Daily Inspiration: “A short term view will bring you despair. A longer term vision will give you initiative!”

“A short term view will bring you despair. A longer term vision will give you initiative!” – Futurist Jim Carroll

One day we and future generations will look back on this as their 9/11, their Kennedy assassination, their Pearl Harbour, their stock market crash of 1929.

And this moment won’t last forever. Some sort of normal will settle in – it will be a fundamentally different normal, it might take a long time coming, and we might not recognize it for a time. But we will come back into something new and different, and this tragedy of our times will fade to become more of an awful memory than a moment of madness.

What will you do today to align yourself to this future? What actions might you be willing to take right now to try to get ready? How might you begin to move yourself out of the doom and gloom into a state of positivity? These questions matter.

I received an email yesterday from someone, after I posted that I was questioning my relevance at this moment in time, when there is so much going on that is hard to comprehend how we might emerge….

This is what he wrote:

I’d argue you’re as relevant or more now.   My opinion is that a futurist and innovator plays a key role in continuing to look up and out, alleviating others who are in the midst of current operations from struggling to also meet this need.  A corollary is that leaders and strategists operate in the realm of uncertainty, charting the way through the fog for managers to follow.

and then…

Whether in a year or so we return to the same life and future, or if there are significant changes to what we perceived to be the future, you are still tremendously relevant and valuable.  If anything, the unknown is what demands future vision, people sifting through what might be changing and projecting those impacts.  While people are certainly caught up in the present and their personal challenges, I think people are just as starved for understanding how that may be changing and where can they look forward to some hope and new opportunities.  And in that, you’ll find stories of innovation and disruption are happening right now, which may be long-lasting.

And so a thanks to Darran in Texas, I had a mental shift yesterday!

Tomorrow,I’m going to start a series of posts to outline my thoughts on how I see various industries shifting and changing over time. The same industries that I previously spoke to on stage, but for which I might now share my future insight in a different way.

Because a short term view can bring you despair. Longer term, hope!