sales-trends-2020-trend-1-global-trends

Sales trend 1 of the Barrett 12 Sales Trend Report for 2020 is about what businesses and sales teams can do now to start making a difference for people and the planet.

blog_numberSome thoughts on forecasting:

Now is always a good time to confront an uncertain future. While forecasting accurately beyond 90 days is generally a coin toss, it is never pointless asking (and sharing) questions about the future and likely scenarios. This is especially useful if it flushes out clear dissenters, who may have an unconventional view or new information.

Predictions can also be over complicated – nominating odds of 0% thru 100%. But most people are very good at classification systems like this:

  1.  “Won’t happen, most likely” 0 to 19%
  2.  “Probably won’t happen” 20 to 39%
  3.  “Don’t know” 40 to 60%
  4.  “Might happen” 61 to 80%
  5.  “Should happen, most likely” 81 to 100%

At Dysrupt Labs we confront an uncertain future at constantly scanning for shifts in “known unknowns” (i.e. will there be a recession) and “unknown unknowns” (i.e. the USA withdrawing from Kurdish Syria). We do this on our public geopolitical forecasting platform www.almanis.com, estimating the probabilities of events happening.

We continuously monitor forecasters, pundits, journalists and media outlets including social media. We also track gambling sites. The best of these experts’ forecasts, looking out 3 to 12 months, are right 50% of the time. And beyond 12 months, they are right less than 50% of the time.

We look for the “astrologer” effect where the expert’s language is cleverly structured for ambiguity or get-out clauses. Or the “economist” covered bet “On the one hand, but on the other hand ….”

We look for credible “heretics” [as opposed to crack pots] who challenge the orthodoxy of conventional wisdom. They often see inflection points the rest of us cannot. We ask questions:

  • A decade out for technology and climate;
  • Several years out for politics;
  • Less than two years out for economics;
  • Less than 90 days for corporates, politics and climate.

Some unknowns in 2020:

  • Australia
    • Housing price crash.
    • Impact of a prolonged trade war and resultant economic slowdown in China, and therefore Australia?
    • Drought and other climate events.
    • Anti-corruption – A royal commission into, or the successful creation of, an effective federal ICAC/IBAC would be unexpected. If it established that graft, corruption and incompetence amongst Commonwealth public servants and politicians is more widespread than portrayed this would have high impact.
  • UK
    • Brexit
    • Hard, soft, none or delayed?
    • Exit – another Y2K false alarm? A nasty short term shock and adjustment? A catastrophic medium to long term system failure?
  • USA
    • President Trump’s impeachment: is a dramatic distraction.
    • President Trump’s re-election is important for three reasons – who will be the Democrat candidate? Will Trump be the GOP candidate? And who will win?
    • Border protection – deceptive question – the 2013 Australian Federal Election established “border protection” as a divisive electoral issue and in the 2016 UK Brexit referendum some consider it a factor. US commentary on both sides of politics has been weaponised and the Americans may be underestimating this issue if it is exploited effectively by either side. The impact on the 2020 Presidential election is uncertain.
    • Financial crisis – the conventional wisdom is that there is no prospect of another crisis, however, concerns remain in the wings about US Corporate sector’s leveraged debt, or a possible unknown shock
    • Recession – technical indicators have flashed red to a recession sometime in the next 18 months- but if so, when?
    • The behaviour of some governments including Russia and China in significantly increasing their gold reserves year on year suggests we are all missing something? Reduced foreign appetite for US government debt?
  • US-China
    • Trade dispute – has been weaponised by both countries, and by “global traders” and “nationalists”. However, there are significant shifts in the narratives about “globalisation” as the world reassess trade relations with China since it entered the WTO during the Clinton administration. There are a lot of unknown unknowns in this dispute.
    • Chinese consumer boycott on US corporations and brands …. If implemented, as previously against Japan and South Korea, this could reduce Fortune 500 revenue by 5 to 15%
    • South China Sea – something that could see a spectrum of progressive escalation. The contrast in resolve of China versus other nations is notable.
    • Taiwan – if the US pushes support for Taiwan too far, we could see China calling out the US the way the US called out the Soviet Union during the Cuban missile crisis in the early 1960s. The Chinese communist party is not bluffing about Taiwan as a part of China.
    • Hong Kong – both the US and China want this to go away. The wild card. The West’s prevailing narrative is naive in its expectations for special consideration, for what China sees should, eventually, be just another city in China, rather than a European colonial artefact. Watch for the Hong Kong dollar peg against the USD to come under pressure and possibly break. Watch for Hong Kong bank failures if the US Senate and Congress withdraw Hong Kong’s special treatment as a “country” separate from China in trade and commerce.
    • Huawei – is part of a broader long term conflict between the US and China. Huawei represents an escalation in the cyberwar between the two countries and between China and the rest of the world. If you are in technology infrastructure or Internet business such as Facebook, Apple, etc. do not expect this to go back to how it was.
    • Cyber war – US retaliation, should it become a “declared” conflict, will significantly impact Chinese equipment suppliers and US component manufacturers.
  • Global
    • Large scale regional stimulus spending on infrastructure to try and combat a slowing global economy?
    • Energy technology transformations – falling costs of alternatives? Increased interest in new generation nuclear tech? Battery storage breakthroughs? Chinese solar panel subsidies and subsidies of other governments can distort these transformations.
    • Anti-trust action against new tech: Facebook, Amazon and Google. Likely to be national and regional [i.e. EU] responses.
    • The social backlash against 50 years of increasing concentration of wealth [and opportunity] in the hands of the top 10% [across all countries] is likely to see:
      • left and right populist candidates elected
      • increasing taxes on corporates and high net worths
      • other attempts at redistribution of wealth and/or opportunity
      • internationally coordinated assaults on corporate and high net worth tax “planning”
      • a growing backlash against the big corporates, accounting firms and major banks as complicit enablers of inequality and followers of behaviours at odds with their nationally granted social licenses to operate
      • increasingly aggressive and well-resourced pushback from the targets of backlash.
    • Climate change will prove to have been significantly underestimated by all experts and forecasters. Be on the lookout for a shift in the global narrative and emerging “societal inflection points” times where societies pivot as a shared realisation takes root. This means that as system distress becomes more frequent and more impactful in the coming years public demands and preparedness for economic sacrifice will grow. This will be an exponential process, not linear.

The time is NOW to confront an uncertain future.

Remember, everybody lives by selling something