The World Changes Before We Do

One of the challenges of change is that the world can change long before we change our understanding of it. We can continue to operate with assumptions, beliefs and expectations that have served us well, sometimes for decades, without noticing that they may no longer hold.

I've been thinking about this in the context of Australia's place in the world, and particularly our relationship with America and Asia.

Plenty has been written about the changing geopolitical landscape. What interests me is the human dimension – how these changes affect our sense of who we are, our security, our assessments of the world and the moods and attitudes we find ourselves in.

One credible person to listen to on this is Hugh White, Emeritus Professor of Strategic Studies at the ANU. Earlier this year he wrote the Quarterly Essay Hard New World: Our Post-American Future.

For much of the period since the Cold War, Australia lived in a comfortable world. Globalisation seemed to guarantee prosperity, and the overwhelming power of the United States, and its commitment to close allies, seemed to guarantee our security. White argues that world has gone.

His central claim is that we have moved from a unipolar world dominated by America to a multipolar one, with power spread across the US, China, India, Russia and others. The economic shift alone is striking. In 2000, China's economy was about a third the size of America's in purchasing-power terms. Today it is around 30 per cent larger. India has grown from about a fifth to about half.

Crucially, White says this isn't just about Donald Trump. Trump has made the change visible, but the forces are structural. In a world with several major powers, some of them nuclear-armed, the costs and risks to America of global leadership have grown, while the imperative to bear them has shrunk. Alliances, he reminds us, are transactional when the chips are down. We only have to think about how Britain's ties to Australia were outweighed by its own interests when Singapore fell in 1942.

The implication is that while the USA will continue to be important for Australia and US allies, Asia's future will increasingly be decided in Asia. White argues that Australia must take far more responsibility for its own defence and build a different relationship with its region.

You can agree or disagree with his conclusions. But if he is even partly right, there are significant consequences for governments, businesses and the way Australia sees itself.

Narratives run on delay

What interests me most is the leadership and business challenge underneath all this.

Our narratives about the world don't necessarily change at the same speed as the world itself. An old story stays powerful because it has worked. It has shaped our institutions, careers, investments and identities. White observes that many political leaders built their careers in that world and are reluctant to acknowledge how much it has changed.

This isn't unique to politics.

The business changes, but the story people tell about it stays the same for a while. Clients' expectations shift before professionals change how they work. Technology changes what is valuable before we redefine expertise.

We can become so accustomed to our assessments of the world that we start treating them as facts, rather than interpretations that need revisiting.

And depending on how we interpret what's happening, we can find ourselves in different moods/attitudes informing what we do:

• Complacency (or even delusion): Things will basically continue as they have.

• Resignation: There isn't much we can do anyway.

• Nostalgia: I wish it was like the old days.

• Anxiety: I can see things are changing, but I'd better play it safe.

These are understandable responses but not helpful, especially when we don’t notice them.

Other moods/attitudes can open up different possibilities – curiosity, conviction, courage and perhaps even awe. They allow us to look squarely at what's happening, make different assessments, and take steps without pretending we know exactly how things will turn out.

Conversations create a different future

This is where White ends up, and where I think his argument applies well beyond foreign policy.

He argues that Australia's first task is to say publicly that the world has changed and to begin a serious national conversation about our relationships with America, with Asia, and our own responsibility for our security. None of this, he says, is hard to say. A few serious speeches could start it.

We've seen leaders such as Canada's Prime Minister at Davos earlier this year change the conversation simply by naming what is happening.

I think there's an important lesson here for leaders of organisations and businesses.

Sometimes the most important conversations are the ones we haven't been having.

Some questions that might be useful for leaders are:

• What assumptions are we making about our business, our clients and the world around us?

• What are people thinking but not saying publicly?

• What are the potential losses for the key people impacted?

• What conversations could we start having?

Much of what happens in the world is outside our control. But how we interpret it, and how we respond, is something we can influence.

We can pay attention, listen to credible people, and question the stories we've grown comfortable.

And we can start different conversations, and take steps to a different future.