What you need this week

2025 will test us. The geopolitical landscape is changing, new technology capabilities are emerging faster than ever, and the financial architecture of the world is being completely reinvented.

Economic Dashboard

Featured Panorama with latest updates

Change Leadership Segment

Featured Playbook

Outlook for 2025 and what it means for personal motivation

The geopolitical landscape is changing, new technology capabilities are emerging faster than ever, and the financial architecture of the world is being completely reinvented.

The issues we face in the 21st century are complex, risk-laden, and accelerating. Many meet the full criteria of "wicked problems": issues that don't have predefined recipes for success, won't get solved by ideology, and will require multiple iterative attempts to resolve.

The first attempt at solving a complex problem rarely goes well - regardless of the ideology or views or the people attempting to solve it. The first attempt often changes our understanding of what the problem actually is.

This challenging era we face is the strongest case for unity. When we're working through these challenging problems, political operatives will seize upon setbacks and distract us with "told-you-so's" ...what we need in those moments is not division and distraction. We need focus. And we need each other's perspectives. All focused on solving the problems at hand...not just making sure the other side looks bad. We need to increase communication and knowledge sharing.

Navigating and solving complex issues successfully requires diverse perspectives and the blending of different kinds of expertise. This requires high degrees of trust and free and open communication.

It is easy to read this and think it's unrealistic. But it's far more unrealistic to think that pessimism is somehow the safer ground.

Across the panorama of history, mindsets that said "I doubt we can" never accomplished as much as mindsets that said "I believe we will". If you just can't bring yourself to say "I believe we will" then see if you can at least say "Let's try."