Protecting our us

Welcome to 2025. These are testing times. Remaining clear of eye and level of head will likely be more important than ever.

Welcome to 2025. Welcome to the world as it is right now, and as it will come to be.

How does this world look to you, right now? How do you expect this world to look 12 months from now?

Anyone, regardless of their political leanings, looking from this end of 2025 at the prospects for the next 12 months would likely expect a time of turbulence, to a lesser or greater extent. These will be testing times. Remaining clear of eye and level of head will likely be more important than ever.

With our eyes wide open

Reading Neneh Cherry’s autobiography A Thousand Threads over Xmas, I happened upon some excellent words on how to maintain a level head during testing times. Cherry is writing here about what we might consider the good kind of testing times. It is 1988, and she is coming to terms with abrupt change following the rollercoaster success of her debut album Raw Like Sushi. From a standing start to instant fame, instant fortune. Conscious of the need to maintain a level head, Cherry writes of how she fell back on her tried and true values and her tried and true family and friends:

“Being on a roll tastes good. But it did affect us. How could it not? So, like warriors, we – the family and all of the good people around us – stood at attention, protecting our… us. In we went to the fabricated new glassy spaces, determined to own them before they owned us. Inquisitive, with our eyes wide open, we tried to keep sight of ourselves and reality, who we really were. We would not allow ourselves to be blinded by any transitory bullshit.”

I love the idea of protecting our us. Each of us has an “us”, a group of people – whether family, friends, colleagues or some mix of these – to whom our love and devotion is endless, unbending.

Beyond or beneath that “us”, at the centre of who we really are, are our values. In testing times, being conscious of and holding true to our values is essential if we want to keep sight of ourselves and of reality.

What are your inflexible values? What are the things on which you won’t compromise? What are the principles that you follow and that guide you every day of your life?

The decision that removes a thousand decisions

Living up to and behaving in line with your values should in theory be the simplest thing in the world. It should be simple because it should be automatic.

Living up to and behaving in line with your values can be the hardest thing in the world. Moments of change, of choice or of crisis will always barge their way into your life. Things suddenly get complex. The spotlight falls on you. Everything comes down to the choice you make in response to the pressures of the moment. In testing times, doing nothing can seem a seductively easy response. But only rarely is it the correct choice in moments of truth. Doing what you know needs to be done might require you to dig deep to find a resolve and a willingness to act that will surprise you. These are the times when it is both the most difficult and the most essential to do something.

Knowing what your values are, knowing what you will or will not do, should in most cases be sufficient to guide that choice. Your values should (in theory) make it easy for you to make the decision that removes a thousand decisions.

A profound shift

The expression of your most essential, inflexible values should be simple. It is the expression of your most fundamental self. I came across a striking example of living up to and behaving in line with fundamental values the other day.

One theme that I think will characterise the coming year in the world of work is the push and pull around EDI: equity (or equality, depending on how you choose to define the “E”), diversity and inclusion. Over the past year, many companies in the US have cut or appeared to pull back on their commitments to EDI. Reporting on one recent high profile example, AP wrote:

“Walmart’s sweeping rollback of its diversity policies is the strongest indication yet of a profound shift taking hold at U.S. companies that are re-evaluating the legal and political risks associated with bold programs to bolster historically underrepresented groups.”

In some cases, investment funds are taking an active stance on EDI, using their status as large-scale shareholders to put pressure on companies to amend their approach. On Friday 27 December 2024, CNN reported on Costco’s response to a specific instance of this kind of pressure:

“Costco’s board of directors unanimously recommended that its shareholders vote against a proposal brought by a conservative think tank, the National Center for Public Policy Research [NCPPR], that would require Costco to evaluate and issue a report on the financial risks of maintaining its diversity and inclusion goals.”

Costco said no. The statement from Costco’s board reaffirmed the company’s core commitment to EDI, and also argued that, in their view, the NCPPR’s “broader agenda is not reducing risk for the company but abolition of diversity initiatives”.

You can make up your own mind as to who, if anyone, might be in the wrong or the right in this situation.

Costco’s annual shareholder meeting takes place at the end of this month. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in 2025, and how other companies might respond if faced with similar situations.

It is possible that this kind of shareholder activism on EDI will gain traction in the UK during 2025. Last weekend, the Daily Telegraph reported on the launch of “a new [investment] fund aimed at punishing ‘woke’ companies” in the US:

“James Fishback of Azoria, says the goal of his new fund is to ‘eliminate racial and gender hiring targets and restore meritocracy in the S&P 500’. […] Fishback plans to meet with Nigel Farage, hoping to export his ‘anti-woke’ investment style to Britain.”

Welcome to 2025. In turbulent times, remaining clear of eye and level of head will likely be more important than ever.

May you be nothing but kind today, to others and to yourself.

May today be nothing but kind to you and yours.

IMAGES

• City Lights of Asia and Middle East 2016 via Wikimedia Commons.
• Neneh Cherry 2012-12-06 002 via Wikimedia Commons.
• Hiroshige Travellers on a mountain path along the coast via Wikimedia Commons.