Daily Inspiration: “When shift happens, why do you not shift?”

“When shift happens, why do you not shift?” – Futurist Jim Carroll

Third times a charm! – that’s the final, authoritative quote for today – the third attempt!

The next to last? I had this image below, and was about to commit to it but still didn’t think it was quite right: “When shift happens, why do you remain stuck in your tin can rut?”

The tin can reference? It goes to the heart of a story I often told on stage and one that I filmed in the studio yesterday – how Star-Kist saw a $200 million revenue uplift by switching to resealable pouches instead of tin-cans for certain products. A wonderful product innovation – particularly when they had been using tin cans for 110 years.

Don’t get stuck – always challenge yourself to align with the future, because it’s pretty likely that barring ill-health or unfortunate circumstances, you are going to end up there! That was the thought running through my head when I was putting together the first version of today’s quote, which looked like this: “What’s your tin can? Why are you clinging to your old future, when we’re so busy building a vastly new and different one?”  Too wordy!

As I started typing this first blog post after assembling the picture, I instinctively wrote:  “When shift happens, why do you not shift?” At that moment, I knew I had my idea for today. Even so, I changed it yet again.

Here’s the key thing: when people all around you are busy building a different future, what possesses you to cling to your old, out of date one? When it’s pretty obvious that everything you’ve done in the past won’t be done in the future – why do you keep doing what you have been doing before? When it’s extremely likely that your old business model is gone and that you’ll need a dramatically new and different one, why do you still keep investing in the old one? When it is massively evident that what worked for you in the past might be irrelevant in the future, why do you hold yourself to irrelevance?

These are the questions of my world which have always mystified me, and yet have allowed me to build a global career of sharing my insight. Simply put, I think I help people to understand, confront, and adapt to a new and different future. I find it easy to do so; obviously many others do not.

I fully intend to keep doing this, albeit more and more in this virtual space. The more I connect with people throughout my industry and take a look at what is happening, the more I come to realize that there are no other speakers around the world who are doing the sophisticated type of virtual home studio setup that I’ve been doing. If you know of someone who is even remotely close, I’d love to know of them.

Do you want some words to live by? Don’t keep doing what you were doing yesterday: start doing something new and different yesterday that you might have a chance to use tomorrow.

Side note: What I am happiest about with this particular screen grab is that it utilizes the new wide-angle camera lens that I purchased some weeks back. I’ve been building and scraping together this studio carefully, ever mindful that my new business model isn’t quite yet firing on all cylinders. I was never really happy with the 12-year-old lens that I was using for this particular camera angle – this new one rocks in terms of clarity!