Small change: predict nothing

The Hot Take Industrial Complex is a stultifying modern phenomenon. This or that happens. And before you can blink, a cavalcade of people queue up to tell you what it all means (for a fee).

These explanations have one thing in common: they’ll be wrong. This is because human beings are awful at predicting the second and third order consequences of any given event. The world is far more complex than we allow ourselves to think.

So, if you’re planning change, shut out the noise. Stop worrying about what might go wrong along some hard-to-define timeline. Instead, focus on the medium term: six months is about right. This reduces the window of opportunity for hard-to-predict events to bite, while allowing you to make decent progress on your agenda.

Something to consider: what can we get done in the next six months?

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