Trees, Viruses, Businesses, Careers and 'Enough"

Photo by Maksim Shutov on Unsplash

I wake early. I like that brief period in the day before too many people start using it as a time to think.

I listen to "Farming Today", one of my favourite programmes and a source of constant inspiration from those who deal with more critical business uncertainty in a week than many of us face in a year, and who live with systems thinking as reality, not a course to be taken.

It makes a great reference point before listening to the news headlines until 7:00am. Often I listen to them in the background, and listen for the themes that connect the individual items, rather than get sucked into the details.

Today, the theme that emerged was the accelerating reversal of scale, as globalisation retreats in the face of fragile supply chains, fractious geopolitics and business models that just assumed scale, as a right that once initiated just keeps going. In sector after sector, from technology to the food chain, we can see the casualties of short term hubris ex…