I shared how local government was at a cross roads in how it evolves in the future and Covid 19 has accelerated its need to rethink what its role is. At the start of the year, I thought it would be a good idea to understand what we can learn from social trends.
I also imagined what 2020 would be like for councils. Some of those predictions did come to life, but not in the way I imagined, but I wonder whether these principles I thought councils should adopt as we transitioned into a post-Brexit world still hold or whether they should be rethought as we entered a post…Covid world.
One person’s apocalypse is another person’s storm in a teacup. Remember how the year 2000 was going to crash everything from the financial system to airplanes dropping out of the sky to hospital equipment not working. Little did we know that fixing a computer bug is easier than systemic failure in our economy which did crash the financial system eight years later, a lack of planning for pandemics which meant we didn’t have the equipment to tackle coronavirus and airplanes didn’t drop out of the sky, they were just grounded for close a year as a result.
Reading Ipsos MORI Almanac, the prompts from Trendwatching and Atlas Obscura and its imaginary fantastical maps made we think that in local government we need to find our new maps to chart a new territory.
How we feel
The way we feel influences the things we do, how we shop and what we spend. The pandemic has been an emotional rollercoaster for many. Almost a third of people “feel up and down emotionally”. Over half have said they were finding it harder to stay positive about the future.
Brands try to reflect this, putting their products into the everyday stories people experience, like Tesco’s Food Stories or challenging stereotypes like Gillette’s The Best A Man Can Be, in the race to meet ever increasing and changing expectations of what customers want from brands, being quick and effective, while also being personalised to their needs and match their values.
What our country was like at this time if it just had 100 people. How many of our ‘village’ would hold certain attitudes, how many would behave in certain ways, what would they think and do?
However, we know that the way people feel and make decisions is also influenced by people’s environment — like their education, their networks and their workplace. This was the case before the pandemic. What has changed is the massive changes the pandemic has brought about in terms of behaviours people changed to protect themselves and the constant uncertainty about when this pandemic will end.
As Ipsos Mori suggests, this creates both mindful decision making where people reflect on what matters most to them and what longer term changes they want to make, and mindless decision making where they react to shock but also assumptions being challenged about when things will return to normal. This set of phases that we may have expected at the start of the pandemic may not be as linear and may move backwards and forwards like a snake and ladders game.
For councils, there’s a need to both adapt to people making decisions in ways that might seem unexpected, pay attention to signals under the radar over long term changes in attitudes and help people deliberate on how they will adapt to their future everyday lives.
How do people want councils to make them feel?
How can we create the spaces that help people deliberate over the futures of how they live and interact with their neighbourhoods?
