JimCarroll

“With accelerating change, your ability to ignore the future is more than directly inverse to the impact it will have on you!” – Futurist Jim Carroll

It used to be you could ignore what’s next. Today, you can, until you can’t.

Something about the future has changed in the last few years – it’s faster. And it continues to become even faster yet. The best way to comprehend that is by looking back in time – doing a bit of time travel in reverse order. Given that we are obviously in the midst of a global economic pullback, let’s consider where we were during the last economic downturn. Consider the recession of ’08.

• back then, Twitter was but just a blip on the consciousness of most people;
• Facebook was still a place where teenagers hung out before their parents invaded it and filled with whacky misinformation;
• deep-fake videos were still a decade away;
• politicians still spoke with something that closely resembled reality, or at least a bit;
• people had a bit of trust in institutions – media, government, and more;
• collaborative, conspiratorial mental illness was not yet a thing;
• truth mattered;
• electric vehicles were not really considered much of a threat to the automotive industry;
• Tesla produced but 500 cars
• Netflix was just introducing streaming
• the mRNA vaccine technology was only in the early exploration phase
• the iPhone was but one year old;
• and Blackberries were still somewhat cool (though not for long!

Look at our world today – it’s a totally different story. All of this is gone – we have a new global society and a new global economy that is unlike anything that we’ve known before, built on a bedrock of misinformation. Our political, business, social, news, and is NOTHING like it was 11 years ago. We know that the era of oil is over, medicine has been transformed, the automotive industry is being torn asunder, and TV as we know it is dead.

The point is – the future is faster. Are you? Or are you too busy ignoring the signs of accelerating change? Are you structured for slow in a fast world?

Now consider this: the global pandemic has changed the axis of our universe. What was disruptive before is now massively transformative. Do you have a strategy to keep up? Are you dealing with the reality of the acceleration gap? Some time back, I hit the virtual studio to explain your challenge.

History tells us that every global crisis shifts the axis of the future of our universe, and every crisis offers an opportunity to improve. In the harsh reality of our post-pandemic world, leadership strategies that worked yesterday are exposed as being irrelevant tomorrow even while they are being actively considered today.

Pre-pandemic, CEOs and organizations were dealing with a world of business model disruption, the acceleration of technology, the faster evolution of key skills, and other critical issues. Now, in the harsh light of our new world, one thing is clear – the future is even more complex than it was before. And a simple fact has emerged – there is a massive and growing gap between the speed of change and the ability of organizations to keep up. Bridging this gap is critical to future success – and the significance of your inability to bridge the gap is even bigger than it was before.

The challenges exist in stark terms. Medical knowledge is now doubling every 78 days, compared to 8 years a decade ago, rendering irrelevant previous healthcare industry strategies. We’ve gone from a world of just-in-time to just-in-case supply chain concepts because of a world of broken globalization and sudden volatility. 68% percent of organizations have said that the global pandemic has forced them to adapt and change their business models – what was disruptive before is even more so today. Old methods of public relations fail faster in an era in which a Tik-Tok teenager with an effective message can change the entire course of human history. Regulatory bodies can barely keep up with the pace of fast science, as seen with the disconnect between the fast arrival of Covid-19 vaccines. An electrical grid infrastructure designed for the era of carbon vehicles is clearly unable to support today’s rush to battery-focused electric vehicles. These are but a few examples of how the ‘acceleration gap’ is affecting every aspect of our world today.

Bridge the gap! What worked yesterday will not work tomorrow!

You are on a guaranteed path to failure if you don’t align with our new reality – by mastering the disconnect between speed and structure. The acceleration gap is very real, and it’s growing larger all the time. Successful organizations will be those who can shrink the gap, minimize its impact, and turn it into an opportunity rather than a threat.

“Analytical unpredictability is often a magical combination for creative success!” – Futurist Jim Carroll

Sometimes the best results come from unpredictable planning – that unique combination of a detailed analytical approach combined with random happenstance! (It’s a national holiday in my home country, Canada – Victoria Day – but many followers of my Daily Inspiration are global so I am not deterred!)

The old left brain / right brain; analytical mind / creative mind synergy has long been observed, and many have commented that building a team that combines both leads to powerful results. Look at Jobs and Wozniak – the former was the creative genius behind the concept of Apple as a brand and product conceptualization, while the latter was the technical genius who revolutionized the concept of how computers could be designed.

With that in mind,I give you this tree:

We had a major storm blow through our region on Saturday, and there was much damage along a 1,000km swath with this ‘derecho,’ a unique weather phenomenon. Sadly, 8 people have died. Where I live there was significant tree damage, including a massive tree limb dislodged on my neighbor’s 35-year-old maple tree. Chainsaw in hand, my neighbor was not deterred from attempting to take it down in advance of a tree removal professional, despite the potential risk. Being of an analytical mind – a retired geologist – he was approaching the project step by step, removing a portion of the tree, analyzing the remaining weight and balance, and plotting a strategy, even as I attempted to talk him out of taking on the project.

At one point in day 2 – having returned from my golf round – he was back at it. Observing his determined process of detailed steps followed by careful analysis, I suggested a rope. Being somewhat creative but impatient with details, my thought was that it might be a good time for some brute force involving swinging the branch back and forth simply ‘to see what would happen.’ I would guess I am the Jobs to his Wozniak. Either that or I am a new, annoying neighbor on the block.

And yet, 30 minutes later, we had the limb – which must have weighed several thousand pounds – down and on the ground. I don’t take credit for it – he would have succeeded with his approach eventually, if not ending up in the hospital while doing so. And yet, I like to think that my creative effort helped to move it along.

Facing a complex problem? Build a team of an analytical mindset and throw them together with artists. Bring together those who define their future with logic and sparkle them up a bit with creativity. Combine the detailed mind within those who build a life based on random pursuit, and magic might happen.

“You’ll get the future right if you get the timing right!” – Futurist Jim Carroll

Here’s a big issue to wrap your head around – increasingly, your opportunity for future success will come from your ability to get the timing right! That’s why a number of my recent in-person keynotes have focused on the issue of when the future we are talking about actually happens. Here’s one of the five or six rules that I share:

Much of my timing focus is based on the Gartner Hypecycle, which has, for a long time, offered an invaluable path for the arrival of any new technology and concept.

With that in mind, here are my basic “5 Rules to Determine the Arrival of the Future”

1. The future happens, but eventually

Follow the Hypecycle. It’s here, but not mature, until the Slope of Enlightenment and the Plateau of Productivity. Most trends are overhyped and crash and burn before they become real. Hence, I give you cryptocurrency, Web 3.0, and the metaverse!

2. The future is usually slow, and then, instant

Kevin Kelly, the founder of Wired Magazine, came up with this one.  As I explain on stage, any particular trend can bubble along in the experimental and discovery phase for a time – and then, suddenly, unexpectedly and rapidly, mature and suddenly become very, very real. You need to be ready when this happens!

3. Technology puts great uncertainty on the accuracy of rules 1 and 2

If you have those two rules down, get ready for this one. In essence, every industry is coming to change at the speed of ‘Silicon Valley’ because they are becoming tech companies. This throws every assumption about the pace of change in the industry out the window, because, well, technology.

4. Accelerating science can suddenly make your previous future estimate terribly inaccurate

And it’s not just fast tech that changes every industry – it’s faster science. By way of example, right now I’m watching a trend involving ‘real-time customizable food programming’ – basically, the marriage of genomics, food, health and wellness, medical devices, and mobile technology into one big super-trend. One of the driers of this trend is the acceleration of DNA sequencing or genomic science – which is making the potential for this trend faster still!

5. Just when you think you’ve got the future all figured out, kids come along

And last but not least, many industries are ruled and overseen by slow, ponderous, tech adverse baby boomers – folks who grew up with COBOL and punch cards. They’re starting their retirement wave, and as the next generation takes over, watch out! They hold no inhibitions when it comes to fast, new, disruptive ideas!

There you have it! These issues have been featured in a few of my daily inspirational quotes over time.

I wrote about this trend in my 19 Trends for 2019: specifically, trend #12, the issue of timing.

“As they say, timing is everything, particularly when it comes to the issue of getting involved in any particular trend. In the era of acceleration, it becomes even more critical. You’d better make sure you are ready with any trend of importance and relevance because the future might happen before you know it.”

I spend a lot of time on stage talking about the issue of timing on stage, particularly in the context of the “Gartner Hypecycle.” It’s been a key go-to on my client innovation guidance for well over 15 years. The interesting thing is that it’s really risen to the forefront in the last year, particularly as technology journalists have tried to explain the rise and fall of the BitCoin bubble.

The other thing about timing? The future is staggered and uneven – it doesn’t happen everywhere all at once. It’s phased by location, sector, and other discrete perspectives. Think about self-driving vehicles – we’ll see them happen in some ways faster, and in other ways, slower. I was in New Orleans and saw some crowded streets, and it was the perfect opportunity to talk about the issue of timing.

Here’s another example where I hit the stage before a keynote for a group of investment professionals in Nassau, Bahamas – and explain the timing issue:

That’s why my mantra to “think big, start small, scale fast” gives a key shoutout to timing. “Start small” implies that you should be on board with any particular trend, despite the potential immaturity it might have because you want to make sure that you understand it, have experience with it, know how to work with it – and are ready to go when it “goes supernova!”