Future Here Now: Pervasive Externalities
On occasion, I share a piece from Future Here Now—the newsletter I send to more than 2,500 subscribers, two to three times per week. This is one of those moments.
Because this idea keeps haunting me.
⚠️ Externalities don’t disappear.
We were taught they do.
In our Industrial Era upbringing—and in much of neoclassical economics—we were trained to believe that the externalities of our actions didn’t really matter. Economically, they were assumed to vanish. To be absorbed by the system. To become someone else’s problem.
They don’t.
📘 In The Local Economy Revolution Has Arrived, I tell the story of my grandfather’s small paint factory—and the failed paint batches everyone assumed would simply “go away.” Thirty years later, we learned otherwise. Externalities don’t resolve themselves. They accumulate. Quietly. Patiently. Then expensively.
We know this.
And yet—we still behave as if we don’t.
We ignore them.
We pretend not to see them.
We tell ourselves someone else will deal with them later.
🌍 From climate change to work teams
In the post-Industrial era now unfolding, dealing with the externalities of our past and present decisions will consume enormous amounts of energy, money, and attention.
But here’s the deeper truth:
🧠 Some of the most pernicious externalities aren’t environmental or economic.
They show up in work team meetings.
And at home.
They live inside organizations—and inside our heads.
🏢 The risk within our organizations — and ourselves
One of the best explorations of this comes from Stowe Boyd’s workfutures newsletter (highly recommended). His recent piece on uncertainty, volatility, and ambiguity captures something many leaders feel but struggle to name:
We’ve entered the postnormal—where late-industrial economics have turned inside out, and interconnected global complexity has made low‑risk paths forward almost impossible to identify.
And the most dangerous risks?
🚫 Not inflation curves
🚫 Not competitors adopting new technologies
🚫 Not the next virus emerging somewhere unexpected
The deepest risks are often behaviors baked so deeply into organizations that they can’t be spoken of.
🤐 The “undiscussables” we carry
To navigate ambiguity, we must reevaluate assumptions—and that means unthreading what can’t be discussed:
• You think it but dare not say it 🤐
Fear of retaliation creates silence—and silence kills learning.
• You say it but don’t mean it 🎭
Performative change replaces real transformation.
• You feel it but can’t name it 🌫️
Unspoken distrust leaks out in nonverbal ways.
• You do it but don’t realize it 🔁
Unconscious routines reduce anxiety short‑term—and sabotage progress long‑term.
As Boyd notes, these collective blind spots are the hardest to surface—and the most dangerous to ignore.
🧭 The line that won’t leave me
Heightened uncertainty, risk, and ambiguity may be the defining feature of our time. And yet:
Once we harden our thinking, stop questioning assumptions, and censor those who raise the most undiscussable issues—we lose our path through the fog.
That sentence has been haunting me.
Because it’s not just a diagnosis.
It’s a warning.
🚀 Go deeper with Future Here Now
Future Here Now exists to help leaders, teams, and communities see what we’ve been trained to ignore—and act before the costs compound.
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💬 If this resonates, let’s talk about how your organization can surface its undiscussables—before they become your biggest externalities.
#FutureHereNow #LeadershipInUncertainty #HiddenRisks #SystemsThinking #FutureOfWork
