Tag: strategy

  • To Prepare For Every Possible Outcome, Try Red Teaming

    An advanced how-to guide to using the U.S. military’s most powerful strategic tool.

    “This is Spearhead 6, execute FRAGPLAN 7,” the division command radio net crackled.

    It was the evening of February 25, 1991 – Operation Desert Storm – and we in “Spearhead” 3rd Armored Division were deep into Iraq on the second day of the attack as part of 7th Corps, the main attack force. “Six” is the call sign of the commander, and a “FRAG” (short for “fragmentary”) plan is Army speak for a contingency plan. The order to switch to FRAGPLAN 7 meant that the enemy didn’t do what we expected they would, and we thus needed to change to a predesignated contingency plan.

    “I guess the enemy didn’t get the memo,” my radio man jokingly muttered. 7th Corps primary plan was to attack from Saudi Arabia into Iraq to the west of the main enemy positions, deep into the enemy’s rear. Doing so, we expected that our primary objective, Saddam Hussein’s elite Republican Guard (RG) Divisions, would retreat to the north, abandoning their defensive positions and occupation of Kuwait, given the threat we imposed of encircling them and cutting off the resupply and communications lines to their rear. After taking away their advantage of being in a fixed defense, we could then engage them in open battle.

    Instead, they decided to stand and fight. Defeating these RG Divisions were what the corps commander LTG Fred Franks designated as the enemy’s “center of gravity” – defined in U.S. Army doctrine as the core focal factor that the success of a plan hinges on. LTG Franks knew that the RG provided the Iraqis their strategic flexibility and that if we defeated the elite RG, the rest of the less proficient Iraqi Army would begin to crumble.

    FRAGPLAN 7 was based on the “what if” occurrence that the RG stayed in place, and entailed that 7th Corps and its five divisions and other assets abandon the attack north and instead swing to the east and launch an attack against their positions – what the press later labeled the “hail Mary” or “right hook,” depicted by the darker blue arrows on the map below.

    How do you get a force totaling a massive 150,000 soldiers in strength to execute a substantially changed plan in stride, maneuvering divisions into new positions and directions of attack across an approximately 100-mile front, while maintaining coordination, synchronization, logistical support and effective performance? Every artillery and bombing target had to shift; attack routes, resupply points and medical stations all had to shift; communications antennas had to relocate; new maneuver control points had to be established, etc. To be so adaptable, organizations need to enact “possibilistic” thinking, analyzing the potential need to change ahead of time and have developed, socialized and rehearsed a responsive contingency plan across the organization. That foresight and associated contingency plan was, in this case, FRAGPLAN 7 and it ensured the overwhelming defeat of the enemy’s center of gravity in Desert Storm.

    Does your organization proactively plan to “shift right”?

    The U.S. Army operates in volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) contexts where changes to plans are not only likely but is expected. General Eisenhower stated, “Plans are nothing – planning is everything,” conveying that the plan itself is less important than the process you go through to create that plan, wherein wisdom is gained. As VUCA often demands that plans change, it is thus critical that through a robust planning process the organization has created deep knowledge and understanding of the threats and opportunities to a plan and created a series of contingency plans. Gaining such wisdom requires a process to fully understand all of the plan’s internal and external stakeholders (business partners, competitors, employees, government actors, and other stakeholders, etc.), the operating environment, the competitive market dynamics, and all the ‘what if’ factors and events that might positively or negatively affect your plan during execution.

    To do this, the Army has honed over many years a process called “red teaming.” Red teaming is just one step in a broader planning process but is arguably the most important. Red teaming occurs after planners develop potential courses of action (COA) to accomplish the leader’s intent or vision for a given plan, strategy, or initiative. Creating a minimum of two potential COAs is advised so that they can be compared for their relative strengths and weaknesses after each is thoroughly “red teamed” to determine which is best. In the case of Desert Storm, before selecting the primary plan, planners initially looked at alternate COAs of attacking from the west part of Saudi Arabia due north into Kuwait, an amphibious assault from the Persian Gulf, and numerous other potential COAs. Each were red teamed prior to settling on the final intended plan. I say intended for as Prussian Field Marshall von Moltke famously stated in the 1800’s, “No plan survives contact with the enemy.”

    Research shows that leaders and their planning teams are plagued by numerous psychological limitations and biases, and they also tend to not look at their plans fully through the eyes of all stakeholders nor take into account all potential contextual and market factors. Planners also tend to become advocates for their plans and thus tend, often unknowingly, to seek or see as more important information that supports their plan while not seeking or discounting the validity or importance of information that doesn’t support their plan. Red teaming helps break through these and other limitations to increase objectivity.

    The Army’s Red Team Handbook states, “‘Red teaming is largely an intellectual process…. more an art than a science…. requiring Red Team members to possess superb critical and creative thinking skills.” Red Teaming can be defined as:

    A process of providing objective assessment and exploring alternatives, opportunities, and weaknesses in plans and operations from the perspective of adversaries (competitors), other stakeholders (e.g., suppliers, customers, employees), and potential positive and negative (Murphy’s Law) events.

    As former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said, “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.” The purpose of red teaming is to ensure you objectively maximize the organization’s understanding of the known-knowns, validating and refining your facts. That you analyze, create assumptions for, and develop contingency plans for the known-unknowns. And that you ideate and create wisdom and flexible plans as best possible to ready the organization to respond to the many unknown-unknowns that may occur.

    The red teaming process has been successfully implemented across many corporate enterprises of all sizes. Chris Calio, President of Pratt & Whitney says “We’ve widely adopted red teaming as a tool to support critical decision making, on topics ranging from investments to financial plans to customer proposals. It’s become especially valuable in the current VUCA environment, when leaders often are required to make swift decisions while facing a host of unknowns. Our leaders recognize that using red teaming to challenge our assumptions and understand different stakeholder perspectives results in better quality decisions and improved team alignment.”

    Setting the conditions:

    Effective red teaming first requires a transparent culture that encourages ideating outside the box, and ‘speaking truth to power’ by openly expressing thoughts and concerns about plans. Everyone needs to remain objective, not allowing personality, belief of “what COA the leader wants” or other factors to limit ideation or defending a COA just because you developed it. There should be “no rank in the room” – everyone participates and has a chance to raise ideas, issues, and concerns transparently. Indeed, often those employees closest to the point of execution or that interact more regularly with stakeholders have the best insights.

    Red team members must also be sufficiently selfless and willing to put the organization first. Such selflessness is shown by providing outside perspectives to help others red team their plans, avoiding politics and ‘silo thinking’ and being open to recognize when during red team analysis your unit’s/team’s plans negatively affect other units/teams and be willing to adjust your plans as needed.

    Effective red teaming also requires balance. Planning teams too often focus red teaming on the potential threats to the plan, but you should equally look to identify opportunities that may emerge during plan execution. You should ask yourself ‘how can we be ready to seize this opportunity if it presents itself’? and create corresponding contingency plans. In Desert Storm, for example, we didn’t adequately consider or plan for the potential that the enemy would surrender in droves once met with overwhelming force, and thus we were not adequately prepared to receive the deluge of 57,000 prisoners taken by 7th Corps during the conflict.

    The Red-Teaming Process:

    Red teaming is typically best done by breaking a plan into logical phases and then red teaming one phase at a time as shown in the example in the above Figure. Thus, structure the red teaming session to walk participants through each phase in turn from start to finish of plan execution. Prepare synchronization matrices, schematics, models, maps or other products to guide conduct of the session and give participants an understanding of the events happening in each phase and provide a sense of sequence, space and time. There are many techniques and approaches organizations can take to red-team plans. Some key components inherent in any effective red-team session would involve the following seven steps:

    1: Do a stakeholder audit: Conduct a thorough analysis to identify all internal and external stakeholders that your plan will affect and/or that could affect implementation of your plan (competitors, business partners, government regulators, clients/customers, community members, your own employees, etc.). When possible, assign knowledgeable individuals to role play those stakeholders to ensure all stakeholder perspectives and potential actions are illuminated and addressed.

    2: Conduct stakeholder analysis: Walk through each phase of execution in turn, assessing the potential actions and reactions of each stakeholder group. In each execution phase, ask questions such as “what will be the desires, needs, fears, and positions of each stakeholder?” “What actions might they take or fail to take that could positively or negatively affect the plan?” “What threats and/or opportunities might they impose?” What if, for example, the Republican Guard retreats, holds in defense, counter attacks, etc.

    3: Conduct Murphy’s law and Yhprum’s law analysis: After analyzing all stakeholders in a given phase, before moving to the next phase, assess what other possible ‘what ifs’ may occur in addition to specific stakeholder actions. Identify potential Murphy’s law (“if it can go wrong it will go wrong”) events, considering things like “What if a pandemic hits?, What if the prime rate shifts? What if we experience a product recall? What if our employees strike? Yet in each phase also conduct Yhprum’s law (“Murphy” spelled backwards) analysis, whereby you consider “anything that can go right, will go right”. In this case, look for potential opportunities that may arise: What if interest rates or cost of capital decline? What if our major competitor has supplier issues, product recall or government injunction? What if we get unexpected orders that require us to double production? As part of this analysis, challenge all the facts, assumptions, and hypotheses you generated during planning. Ask yourself. Are these really facts (known-knowns) or just assumptions? What if our assumptions we made concerning the known-unknowns (e.g., what the expected sales orders, or cost of labor will be) are wrong? Have we adequately brainstormed potential unknown-unknowns?

    4: Identify and list known critical events and decision points. Steps #1-3 will identify a series of critical events that will or could occur and positively or negatively influence mission accomplishment, whether by stakeholders, natural events, etc. In this fourth step, list and describe each critical event, then for those deemed to have sufficient probability of occurring, and are of sufficient importance, identify them as key decision points – points at which the leader may have to decide whether to launch a contingency plan, alter the strategy, allocate additional resources, etc. Decision points are events, locations, or points in time where decisions are estimated to be required during mission execution dues to VUCA (e.g. continue or abort a product launch, apply more resources to marketing, launch Plan B). When red-teaming the primary COA in Desert Storm, the Republican Guard holding in defensive positions was just one of many potential critical events identified, and it served as one of many decision points for LTG Franks – if the event were to occur he had already identified that he would have to make a critical decision at his level, to continue the primary plan or execute a contingency plan.

    5: Create contingency plans. Contingency plans should then be created for each decision point. The amount and depth of contingency plans is a leader decision – based on factors such as how much time the team can allocate to planning, how likely each critical event is to occur, and how dangerous or opportune each possible key event might be. As Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz proffered in his famous 1800’s book, On War, and as depicted in the Figure below, contingency plans can be branches or sequels. Sequels are decisions such as whether to launch the next phase of or abort a plan, or slightly alter or infuse additional capital into the plan at key points. Branches entail doing something different than the original main plan (e.g. FRAGPLAN 7). In Desert Storm, there were numerous such contingency plans created.

    6: Create a list/matrix of leader’s critical information requirements (LCIR). LCIR is simply the list of information the senior leader wants to be informed of during execution relative to each decision point so that they have the information needed to drive those decisions. Specifically, a matrix should identify and describe each potential critical event, the associated decision point, and list the associated LCIR that the senior leader needs from their team to inform that key decision. LCIR specifies to the team what metrics, market intelligence, internal status factors (e.g., cost or equipment readiness factors) to track and inform the senior leader. Implicitly however, it also communicates what the leader doesn’t need to know – thus it limits followers’ reporting requirements to that information needed to drive decisions at the higher leader’s level. In an empowered organization, other information that drives decisions at lower levels can be maintained at those lower levels.

    This also allows senior leaders time to free their minds to think more strategically, knowing they will be ‘brought into the loop’ when needed to make key decisions. In Desert Storm, LTG Franks established a series of LCIR associated with each key decision point identified during the Corp’s red-teaming, which his staff was assigned to track, to include factors that would provide leading indicators of the battle disposition and movements of the Republican Guard. When one of his LCIR was ‘triggered’ he was provided the information, equipping him to decide, based on that information which, if any, FRAGPLAN to initiate. Like any senior leader, LTG Franks could not, nor would want to stay abreast of all information occurring across his 150,000 force – only that which required decisions at his level. His division, brigade, battalion, and other lower level commanders could handle the rest, and each had their own LCIR, developed from their own red teaming, for the potential decisions at their levels.

    7: Refine the COA: Red teaming produces great wisdom. Thus, as you red team, you are not just identifying contingencies to the primary plan but gaining knowledge of the primary plan. Thus, also take time to refine the products you created in earlier parts of the planning process (during your market analysis, COA development, etc.) as new knowledge emerges. This may include refining the specified, implied, and key tasks for the plan; the facts and assumptions; SWOT analyses; constraints and risks, resource requirements, event timing, assignments to sub-organizations, etc.

    Remember that at least two COAs should be identified for any potential plan to provide the senior leader distinct choices. Red team each COA in isolation and avoid comparing one COA with another during red teaming. Accurately record the advantages and disadvantages of each COA as they arise in red teaming so that they can later be compared based on their relative feasibility, acceptability, suitability, and effectiveness, to guide you to select the best COA.

    The red-teaming process can be used in any industry. Latham & Watkins is one of the largest law firms in the world. LeeAnn Black, Chief Operating Officer of Latham & Watkins describes the use of red teaming: “We recently utilized red teaming in our firm’s return-to-office planning for over 6,000 people worldwide. Our core planning team developed protocols focused on minimizing risk in our offices and a proposed framework for communicating to our personnel in the event of possible exposure to COVID-19 in our space. A cross-section of our office leaders from around the world served as our red team. The red team challenged our viewpoints, raised new perspectives and highlighted areas for improvement in our proposal. The red team exercise ultimately resulted in a more robust framework that we implemented shortly thereafter. I believe red teaming enabled us to get to a significantly better decision on a much faster timeline. This is an incredibly valuable tool in the current environment, as leaders are required to make decisions more rapidly and with more agility than ever before.”

    Parting Comments

    Red teaming can be as formal and exhaustive as you want and need it to be but can also be done more informally or quickly. I have been in formal 15-hour red team sessions and in impromptu 15-minute ones. Regardless of length or formality, when red teaming we are asking everyone to take off their proponent/champion/advocate ‘hat’ for a plan and put on a more critical antagonist/adversary/challenger ‘hat’. Once instilled in the culture, this tool can be used at any time – even impromptu “let’s stop and red team this” in the middle of a meeting or planning discussion to stop and informally scrutinize the team’s thinking.

    Further, just as planning should occur at each of the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of the organization, so should red teaming to improve those plans at each level. In the end, leaders at each level should have identified key events, decision points, contingency plans, and LCIR designated to drive execution and decision-making for plans at their level.

    Finally, while red teaming takes precious time, we have a saying in the Army to “go slow to go fast” by taking the time to adequately plan up front. Imagine in Desert Storm if we didn’t have FRAGPLAN 7, and the comparatively larger time, resource and performance loss we would have experienced if we had to stop and develop a new plan from scratch, and communicate that new plan to subordinate units who would have had no prior preparation for the new orders, not to mention the debilitating loss of tempo in the attack. I encourage you to go slow to go fast.

    Written by Dr. Sean T. Hannah

    Original Content Posted by Chief Executive Group, LLC.

  • The Strategic CFO: 6 Steps to Become a Trusted Advisor to the CFO

    Nowadays, Chief Financial Officers aren’t just keeping track of income and expenses; they’re processing this information to understand how best to grow the business. This valued capability is increasingly sought by large enterprises and is quickly becoming table stakes at midsize companies, as well.

    The challenge for many tactical finance directors seeking to become strategic CFO is time. “Finance is often up to its ears in manual repetitive tasks that bog down the function,” explains Sandy Cockrell, global leader and U.S. national managing partner of Deloitte’s CFO Program.

    In working with hundreds of CFOs and studying best practices at top performing organizations, Senior Executive Network has identified six imperatives (with specific action items) to help tactical CFOs become strategic CFOs, transforming the position into a forward-thinking strategic adviser:

    1. Drive Strategy
    2. Allocate Capital Resources
    3. Lead M&A Due Diligence and Post-Transaction Integration
    4. Enhance Profits
    5. Champion New Technologies
    6. Assess Risks and Implement Controls

    To Read Full Report by Chief Executive Network, Click HERE

  • CEO and Senior Executive Compensation in Private Companies 2019-20

    Chief Executive Research surveyed 1,668 companies in April thru June of 2019 about their 2018 fiscal year compensation levels and practices, as well as their expected compensation levels for the remainder of 2019.

    We’ve received detailed data about compensation packages for CEOs and nine other senior executive positions, as well as comprehensive information about each company’s executive compensation policies and practices. The substantial response provided meaningful data for companies across revenue ranges, industries, regions, ownership types and levels of profitability.

    Detailed data from this survey is analyzed and presented in our acclaimed 2019-20 CEO & Senior Executive Compensation Report for Private Companies, for which we are happy to provide you, as a survey respondent, this executive summary.

    While most data sources on CEO compensation focus on large public companies, our research brings real-world insight into the compensation of CEOs of the approximately 6 million private companies in the U.S., not just the S&P 500. We invite you to consult the full report for complete compensation data broken down by company demographics and performance.

    To read this Executive Summary by Chief Executive Research, click HERE

  • Productivity Is Not Working

    My generation learned that relentless self-optimization was a way to cope—but in this crisis, everything looks different.

    SOME QUESTIONS ARE infinitely more interesting than their answers. One such question started to echo around the internet in the early days of the Covid-19 lockdowns and has become increasingly frantic in the febrile weeks that have followed. The question was this: How shall we stay productive when the world is going to hell?

    Productivity, or the lack of it, has become the individual metric of choice for coping with the international econo-pathological clusterfuck of the Corona Crisis. How should we self-optimize when we’re suddenly having to meet our deadlines with our roommates, kids, and inner critics screaming in the background? If we’re lucky enough to be able to shelter in place and we’re not using that time to launch podcasts and personal projects and life-hack our way to some cargo-cult pastiche of normality, are we somehow letting the side down?

    These are not practical questions. They are moral and philosophical questions. Yes, there are plenty of practical reasons why so many people are panicking about work. If we’ve been furloughed or lost our jobs, we’re scrambling to make up the shortfall. If we’re still employed, we’re worried about the long term, and if we’re relatively secure, we’re wrestling with survivor’s guilt. But the drive to stay productive is about so much more than making rent. It is a moral discipline. When I check in with friends and family far away, I usually get an update on how productive they have or have not managed to be since we last spoke. “Productivity” is not a synonym for health, or for safety, or for sanity. But as a precarious millennial who for the past 10 years has answered every cautious inquiry about my well-being with a rundown of how much work I got done that day, I do understand the confusion.

    It’s hardly surprising that so many of us are processing this immense, unknowable collective catastrophe by escaping into smaller, everyday emergencies. A crisis you create for yourself, after all, is a crisis you might be able to control. Frantic productivity is a fear response. It’s a fear response for 21st-century humans in general and millennial humans in particular, as we’ve collectively awoken from the American dream with a strange headache and a stacks of bills to pay. My whole generation learned relentless work was the way to cope with the rolling crisis, with the mood of imminent collapse and economic insecurity that was the elevator music of our entire youth—the relentless tension between trying to save yourself and trying to save the world, between desperate aspiration and actual hope.

    Right through the white-knuckle ride of my twenties and beyond, I clung to work as a way of protecting myself when I was scared, when I was hurt, when the future seemed to collapse on itself like a stack of marked cards. No matter how many marches I go to, there is some part of me that believes that if I can only self-optimize a bit harder then the world will right itself, no one I love will suffer, and death will have no dominion. So when the coronavirus crisis began, I started writing myself ambitious to-do lists on giant sticky notes—because when every cultural certainty starts collapsing in my hands like wet cake, writing ambitious to-do lists is how I calm down.

    I would exercise in the mornings and write in the evenings. I would cook. I would sort out my finances. By week three, I would finally finish my book. I would organize my time so I had no time to feel any emotion other than manageable, everyday anxiety about my workload, with occasional breaks for feeling appropriately grateful that I still have a job I can do from home. Unfortunately, somewhere between writing those to-do lists and watching overpromoted incompetents invite their voters to kindly die to keep the economy going in the manner to which it has become accustomed, the entire concept of linear time seemed to disintegrate, which really played havoc with my calendar.Most Popular

    These days, I have a new, surprisingly packed schedule of cooking, washing up, video-conferencing with everyone I’ve ever met, and hiding in bed hoping that history can’t hear me breathing. The giant sticky notes are proliferating around the house, and my roommates tolerate them so long as I don’t start linking them together with red thread and pictures of my enemies. Despite being various flavors of neurotic workaholic, my roommates and I have discovered that right now, while our personal productivity matters, what matters more immediately is that we all manage to live in the same house without killing each other. The human race as a whole seems to be coming to a similar realization.

    There has always been something a little obscene about the cult of the hustle, the treadmill of alienated insecurity that tells you that if you stop running for even an instant, you’ll be flung flat on your face—but the treadmill is familiar. The treadmill feels normal. And right now, when the world economy has jerked to a sudden, shuddering stop, most of us are desperate to feel normal. This column is happening because I lost one of my three jobs to the Covid-19 crisis right around the time when I realized I had no idea when I was going to see my mum again, and after a few hours of crying and tidying, I emailed my kind editor in a panic and told him to please give me deadlines, I don’t know who I am without them. Why don’t I know?

    The way most of us have been conditioned to think about work in the modern economy has all the hallmarks of hypervigilance. It’s what happens to people when they are trapped in abusive circumstances they cannot escape. Psychologist Judith Herman observed that “the ultimate effect of [psychological domination] is to convince the victim that the perpetrator is omnipotent, that resistance is futile, and that her life depends upon winning his indulgence through absolute compliance.” The body responds to relentless insecurity and threat with agitated alertness, looking for ways to protect itself from harm. This is how most of my peers have experienced the modern economy. We were told that if we worked hard, we would be safe, and well, and looked after, and the less this was true, the harder we worked.

    The idea that hustling can save you from calamity is an article of faith, not fact—and the Covid-19 pandemic is starting to shake the collective faith in individual striving. The doctrine of “workism” places the blame for global catastrophe squarely on the individual: If you can’t get a job because jobs aren’t there, you must be lazy, or not hustling hard enough. That’s the story that young and young-ish people tell themselves, even as we’ve spent the whole of our brief, broke working lives paying for the mistakes of the old, rich, and stupid. We internalized the collective failures of the ruling class as personal failings that could be fixed by working smarter, or harder, or both—because that, at least, meant that we might be able to fix them ourselves.

    The cult of productivity doesn’t have an answer for this crisis. Self-optimizing will not save us this time, although saying so feels surprisingly blasphemous. This isn’t happening because you didn’t work hard enough, and it won’t be fixed by optimizing your morning routines and adopting a can-do attitude. After the quarantine, after we count the lives lost or ruined, recession is coming. A big one. For millennials, it’s the second devastating economic calamity in our short working lives, and we’re still carrying the trauma of the first. This time, though, we know it’s not our fault. This time it’s abundantly clear that we didn’t deserve it. And this is exactly the sort of crisis that gives people ideas about overturning the social order.Most Popular

    The Great Plagues of the 14th century famously shattered the feudal system by wiping out half of Europe and giving the few remaining workers a lot more bargaining power—but the Black Death also undermined the power of religion. As broken communities surveyed the mounds of corpses, wondering what sins could possibly be proportional to this sort of punishment, they started to lose faith in God—and the Medieval Church began to lose power as an organizing force in everyday life. If the economic dogma of work under modern capitalism fulfills the same functions as the church of the 1400s—defining human value and justifying our place in society—the emotions of watching that dogma fail are akin to a loss of faith. If frantic productivity is a fear response, the opposite urge—to tear it all up and declare deadline bankruptcy—feels like blasphemy. Laziness is the only sin out of the seven big ones that seems to count in the moral metric of the modern economy, and what other word is there for that edge-panic impulse to simply delete your email address and spend time doing small, gentle things that make being alive hurt a little less?

    “When we have no memory or little imagination of an alternative to a life centered on work,” writes theorist Kathi Weeks, “there are few incentives to reflect on why we work as we do and what we might wish to do instead.” In fact, as Europe and America remain in enforced lockdown, many people are working harder than ever—but the work they’re doing more of is not “productive” in the traditional sense. That does not mean it isn’t work. Childcare is work, as anyone who is suddenly having to do twice as much of it on top of their normal job can tell you. Cooking, cleaning, emotional and community management, all of which most of us are doing more intensely as we’re living together in lockdown, are work—they just don’t count on the ledger of human worth because the economy refuses to value them in its reckoning of what does, because most of it has been done in private, by women, for free. Making breakfast, making the beds, making sure your friends and family aren’t losing their absolute minds is work that matters more than ever and will continue to matter in the coming decades as crisis follows crisis. It is not “productive,” in the way that most of us have learned to understand what that word means, but it is work, and it is worthwhile.

    There is nothing counterrevolutionary about keeping busy. But right now, we have a finite opportunity to rethink how we value ourselves, to re-examine our metric for measuring the worth of human lives. Right now, the entire species is trying to work out how to live in the same house without killing each other—and that may well turn out to be the work that matters most.