WATCH | Bruce Whitfield introduces 'The Upside of Down'

03 March 2020 - 10:56 By pan macmillan
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Can chaos and uncertainty breed opportunity? This is a question Bruce Whitfield answers in his new book, 'The Upside of Down'.

About The Upside of Down:

The next time you attend a conference or hire a consultant, you may be told: "We live in a VUCA [Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous] world. Leave the room. You are wasting your time."

In a world of fake news, deep fakes, manipulated feeds of information and divisive social-media agendas, it’s easy to believe our time is the most challenging in human history.

It’s just not true.

It is a time of extraordinary opportunity, but only if you have the right mindset. Fear of the future breeds inaction and leads to strategic paralysis. We put off decisions until we can have certainty. We look for signals. We wait. And while we do that, the world moves on around us.

Problem solvers thrive during chaotic and uncertain times because they act to change their future. Winners recognise that in a world of growing uncertainty, you need to resort to actions on things you can control.

The only things over which you have absolute control are your attitude and your mindset. These, in turn, determine the actions you will take and that will define your future.

A robust mindset is the one common characteristic Bruce Whitfield has identified after two decades of interrogating how South Africa’s billionaires and start-up mavericks think differently. They are not naive Polly-Annas. They don’t ignore risk or hope problems will go away. They constantly measure, manage, consider and weigh up opportunities in a tumultuous sea of uncertainty, and find ways around obstacles.

If, as Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller suggests, the stories we tell affect economic outcomes, then we need to tell different stories amid the noise and haste of a rapidly evolving world.

BRUCE WHITFIELD has won more awards for financial journalism than any other working South African media professional. His daily Money Show on 702 and Cape Talk is compulsory listening for anyone who wants to know what is happening in the political economy. Whitfield presents Taking Stock on eNCA.


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