Consulting the Oracle

Consulting the Oracle

A few years ago on a motorcycle trip through Greece, one of our last stops before heading into the barn in Athens was the Oracle at Delphi. The Delphic Oracle used to be called Pythia and it is a place where gaseous fumes from the subterranean realm sent high priestesses into rants and visions which came to be interpreted by ancient Greeks as prophecies. Some Greek historians say they were gibberish that was interpreted as prophesy and some say they were crystal-clear foreshadowings of coming events. It feels today as though we are caught in a new era of oracles trying to divine the future of our world. We in the United States don’t have a Sybil or Medusa, but we are stuck with an orange-haired pontificant of equally strange and unnatural ways. He has declared himself not a conduit to the gods, but a God unto himself. The all-knowing, all-seeing oracle of the American people.

He points to his head during a press conference and says with total sincerity that this is where the answers will come from. This is where the knowledge of what to do next and when to reopen our country will come from. There is a fine line between genius and idiocy and while I doubt we were ever in the former realm with this particular leader, we have definitely crossed the border into idiocy. The IQ maps delineate the fall in IQ rankings as going from average (100-115) to impaired to moronic to imbecilic (also inhabited by the cretinous) and lastly into the idiocy that prevails with IQ scoring of 0-25 points. These are actual gradations of the mentally deficient. We have had illustrious White House staffers and cabinet members go from calling Donald Trump a moron, an imbecile, a cretin and yes, an even to an idiot. Who knows if they fully comprehended the proper gradations much less the measurement of the man relative to the rankings. Anyone who took a position in his administration might be accused of some degree of deficiency and lack of foresight at very least, so their ability to classify others is probably also suspect.

One thing Trump has certainly now proven to all but the most blinded diehards, is that his ability to foretell events is non-existent and his ability to bring to bear the tools needed to give a rational prophecy cannot get past his massive and anti-social ego. His polls, after a dead-cat bounce at the outset of his daily briefings, have started to justifiably sink to the lowest levels of his disapproval ratings. Even conservative groups like the Lincoln Project have gone so far as to advertise his abject incompetence and narcissism in the handling of the current Coronavirus crisis. These are compelling anti-Trump ads that would infuriate even a stable genius. If Trump is no longer the font of all wisdom, especially on things economic, who is the next oracle of such? Jerome Powell might get the nod from some. Steve Mnuchin has played some bi-partisan ball, but is still a Trumpian. Wilbur Ross is asleep in the corner. Ben Carson….oh, please just stop me! But even Andrew Cuomo, who has clearly taken over as our spiritual and social leader is not trying to claim any provenance over the stock market or the economy. Where is Gary Cohn when we need him? Trying to avoid getting tarred by the Lloyd Blankfein brush I imagine. And Jamie, poor Jamie, needs to focus on his own health.

I contend that the people who will be in most demand initially as this economy tries to get back on its feet will be the thinkers. Not the doers, but the thinkers. Consultants, who are the butt of many business jokes will be in huge demand right now. My son’s girlfriend is an innovation consultant. She is an engineer by training and has moved from a big innovative material science company to a consulting firm that is repositioning its practice to focus on innovation consulting. I was initially worried for her as this Coronavirus hit because I wondered if innovation consulting was like R&D during a recession…the easiest budget to cut when times are tough. But as this crisis has deepened and as I sense that it will both take a long time to reopen the economy and that many of the changes forced upon people may cause a broad and serious rethinking of lifestyles and concomitant businesses, I have changed my mind. I have been on the McKinsey mailing list for years. I have always had a very high regard for McKinsey as the Hertz of the consulting world. I’m not sure I could even name an Avis-like number two….perhaps BCG, Booz Allen, or Accenture, or maybe Deloitte. But as much respect as I have had for McKinsey and all the power players that came out of their system, I can’t say I was too compelled to read their emails. It seemed optional. Things have suddenly changed. I read them ALL now and it seems mandatory.

You never need a compass until your plane crashes in the north woods. Well, our economy is a plane that has just crashed in the north woods. We are on Apollo XIII trying to figure out how to get back to earth when no one has ever faced that problem before. Doing shit won’t help. Thinking through what shit to do and in which direction to do it is what is necessary.

I cannot stress this enough. I engage in long conversations about the future with everybody I can think of. Maybe I’m just bored, but I don’t think that’s it. I think I am simply more uncertain than ever before about where things are going. And most of all, everyone seems to be in the same place. No one is terribly certain about anything. I’ve been saying this is a “hold all bets” moment and I think that’s true. But that will not be enough. In addition to pausing to reflect rather than knee-jerk, we have to think entirely out of the box about the future. Radical thinking and eventually big risk-taking will not become a swashbuckling alternative, it will become a mainstream “must do”.

The humor some people have taken with being disestablishmentarianists (how’s that for a word) is going yo quickly give way to serious and thoughtful futurists. It’s easy to dismantle and be disruptive. Knock down the deep state. Dis agency and bureaucratic insiders. Laugh about beltway cronyism and pork barrel politics. Now stop and design and implement a better system that works NOW and protects both Grandma and her pension and Junior and his voracious appetite for growth. Not so easy. It will take very serious and very diligent people to get our global economy back on its feet in a manner that feels like a step in a positive (dare I say, progressive?) direction. It will eventually requires the engineering and business doers to do their thing, but FIRST it will take great thinkers to come up with a vast array of ideas and work-arounds to transform the broken shards of the last economy into the elegantly efficient and fair new economy we all want and need. This is a great moment of opportunity and there is no room for blowhards and narcissists like Reality TV stars that think all is solved with a dismissive, “you’re fired.” The King is dead, long live the Kings and Queens and those Kings and Queens will be far more astute and serious people than the gold-gilded variety who now inhabit the throne.