Trump’s Election And How To Deal With The Disruption

Over the last few days, I’ve spent a lot of time “talking down” people who seem freaked out, standing on a virtual “ledge” ready to jump off because the Donald was just elected the 45th President of the United States. While his stance on innovation is still up in the air, as I mentioned in a previous post, this is a perfect example of what some may call a Black Swan event, a totally unexpected major outcome.

As I said before, I did not support either of the major candidates, but I did note something interesting in the polling data. While everyone seems to be lead to believe that this was a huge upset and surprise, there were a few polls which were right all along. However, those polls had been discounted because they weren’t being manipulated by the pollsters to give them the answers that they wanted. To prove this, all you need to do is to look at the details on each poll where Clinton was winning, and look at the sample size of Democrats in relation to Republicans and Independents. In most of the polls where it showed Clinton ahead of Trump, Democrats were oversampled, in the same relation that the poll result indicated. For example, in a poll which showed Clinton ahead by 10 points, the Democrats were over sampled by 10 points or more. Pretty much every poll, except for the LA Times tracking poll, which never changed its methodology, was wrong. As Mark Twain popularized “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Is it any wonder why the media and pollsters took a beating – they were all manipulating the results to push their own agenda. Exactly why journalism is dead.

Okay, so let’s now take it as face value that this was an unexpected upset. In that case, it was a very disruptive event, right, on a larger level than Brexit? So how does that affect you and your business?

Depending on where you are in the Anticipation vs Resilience scale, you could have been totally rattled by this, deciding that now your plans are in flames and you will need to re-plan everything, or you can take it easy, knowing that you and your company can take this.

You see, IMHO, that is part of the genius of the founders. They designed the political system to be resilient, in that no one branch of the government has more power than any other. This is one of the things I needed to explain in depth to those outside of the country, on the edge of the precipice, ready to jump off, now that Trump has been elected. Unlike many other countries, no one person can become so powerful as to be in essence, a dictator. Our system has built in checks and balances so that nothing really major can change, or change quickly. This drag was purposely introduced because the founders understood the importance of keeping the government in check. So no matter who wins the presidency, they will be kept in check. One could say that of all the democracies out there, ours is the most accountable to the people, although it could be much, much better.

But I digress. So how do you deal with a Trump presidency?

1. Calm yourself down. Maybe try some light meditation or mindfulness exercises. I’m not kidding.
2. Understand that he may have made some bold statements during the campaign in order to get elected, like any other politician, and that once he gets into power, with all of the checks and balances in place, many of those promises may get left undone. Unless your business is directly in the line of fire, you are probably ok. If you are looking at moving manufacturing offshore, it may be a good time to pause and rethink that strategy
3. Adopt a “wait and see” approach. Depending on if they work on economic stimulus first, like tax relief, things may get better in the short term. If it trade deals, then the opposite may occur. Either way, we have to be ready.
4. Stop complaining or protesting. Unlike the 2000 election, it’s done.
5. Keep moving forward. Not much will actually change in the short term, so most of your plans should be fine

I know that some of you will not find it comforting to just let it go, and will continue to rail against this disruption (and others as they come), and let it take up all of your time and energy, possibly affecting your health and wealth and welfare. That’s your choice, but as I’ve said before, this is but one disruption of many which will be forthcoming from now on, and the sooner that you can make yourself more resilient, the less they will affect you, and you can keep moving forward, no matter what happens.