New maps: How did we get here?
A series on the road we took to get to this crisis, and how we can come back stronger
Dear friends, family and colleagues,
Like many of you, I’ve been wondering: how did we get here? I’ve found there is so much being written about the present and the future, but not nearly enough looking at the long arc that led to this crisis.
So I decided to write a series attempting to answer this question, and I’m excited to share my first piece with you. I’ll be sharing a second piece later this week, and from there, you’ll hear from me weekly.
I hope you find these e-mails give you an opportunity to pause, zoom out, and think about how all of us can come back stronger. Should you like what you’re reading, please feel free to share!
(And, if I have erred in including you, my apologies - there’s a simple unsubscribe button at the bottom of this e-mail)
Hope you are safe and healthy
-Kapil
How did we get here?
How did we get to this moment, where an invisible virus is spreading across our country, our economy has ground to a halt, and our lives have been completely up-ended — all in a matter of weeks?
Right now, we’re in an immediate fight to slow the spread of the virus and save lives.
But while so many of us do our small part at home, fighting that fight by isolating ourselves, it’s also critical to pause, and think about how we got to this moment. Because it didn’t have to be this way.
Countries like Taiwan didn’t have to shut down. They were prepared
People like Bill Gates have been warning us about the dangers of global pandemics for years. Yet, we were unprepared.
We watched Italy get bowled over by the pandemic. It could just as easily have been Canada that went over the edge first. That’s when we started getting prepared.
So, how did we get here? My work is all about understanding complex systems, and I’ve been reflecting on these kinds of questions since studying the Great Recession of 2008 in graduate school. My answer: we were using the wrong maps.
We’ve always used maps to guide our journeys — from the physical maps of exploration, to the mental maps of our own lives and careers.
Maps simplify what we encounter, and help us make sense of a complex world.
These last few weeks have shown us that the maps we use to navigate our collective lives were missing some important information.
We need to understand all the factors that led to our maps being so wrong — so that we can figure out how to build a better set of maps for the future.
The problem is, there’s no one single thing we can point at.
It’s the opposite of our last major economic calamity: the 2008 Great Recession. The factors that caused it are obvious. We know it was largely caused by the United States. And within the United States, by a toxic combination of financial deregulation, and deeply irresponsible business practises by the country’s largest financial institutions. Our maps were mostly fine: it was other people and their flawed maps that caused that mess.
But the Pandemic of 2020?
There is no single thing that led to this moment. Try, or hope as you might, we won’t end this story by pointing our finger at one person and institution and saying ‘aha, we just need to fix this one thing, and we’ll never have to worry about this again’.
It’s about all of us. It’s about the decisions we’ve all been making, together, over these last ten years, from the end of the Great Recession, to today.
We don’t often think in terms of collective decisions. But as this crisis is revealing, we’re a whole lot more connected than we think. The sum total of our individual decisions is a collective decision. And the sum total of our individual maps is a collective map
And the maps we were using to navigate our world in the 2010s was wrong. And these maps unintentionally built a country that’s now in crisis.
And as we navigate our way out of this crisis, we will need to build a set of new maps to guide the next phase of our collective journey.
Because it didn’t have to be this way. A different set of decisions in the 2010s could have produced an entirely different result when the pandemic struck. Our health care system could have been on a stronger footing to respond. Our public leaders could have moved more swiftly to contain the threat. Our economy didn’t need to contract as sharply. And our small business owners, and middle-class earners could have been on a more stable financial footing to weather a downturn.
That’s why this series is called ‘new maps’. Over the next several weeks, we’ll take a journey through the maps that have led to this moment. We’ll also explore what a better set of maps could look like. And we’ll start with the most important map of all: health care.
Building a better set of maps isn’t optional. As hard as it might be to imagine in this moment, this is not the last pandemic, or last global crisis we will face in our lifetime. The real question isn’t ‘when’, it’s ‘will we be ready?’
Before you read on, you might be wondering: how does my background help in telling this story?
My career has taken me through roles in strategy, operations, communications, community-building and health care. I’ve worked as a consultant at one of the world’s top firms, managed a cardiac hospital in England, ran the strategy team in Ontario’s largest community hospital, and been fortunate to earn an MBA and Master’s in Public Policy from Harvard University.
My experiences have crossed rapidly changing operational settings, piecing together complex information and strategy, and translating from the front line all the way to the executive office.
Today, I work as a narrative strategist, helping people and organizations make sense of the world, their own stories, and how the two fit together — across the private, public and non-profit sectors. I also co-lead TEDxToronto, a 60-person volunteer-run community devoted to spreading important ideas for our personal and collective growth.
I’m passionate about helping people understand the broader world and tell their own stories within it. And I’ve been fortunate to have helped organizations and people from all walks of life, from front-line nurses to cabinet ministers, and from artists to CEOs.
The perspective I’ll be sharing in this series is Canadian, but also informed by having lived, worked and studied in the US and UK. If you’re from Canada, I hope you find this writing to be directly relevant to our communities. If you’re not, I hope you’ll find these Canadian examples to be relevant to your country.
Read on for Part 2 of this series: Our fragile health care system