The world is in chaos right now. People, governments and organizations are in downright survival mode. Everybody is looking at today and tomorrow. A future beyond that seems too uncertain to explore. Governments act on a short, day-to-day basis, trying to handle the public health crisis and mitigate any catastrophic financial crisis by creating massive support packages for businesses.
Meanwhile, we see the general public doing they’re best to defeat ‘the corona beast’ by adapting to the measures that have been put in place. Not everyone participates in this fight. In short, there is a disruptive force at work and everyone is responding in its own way.
Amongst this storm of news, sickness, fear and death we also see the gurus and advisors standing up. Experts who know exactly how to respond: never waste a good crisis”. Claiming that you can come out of this stronger. You only have to follow-up on their tackling-corona-in-10-easy-steps advice or invest heavily in marketing and sales right now. Beacons of certainty in uncertain times…
The TrendsActive Approach
We’d like to offer a smart and critical take on the crisis and provide you with thoughtful solutions and strategies on how to respond. But first, we need to understand the problem. Is it corona? Or is it globalization? Or is it the system we created together? Can we solve that? Or do we need to learn how to live with it? What is going on here? Only when we understand the context in which change occurs, we can find the right guidance. And that is exactly what we do at TrendsActive.
Providing guidance from a human perspective
At TrendsActive we believe every problem should be solved from the perspective of the human context. We’ve been researching and analyzing sociocultural trends for over a decade. These trends are in the human sciences like sociology, psychology, anthropology, etc. and describe the changing needs and behaviors of people. Over the last 15 years we have turned these trends into actionable strategies to ensure future relevance for our clients. Everything is brought together in our TrendsActive Trendmodel. And now, we will use this model to provide our clients with true – human centric – guidance for the development of strategical and hands-on solutions.
The way we work is structured and methodological. We always start with a TrendAudit to identify the most important sociocultural trends. And that’s exactly what we are doing right now. Using the TrendAudit to get a the right insights; deep understanding – from a human perspective – of the events that are taking place right now. Because actually it’s not about corona, it’s about a disruptive event. An event that’s influencing people in many ways, creating uncertainty, worries and social isolation.
The insights from our model provides answers. How will how people react in times like this? What human needs of different generations will likely be amplified? And what current behavorial and societal trends will manifest itself more clearly during times like these. We believe that answering these questions will give the right guidance. Because in the end the effect of disruptive events on people decide in which direction we all go, how people consume, how people change their mindsets etc.
Therefore we haven’t written any “How to survive corona” articles yet. It’s impossible without a true understanding of the problem. Giving solutions today is showing a lack of understanding of the whole situation. Organizations or people who claim they know what you should do, don’t show leadership. They merely reflect the same sort of panic reaction as the people who are buying piles of toilet paper right now.
For the next weeks we as TrendsActive will provide you with different human perspectives that will shed a light on what is to be expected. Let these perspectives guide your thinking, apply it to your future and (re)create succes with your products, strategies, positioning etc.
On behalf of the whole TrendsActive team
