Milk is such a staple in our society, it’s one of the first things cleared out of the grocery store as soon as there are reports of bad weather. Which is why it might have come as a surprise that recently, two of the largest milk producers in the US have gone bankrupt. If I told you twenty years ago that almonds would put Borden out of business, you’d have laughed me out of the building. Almond milk is a great example of an irrational idea that sounds completely crazy — until it isn’t.
So what’s happening here? Is the disappearance of a major producer of what has always been a staple an anomaly? Or is it part of a larger cross-industry trend?
We are surrounded by what I call “constants” — those things we believe to be absolute truths, take for granted, and think will never change. As a result, we don’t deem them worthy of interrogation and eventually find ourselves caught off guard when, say, we start drinking almonds instead of milk — an agricultural staple for thousands of years — and in the blink of an eye, find an entire industry in turmoil.
Even the constants that seem most immovable eventually prove they are vulnerable to disruption. Take air travel, for instance. While airlines contemplate their future with respect to the types of aircrafts they operate or in-flight amenities, none are thinking, “What if people just stop flying?” Yet, last year, Sweden experienced a four percent drop in air travel, largely as a result of flygskam or “flight-shaming” from climate activists. And while not everyone can follow Greta Thunberg’s example and opt for a zero-emissions yacht for crossing the Atlantic, technology is making air travel more optional than ever before.
A rise in autonomous cars will make traveling via car more efficient and comfortable, eliminating the need for many short- to mid-range flights. And since business travel accounts for significant revenue for airlines, advances in teleconferencing and the rise of virtual work sessions are already cutting into their bookings. Add to all of that the international rise in luxury rail travel, as well as startups like Cabin, which offer hip, comfortable sleeper accommodations for overnight bus travel between San Francisco and Los Angeles (a frequent flight route), and that four percent drop looks not only poised to stay, but likely to rise.
Just as the dairy industry didn’t contemplate a universe in which people simply stop drinking milk, airlines aren’t prepared for resistance to or such attractive alternatives to flight travel. And while there will likely always be some milk drinkers and air travel won’t completely disappear, the current data indicate more than a few companies will see the negative effects of constants that prove to be false.
Bracing For The Inevitable
So what’s the remedy? Change will happen. The best you can do is look at all the influencing factors within your market and industry — not in an attempt to stop it, but to get out ahead of it.
With milk, there are health trends, an increase in awareness around dietary allergies, and environmental influences, all of which came together to transform the industry much faster than anyone anticipated. The same confluence of multiple influencing factors is happening with air travel. That’s not to throw the dairy or airline industries under the (luxury) bus — we all have these blind spots to false constants, which expose us to risk. Technological advances, social media, and shifts in culture guarantee that every company and every industry are over-relying on a constant that is likely to change in the coming years, perhaps far faster than anyone wants to acknowledge.
But eventual bankruptcy or diminishing profits aren’t the only possible outcomes. By preemptively identifying false constants, you can sharpen your predictive vision and develop solutions that evolve with these inevitable changes. Ask yourself if the constants you’ve identified are really what your business is based on. Try to poke holes in them. What’s vulnerable? To what?
Once you understand the vulnerabilities, you can develop an irrational vision that predicts what would happen if these constants go away, followed by a strategy of small, one-degree decisions to stay ahead of these transformations.
For example, an airline might have a vision of being carbon neutral or — better yet — carbon negative. Lufthansa partners with myclimate to offset each flight’s carbon footprint, and electric air travel is now upon us. Airlines might also consider an additional class of service with carbon offsets built in, including exclusive partnerships with rideshare companies that use electric vehicles, creating an environmentally friendly experience door-to-door.
These are just two recent examples of things we never thought would change, as recently as a few years ago. But we live in a world where outcomes are not always rational — they’re irrational — and the only way to avoid their fate is to identify your constants and arm yourself with some preemptive irrational thinking.