“At each phase of transition, the leaders of the world are not those with greater military power, political weight, or advanced economies, but those who give birth to new senses.”

On April 24, at “World after the Coronavirus” webinar, Valery Pekar was talking about the changes that are about to take place, the trends, and the creation of new senses that make the world go round. Here are some key points of our lecturer:

✔ Currently many claim: “The world will never be the same again”. And when has the world been the same? In fact, changes occur monthly. The crisis in no way breaks the trends observed before its start, but on the contrary, it greatly accelerates them. This is not a movement backwards, but a fast run forwards.

✔ Following every crisis, almost everything is back to square one, but there will be certain changes. Among the inevitable trends: increased health care, digitization of various services and processes, flexible work, changes in organizational culture towards greater employees' autonomy, development of biotechnology, blurring the middle class, and squeezing the world of consumption, anxiety.

✔ In its turn, variational trends, namely those that, despite their opposite character, are currently on the rise: globalization or protectionism on part of governments; electronic or live communications – the world has not decided yet as to whether it has moved online forever; social distance or social cohesion; total monitoring or trend for freedom and destruction of authority monopoly;

✔ During crisis, strong systems will be improved, while the weak ones will disappear. The weight of countries on the world map will change depending on the way they overcome the crisis. Authoritarian countries may seem to be overcoming the crisis better than the democratic ones. But in fact, democratic countries with strong institutions overcome the crisis in the best way. Any crisis is about the capacity of the institutions.

✔ The world nowadays chooses between 2 scenarios: new enlightenment or new inquisition. To live in the age of new enlightenment, a human being must become more complex and have a desire to know more. And a new inquisition will come if the desire to hide from information and to know less prevails.

✔ The role of a leader today is to bring hope, support, and to develop. And the keys to his/her strength and inspiration in 2020 are:

• Proper mindset – commitment to growth, openness, development and service;

• Awareness of the present moment (Mindfulness);

• Compassion;

• Resilience;

• Selflessness;

• Passion – the force that drives all the creators.