how this can be enforced in an environment where parents are happy to give their pre-teens access to services by lying about their age. And it runs the risk of young people finding more secret, less controllable ways of connecting digitally. But it is emblematic of the resistance to certain societal changes that’s emerging as a global trend.

These pressures are unlikely to ease. The climate crisis will drive further migratory pressures — and in many countries, it’s those very migrants that are a useful tinder for populist politicians to stoke a disruptive fire. The moves we take to address it won’t always be popular: witness the EV backlash mentioned above. But the consequences of inaction are far worse. In the UK, the Tory government pushed back Net Zero targets, but it did them no good. They lost convincingly to a party commitment to sustainability — and lost their supporters to an even more climate-sceptic party, Reform.

Business in the permacrisis

So, how do we react?

There’s certainly cause for nervousness here: could the bonfire of the incumbents burn through politics and into business?

Well, if you’re still clinging to a business plan that assumes a slow return to normality, it’s time to roast it away like the chestnuts on the open fire. Your marketing plan has to find a way to balance the nostalgia for simpler times with the fierce dislike of the status quo.

This is no easy challenge. Jaguar’s rebrand to bring attention to its shift towards EVs has been ridiculously successful in attracting attention, if only for the mockery dished out. But, one has to wonder, has it made more people aware of its change of direction than a more conventional campaign would have done? Is there something here about the rejection of the status quo?

It’s a big gamble, but companies whose business assumptions are being mutated around them — car companies, energy companies — can’t afford to think small at times like this.

Narratives of hope in the permacrisis

And perhaps we need to start telling more positive stories about a better future. Hope for the best, plan for the worst, as the old adage goes. Can you create narratives around your technology or products that help people see a better future to reach for, rather than a crappy present to react against?

There are signs of hope. In some places, change has been so transformative that unexpected consequences are developing. In parts of Australia, for example, rooftop solar has made electricity so ubiquitous that the state often has more than it can handle. And the backup generators, which use fossil fuels, are proving harder to run because there’s so little demand. This is very reminiscent of Arash Aazami’s predictions at NEXT24.

There’s a dawning realisation that we need to let go of the old — carbon-derived power backups — and adopt the new:

Importantly, Dr Wonhas said improved technology for inverters — which enable assets such as solar panels to connect to the grid — was allowing green energy to provide the system with strength and security services.

Equally, he said batteries would significantly help deal with the problem “in a number of different ways”.

It was for this reason, he said, that investors were flooding into the space, stumping up billions of dollars to build batteries that would add dozens of gigawatts of storage to the system.

There’s the beginning of a solarpunk narrative here: a world of cheap, abundant energy without needing traditional power stations.

And that may be the choice every company faces. With a narrative of the disliked present out of the question, do they reach for a nostalgic past or an inspirational future?

Place your bets at the casino of permacrisis, friends. The wheel is spinning.

Image by Raychel Sanner / Unsplash