Daily Inspiration: “Hint: You’ll do better if you spend more time preparing for your future instead of reacting to it!”

“Hint: You’ll do better if you spend more time preparing for your future instead of just reacting to it!” – Futurist Jim Carroll

Have you ever noticed you seem to be surrounded by people who seem to have a better job succeeding with what comes next?

That’s because they’ve invested far more time thinking about and analyzing the trends that define their future than you have. They generally have a pretty good idea of what comes next and have a plan as to what to do about it. The result is that they are far more comfortable with the disruptive change swirling around their industry, and are prepared to act, rather than react.

Here’s the thing — I’ve long realized that there are three types of people in the world:

• those who make things happen
• those who watch things happen
• and those who say, “whoah! what happened?”

I’ve often pointed this out on stage, and have emphasized the point, by suggesting that the folks who find themselves last on the list sit back and actually say, “whoah, dude, what happened? Where’d that come from?” Check it out:

In other words, they’ve been completely blind to the trend which would cause massive upheaval within their industry, or refuse to accept the significant business model disruptions which are already occurring.

Is that you?

Do you find yourself having a lot of ‘whoah, dude!’ moments?

Your key goal should be this: when it comes to innovation, make sure that you are in the first camp! Know what’s next and make things happen! You do this by turning forward: make sure you are firmly focused on the future while managing your present reality. Change your focus – spend less time looking back on where you were and more time on where you might be going. Watch more stuff: spend your time nurturing and establish a  “trends radar” that will help you to keep a keen eye on your future. Share more: make sure that you’ve got a culture of collaboration in which you are actively sharing your insight, observations, and recommendations with others with respect to future trends, threats, and opportunities – you’ll get a lot of useful insight back.

I continue to be stunned by how many people today continue to be caught flat-footed by the pace of rapid trends that impact them. It seems like it should be so simple to avoid this!

Yet there are likely still lots of “whoah, dude” dudes out there.

Stop being one of them.