A moment of crisis is a moment of opportunity.
You probably have heard this before. I know I have.
But only recently was I able to understand the thinking behind this idea. It was due to a quote by Milton Friedman, the neoliberal economist.
Regardless of how much I believe in his economical principles, I really thought he encapsulated the idea very well.
He says:
Only a crisis - actual or percveived - produces real change.
I’ve talked before about our resistance to change and why it’s sometimes hard to make it happen. But the truth is that the biggest changes, even in our own lives, can come from moments of pain and crisis.
Milton continues with what I believe is the key idea in his thinking:
When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.
“The ideas that are lying around”. This made so much sense.
There were some crises in my life where I didn’t see any opportunity, so I always had a hard time understanding the whole “moment of opportunity” argument.
This helped me understand why.
You see, the ideas I had laying around were not the right ones to make use of what was happening, to transmute that into an opportunity.
The very practical tip (turned into a question by me) that Friedman offers is this:
What are some of the ideas you’ll want laying around in your next crisis?