Daily Inspiration: “Innovate like your future depends on it. Because it does!”

“Innovate like your future depends on it. Because it does!” – Futurist Jim Carroll

Innovation isn’t optional anymore. It’s your path to survival. It’s also your ticket to the future. If you don’t focus on it, you might not be around.

‘Might’ needs to be emphasized, as the outcome has moved on the ‘certainty meter.’ The fact is, what you did in the old world – three months ago – won’t cut it in this new world. All the rules, assumptions, concepts, plans, strategies and visions are most likely gone. You’ve got to come up with new ones.

And if you don’t challenge yourself with different actions and attitudes, you’ll find yourself in the 90% of organizations and leaders who look back, 5 or 10 years from now, asking yourself why you didn’t change.

Inaction is a dangerous thing – in the old days, it would fuel an organizational sclerosis that would clog up your ability to succeed. Today, it can kill you.

I had a long conversation with one potential client the other day – they are having a senior leadership meeting for their global company. This is one of a few I’m having – people are starting to think, strategize and plan once again. He’s moved beyond the shock, anger and denial phase, into acceptance, but he’s not sure the rest of the global team has. He knows that dramatic action and bold thinking is critical to carve out a new future – others might just seem prepared to ‘zoom it in,’ just as they might have ‘phoned it in’ in the olden days.

Opportunity now comes to those who can change, adapt, morph and mutate. Innovation is now your very own action virus.

It’s interesting to observe what is happening out there. Some people get it – the old economy is not coming back, and a new one is being built. Others click to the belief, desire, delusion that a magic ‘switch’ will be flipped and the economy will come roaring back.

The future is looking back at you right now, and is giving you a message from Winston Churchill: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”

Innovate. Now. Your future depends on it.