In the 1890s, doctors warned about a new disease.
Bicycle face. An expression of strain, some said permanent, caused by the effort of balancing. Women were especially at risk, along with their morals, since a bicycle could take them anywhere without a chaperone.
The bicycle turned out to be a bicycle.
What's the pattern?
Every technology arrives with a panic attached. The printing press would end memory. The train would injure the body at speeds over thirty miles an hour. The novel would rot young minds. The telephone would end the art of the visit. Television would end reading. Video games would end attention.
Some of those panics had a grain of truth. Most were the sound of an old world sensing it was about to be replaced.
I put panic as the first stage in the cycle I teach, because it's that reliable. And here's the thing worth knowing: the panic stage is the least useful place to spend energy. It's where the most words get written and the least gets decided.
In my next book I write about how fear hijacks perception. The nervous system flares, the pattern-seeking mind fills in the threat, and suddenly a spreadsheet tool is the end of thought. That's happening to entire industries right now.
What should leaders do now?
So, three things.
Name the stage. Say it in the meeting: "We're in the panic stage, and the pattern says it passes." Watch the temperature drop.
Separate the true grain from the noise. Every panic has one real risk in it. Find that one thing and address it. Ignore the other nine.
And move to adoption early, with your eyes open. The organizations that came out of every past panic ahead were the ones that started using the thing while everyone else was still writing op-eds about it.
The panic is real. It's also temporary. It always was.
What are you panicking about that the pattern says will be furniture in ten years?
Related: What does 5,000 years of change say about the next five?
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