Here’s something inspirational I came across today, from a visionary leader and founder of the California-based board and wargame company, GMT Games, Gene Billingsley:

A quote from one of my heroes, legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden. He used to preach to his players ‘Don’t let what you can’t do interfere with doing what you can.’ It sounds so simple and yet it is profound, both on the basketball court and in life. Fear, worry, doubt, focusing on our weaknesses, seeing how big or fast the enemy or opponent is—all these things can paralyze and keep us from moving forward, assessing our strengths, and using them to do what good we can in any circumstance. So I want you to understand, in a period where there are definitely some things that we can’t do (like open the office and warehouse), that we are very focused on what we can accomplish—which is to continue to prepare great games for you to enjoy once we’re open and able to ship again. The great strength of GMT Games lies in our people; in the combined positive synergies created by our teams. We’re continuing to foster that team environment and creative spirit as we work together to bring you all some very cool games later this year.

Talk about stopping you in your tracks. That mindset is something I hope all great businesses are able to apply in their engine rooms too.

You see, we’re at a turning point in history. Those who think the Old Economy will be there to greet them when the Covid-19 health crisis is over, will find themselves behind the curve or off it altogether.

That’s because we’re witnessing a New Economy in fermentation. New markets, new supply chains, a need for localised production and the transformation of primary resources into secondary and tertiary products at the local level for trade; with new ways of finding and keeping customers; new ways of serving and delivering their needs.

Covid-19 is to the 21st Century what Hiroshima was to World War 2.

We’ve just encountered our first taste of what global biological warfare might look like. And as the threat of the Atomic Bomb changed the way we looked at life from the 1950s-on, Covid-19 will herald a new world from 2020.

It will bring down political and business leaders without the instinct for change. Those who succeed will realise that the money of the past is next to worthless today. A billionaire with interest rates at zero and without a gold standard backing their promissory paper is worth only the value of that paper their currency is printed on until a global debt reckoning arrives. I see the wheelbarrows of marks in Germany during the early 1920s as the printing presses today churn on when I write this.

A globalised business world based not on egalitarian pricing but slave-wage labour is no longer tenable. The globalisation facade has been smashed revealing it for what it was. Meaning that centralised production and supply chains situated in dictatorships, whether under the guise of Communism or Nouveau-Capitalism, are not only unethical but unsustainable—particularly when those economies were not in genuine trading partnerships with their clients to start with: rather seeking bellicose domination of the globe.

I’m taking about the Xi regime of China and the Putin regime of Russia, neither of which will last once Covid-19 is cured.

What the quote above teaches us, is that while those with foresight are indeed building new business paradigms, lessons of the past can not only instruct us but strengthen our resolve.

Change comes in increments and right now, we have time. But those who think they’ll be able to source demand without a drastic change in market approach and origin—they’ll fall by the wayside, while those who know that consumers will now punish anyone linked to the source of a virus that has caused them so much pain, will reap the riches to come through viable alternatives in a massively over-leveraged geopolitical world.

So, for now, we work on what we can do. And getting a broom out on our shop floors is fully within that capacity. We create change.

© 2020 Adam Parker.