They’re over there – in your Department of Stifling Great Ideas!
Here’s how I know – watch this!
by JimCarroll
They’re over there – in your Department of Stifling Great Ideas!
Here’s how I know – watch this!
by JimCarroll
“Have you ever considered that maybe your overall success is being held back by your ‘Department of Overpromising and Underdelivery?’” – Futurist Jim Carroll
If you want to know where to find it, you’ll probably discover it right next to your “Innovation and Creativity Prevention Department.”
Where’s that? It’s just down the hall from the “Department of Excuses and Apologies,” which is run by your VP of Ensuring the Status Quo. You might not yet know him, but he was just promoted due to his stellar efforts within the “Laboratory of Marginal Innovation and Failed Ideas.” That caused a bit of controversy, though – the senior VP of Stifling Creativity thought it encroached on his territory. Our previous President, now ex-officio Champion of Small Ideas tamped down the controversy pretty quickly.
I know, I know – you’re new around here, and you thought it might be different. If you are frustrated, maybe you could take up your issues with the Coordinator of Complacency – she’s in a small office in the Division of Marginal Thinking. I think she might be the one who manages the Suggestion Box to Nowhere – she’s pretty good at making sure that your idea is never noticed or acted upon.
Look, it can be a challenge to try to fit in, and maybe that is why should consider taking a course from the Department of Skills Inaction – formerly known as H.R. I hear that next week, they might be offering up another two-week long course in “How to Develop a Groupthink Consensus Mindset and Kill Ideas in A Flash!”
I understand that the online registration system is currently broken, but maybe in two weeks we’ll get a fix from the Office of Information Technology Bug Implementation; they’ve seen some recent great ideas from the internal Laboratory of Insecure Untested Code.
Oh, but before you start to follow up – make sure you fill out your form 39-10R-271: Provisioning the Irrelevance of Your Role. That will help you ensure you fly below the radar and never get noticed again.
Got it?
by JimCarroll
“You’ll get to your future faster once you accept the reality of where it is taking you!” – Futurist Jim Carroll
I was invited to keynote a 100th Anniversary Celebration Gala Dinner for Nikon in Tokyo, Japan – and the message was that was running through my mind was that it doesn’t really matter what you’ve done in the last 100 years – it’s what you do in the next 5 that really counts!
That became an undercurrent to my talk – but I also spoke a lot about the necessity of accepting the disruptive rate of change that is swirling all around you. I opened with a story on when NASA invited me in (twice!) for a talk on the disruption of the space industry, transformative leadership, and fast-paced trends – and the need to accept the fact that the space industry of yesterday is forever gone. Today? It’s NASA, SpaceX, BlueOrigin, and a few hundred private space startups!
The talk in Tokyo was certainly a thrill – my audience consisted of people from 37 countries, with simultaneous translation into Japanese and Chinese. It was held at Happo-En – a wonderful Japanese-themed garden facility.
We were there for about 6 hours for stage prep and logistics coordination. I had a team of 6 handlers – and I must admit, for a time, I felt just like Bill Murray in Lost in Translation, particularly as they spent 20 minutes quietly discussing whether I should enter stage left or stage right!
The main point in my talk? You don’t get to be a company with a 100-year history without constant, relentless innovation and reinvention, and so it was an honor to be invited to headline this prestigious event. Even so, I hammered home the idea that complacency kills – it’s the root of so much failure!
As in – are you the Pokemon GO in the room? Remember how quickly that reality came and went?
by JimCarroll
“Grateful and thankful!” – Futurist Jim Carroll
It’s a holiday here today in Canada – Thanksgiving Day! We celebrate one month earlier than our southern counterparts.
My family always tells me that I should not do any work today – but my Daily Inspiration goes global and knows no national boundaries. With that in mind, I’ll be short and to the point. My oldest son became engaged last weekend; my younger, last year. My wife and I are so thrilled to be gaining two wonderful daughters into our lives; we are so grateful for our blessings and thankful for the joy our sons have discovered.
Wherever you might be, I hope these two wonderful photos orchestrated by my sons at the very moment of joy might inspire your soul with warmth today.
by JimCarroll
“Nothing great was ever achieved through conformity. To thine own uniqueness be true!” – Futurist Jim Carroll
Groupthink. Committees. Consensus. Buy-in. Harmony. Concurrence. Unanimity. These are the words, ideas, and cultures that kill great ideas.
YOU are the owner of your great ideas. Don’t let others beat you down, wear you out, tire your initiative, challenge your belief – because you know, deep down in your heart, that you are on the right path. And even if you aren’t, at least the failure will be yours to own – and yours to learn from.
I’ve never liked the word ‘conformity.’ To me, it reeks of the failure of sameness, an admission of defeat. You are giving up on your ideas and beliefs in order to achieve the approval of others. Why? What’s the point?
You should celebrate your uniqueness, and use it as fuel for your creativity. The fact is, when everyone is running one way, run the other way! Because when everyone is thinking the same thing, you’ll always end up with the same thing!
Nature abhors complacency, despises routine, destroys hubris, punishes consistency, reorders routines, inhibits uniformity, and abandons mediocrity. Don’t be like everyone else. Be yourself!
Being unique, though, means that people might laugh at you, and ridicule your ideas. Ignore it – because it usually means that you are right!
Here’s something I wrote in the foreword for a book over 20 years ago:
There are a lot of lonely visionaries out there.
They’re working in their own specialties, their own areas of concentration, their own technology systems that they will believe will shape the world. And often, they are ignored. Battered and bruised. Advised they are on the wrong track. Told in no uncertain terms that they are, well, not quite with it.
Be a lonely visionary. Because in your heart, you believe in what you are doing.
by JimCarroll
“One day you’ll look back at today and realize it’s the olden days. That moment will happen sooner than you think!” – Futurist Jim Carroll
Do you really know how big your future is? Probably not – your reference point for change is in the slow lane, and the world is accelerating while you don’t notice.
Watch this video; it’s from a 2019 keynote for a few thousand people in New Orleans. And now take a look around you – you can see it happening in front of your very eyes. It’s pretty clear that in the olden days, we only farmed when the sun was up, we went to places called stores to get most things, and we fixed people after they were sick. Today? That’s changing fast!
The olden days? It’s today. Right now. At this very moment.
Most of you drive cars and cars that use gasoline and diesel; one day soon, the vast majority will be electric, based on batteries, and over time, they’ll do more of the driving themselves. You’ll simply supervise the process, much as you monitor your kitchen while you are cooking. And it’s going to happen sooner than you think!
Take any industry, and you can see a similar rush of the current time to antiquity. As product lifecycles collapse, the things that companies make are suddenly irrelevant, tired, out of date. Companies think they are selling modern stuff, but are really in the antique business.
The olden days? Many of my keynotes and leadership meetings in dozens of industries and corporate events have involved a good, hard look at serious future trends. It’s a lot of work, takes a lot of research, but is a hugely rewarding ‘job.’ And then, every once in a while, something completely different comes along. So it was with a major US financial company some years back that was holding the 30th anniversary of their key customer meeting. And since they’re in the IT business, they wanted a keynote that looked back in time, rather than looking forward. Something fun, engaging, and which would help folks have a good laugh at the unique experiences baby boomers have been through over the last 30 years! As it turns out, they found me.
The result was a rollicking, hilarious 45-minute keynote based on lots of my material from one of my books from the 1990s: Surviving the Information Age. Form that event, here’s a great clip where I’m talking about how quickly our world is changing, as things that are a part of our lives have become things from the “olden days” — and it has happened before our very eyes.
Here’s another take on the theme – I’m with the senior leadership team of Volvo, and in this case, I’m challenging them to think about how quickly after-sale market values of vehicles collapse when your dashboard is from the olden days – and your car is only a few years old! What’s happening right now? Your 2018 car is already from the olden days when compared to a 2021 model.
It’s not just products that become something from the olden days – your brand can suffer the same fate. In today’s world, brands today can go from hero to zero in a matter of months.
10 years ago, I was on stage for global organizations advising them that the next decade would see them face tremendous challenges as the era of social media, product obsolescence and new competitors hit the essence of their branding soul. I pretty much nailed that one perfectly. Brands start to look tired because they are tired.
The olden days? It’s right now. Are you? Is your mindset stuck in today when it’s already becoming tomorrow?
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