The 3 (Oops, 4!) Types of People in My Audience: What Does the 4th Mean For Your Future?

I’ve long observed, when challenging my audience to align to the future, that there are 3 types of people in my audience:

• those who watch the future happen
• those who make the future happen
• and those who react, “whoah, how did that happen?”

Here’s a clip where I am talking about that issue … and suggesting the mindset that people should be in to find future opportunities.

Sadly, I’ve come to realize in the last few years that there is a 4th category out there: those who deny any of the trends involving the future – and react, ‘that didn’t happen!” The impact? The world of “massively induced fake belief systems” is now and will continue to have a profound impact on the ability of organizations, people and government to align to future trends.

Who are they? This 4th category are those people who build their own belief systems based on false information; who fall prey to obviously incorrect information ; those who are easily manipulated by targeted social media; those who believe everything and anything is part of a vast conspiracy; those who generate their own reality.

What’s the impact? Pretty dreadful, if you think about it. For example, I wrote this into my post, “Trend: The Emerging Health Care Reality Crisis.” 

Here’s what I wrote:

Clearly there are vast sections of the population today who do not believe in science. They don’t believe in facts. They don’t believe in much other than what they want to believe in.

Their belief system will increasingly drive their attitude and understanding of their healthcare circumstances.

Going forward, this new reality will prove to be a tremendous challenge for the healthcare system.

Consider this as a potential reality: As the world embarks on a coordinated and challenging response to the Covad-19 pandemic, the fact that a good part of the population will not believe anything they hear, and who will generate their own reality rather than any real reality, will make managing the crisis all that much more difficult.

Buckle in – it’s going to be quite a ride!