One year ago today, I was already of the mindset as to what would come next.
Read what I wrote.
Nailed it.
by JimCarroll
One year ago today, I was already of the mindset as to what would come next.
Read what I wrote.
Nailed it.
by JimCarroll
“Creativity? Be that one in every crowd!” – Futurist Jim Carroll
We spend our lives being told that we need to conform; that we need to fit in; that we need to become like everyone else; that we shouldn’t try to stand out from the crowd; that we should be of a like mind; that we should be on the same wavelength.
That we should be like everyone else.
What a load of rubbish.
Know this one simple fact that you must confront each and every day: you are surrounded by people who want to crush your creativity!
Fight back. There’s something inside you that is unique, and it’s dying to get out. You’ve got creative energy burning deep within your soul, and you are surrounded by people who want to douse its flames. You’ve got an idea that is deep and personal to your creative soul, but you have friends who tell you that it’s but a pipe dream.
Don’t let them stop you.
That was certainly my experience – watch this clip from a keynote at a major EY Tax conference, in which I reveal my actual professional background – and what I encountered along the way!
Crushed creativity? Read my story below from back in 2019 in another daily inspiration post. Since this is EXACTLY what I’m talking about, I’ll repost it here verbatim.
Read my story. Write your own!
Otherwise, you will regret each and every day that you witness the smoldering embers of your future opportunity fading to nothingness right in front of you.
“Be like Oblio. Embrace your inner oddness!” – Futurist Jim Carroll, September 24, 2019
At some point in time you might realize that you are different from everyone else.
Run with it!
Yesterday, I obtained the ISBN for what will become my 39th book in a career as an author over 25 years – in this case, “Think Big, Start Small, Scale Fast: Stories from the Stage on Innovation, Disruption & Our Accelerating Future.” It will be published later this fall, by my publishing arm, Oblio Press.
Oblio?
He was a magical character in singer Harry Nilsson’s 6th album, “The Point,” which featured the hit song, “Me and My Arrow.” In the album – and later, in the movie – Oblio was the only round-headed person in a land in which everyone, by legal dictate, should have a point.
The land, of course, was known as the Pointed Village.
I’m Oblio – realizing years ago that I’m somewhat different from those around me.
If anyone had told me years ago that, as an accountant by background, I would be on stage around the world speaking about the Jetsons with clients such as NASA (who has had me in twice), I would have laughed in their face.
And yet here I am, 30 years on.
I seemed to know early on that I was kind of different.
I got in trouble in grade 3 for making stink bombs. Out of pens and sulfur matches. I read it in a book. I thought everyone did this type of thing.
I never went to history class in high school, since I had already read all of the books as a 12-year-old – and so when the principal called me into the office to discipline me, I asked him how I might improve from a mark of 98? I spent my time instead of as head of the high school radio station, blasting Led Zeppelin out to the jocks who wanted to listen to disco.
In the accounting firm for which I worked, I used stickmen as audit tick marks instead of X’s & O’s. I was called onto the carpet for doing so. I decided they were out to crush my creativity.
When I discovered the online world in 1982, I abandoned my career, dedicating myself to a voyage into the connected future. I ended up writing a little book about the Internet in 1994; it became a best seller – I found myself on stage.
I’m Oblio, and so are you.
Embrace your inner Oblio. You’ll find your creativity in your oddness!
by JimCarroll
What happens when your career arc is shaped in a different way?
Jeff is the author of “Do Stand So Close: My Improbable Adventure As Sting’s Guitarist“- which takes us behind the scenes of his 18-month adventure in 1987-88, traveling the world the most famous singer of the time, playing to millions, followed by a stint with the Amnesty International’s “Human Rights Now!” World Tour.
And then, the tours ended, and Jeffrey wasn’t quite prepared for his new reality.
Join in to learn more about the process of reinvention when you start at the top – and then have to start at the bottom all over again! It’s a remarkable and wonderful story!
You can learn more about Jeffrey, his wonderful story, his book and more at his Web site.
And the book? Highly recommended – it’s a wonderful read! See it on Amazon here!
by JimCarroll
“The ultimate business impact of the pandemic? Resistance to change, changed forever! ”- Futurist Jim Carroll
I’ve been going through a lot of research lately on how Covid-19 has transformed and changed the world of business – this is for an upcoming CEO-level event for an organization now working to align its strategy to ‘what comes next.’
Many of the actions that organizations took are obvious- working from home, revamped supply chains, curbside pickup, virtual healthcare. But it’s often necessary to step beyond the action to understand the trends that are at the heart of the future.
In that context, I think the biggest change that has occurred, beyond the massive impact on the trend away from globalization, is that resistance to change has absolutely crumbled going forward. This is a massive trend and cannot be discount. (The globalization issue? That was the subject of an “Ask a Futurist’ clip I did last week – see it here.)
When I take a look at the clients who have asked me to come in and speak at a global leadership meeting – Disney, Mercedes, Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer – it’s pretty clear that there is one thread that is at the core of what they are wrestling with. That’s the message that ‘the future is fast,’ and they are working hard to align to it. Often the biggest barrier in their way of achieving that was an ability to change, driven by years of organizational sclerosis and slow culture.
That has pretty much disappeared. They’ve had to learn to compress ten years of trends into a matter of months; they’ve been forced to realign everything they were planning to do, to align to what they needed to do; excuses against change became pleas for faster action. Companies used to run ‘change-management workshops.’ That’s about as relevant an exercise right now as making sure their fax machines are working correctly. (Does anyone use fax anymore?)
Ultimately, the innovation killers which I’ve talked about so much about on stage over the years have been turned upside down, as companies have identified a new set of innovation accelerators. That issue is going to be the subject of a short video I’ll film in my broadcast studio later today.
What does all of this mean?
The future used to belong to those who were fast – and now that everyone is fast, you need to make sure that you can capture and keep what you’ve learned. And that’s what I’m working to define through the research which is ongoing.
Stay tuned!
by JimCarroll
“Your simple reality- you won’t solve complex new problems using old methods!” – Futurist Jim Carroll
It’s fascinating – and frustrating – to watch organizations try to cope with a new reality by clinging to what worked in their old reality.
Right now, we are in the midst of a world in which various groups of big government organizations around the world are trying to build big systems to manage complex vaccination logistics and appointment systems.
It’s not going well.
They cling to a belief that they can throw old, outdated technology and system concepts – centralized architecture and legacy technology – at massive new challenges. The problem is that what they’ve built in the past – driver licence registration systems, tax systems, business registration – don’t work in a new reality in which millions of people all want to press ‘Submit’ at the exact same moment in time.
It’s not like this is a new problem.
We saw it happen with the rollout of healthcare reform in the US many years ago – and the implementation of one big, large legacy system that simply could not keep up. It wasn’t until a group of senior executives brought in their Silicon Valley, fast-world tech smarts that a reliable, scalable system was built.
We should be doing the same thing. Our new world of IT involves the massive coordination of fast teams, the rapid implementation of scalable cloud servers, new methods of coding and construction and other methods that world-class organizations have been using to build a massively scalable system.
The geeks could save the world if we asked them – and yet oldsters in charge of government haven’t asked them, because they seem to still be living in the world of mainframes and Cobol.
Do I sound frustrated? By all means – because in the meantime, organizations on the front line – hospitals, pharmacists, regional health care authorities – are having to roll out what is essentially a series of Google forms to dump data into a spreadsheet on the backend. It’s a bandaid system that can’t cope with what is a massive flood of demand.
It’s not going to end well.
And the thing is, we know better. We should be able to do better.
The problem that many organizations have in this new world is that they think that old methodologies can be applied to new challenges; that stale concepts of how to manage problems can fix the new ones; that the structure and process of the past can deal with a future that is staggeringly different.
It’s not a lot of fun to watch a train wreck in real-time.
Particularly when there are thousands of us – no, millions – out there who know how to do it better.
by JimCarroll
“If you build it, the future might follow!” – Futurist Jim Carroll
There are a lot of “2020/2021” pictures floating around Internet right about now.
The idea is that you post a picture of yourself or your circumstances pre-pandemic, right about March last year, and another one around this moment in time. It provides a fascinating glimpse into how the lives and circumstances of everyone around have changed.
With that in mind, I took some liberties with the timing, but this one’s mine.
The top two photos show two of the major events I spoke at just before our world went upside down – an event for the World Bank in Morocco, and another in Las Vegas for the Association of Truck Distributors annual conference. It seems like a lifetime ago! My work-life consisted of big spaces, great stages, from which I shared my insight.
And then, there are two from my virtual studio – my work-life consisting of small spaces with great stages from which I share my insight. I decided if I couldn’t have the place that I enjoyed doing my work, I’d build my own.
While crafting together this photo, a few thoughts that might have been quoted came to my mind. First and foremost, your ability to create your own personal version of your tomorrow should define you!
Do it at speed – make your reinvention and innovation your own personal space race – and launch yourself!
Because a simple reality exists in today’s fast world: you can’t wait for tomorrow to arrive.
You should define your own version of tomorrow before you get there.
"*" indicates required fields
GET IN TOUCH
Jim's Facebook page
You'll find Jim's latest videos on Youtube
Mastodon. What's on Jim's mind? Check his feed!
LinkedIn - reach out to Jim for a professional connection!
Flickr! Get inspired! A massive archive of all of Jim's daily inspirational quotes!
Instagram - the home for Jim's motivational mind!