JimCarroll

“Never doubt for a moment the opportunities that YOU get to define!” – Futurist Jim Carroll

Two years ago, I was on stage, the dinner speaker for a group of CPAs in Saskatchewan, Canada. They invited me in for a talk on the future of their profession, the opportunities in front of them, and the disruptive thinking they should pursue.

Here’s a fun fact that I don’t share too often – I’m actually still a CPA, originally a Chartered Accountant. As I will often describe, in a land long ago and a time far away, I worked for a decade for predecessor firms of KPMG and EY, doing ‘exciting’ work in the field of audit, business advisory, taxation, and accounting. In university – from which I graduated at the young age of 19 – I was actually an A+ accounting student. I guess I had a thing for numbers and logic. LOL.

It didn’t last long; obtaining my designation in but two short years, I discovered the world of connectivity the next year, in 1982, and soon found myself slowly, and then quickly, abandoning the career as I began to focus on the opportunity of what would become the Internet.  I pursued a path that let me define my own future. THAT is the key to your own success.

Regrets? None! In fact, I would not be able to do what I do if I did not have the chance to develop the unique set of skills the profession afforded me. And THAT was the key story I told on stage on this day, two years ago. Let me share with you the remarkable story of a young CA student who wrote me back in 1995; bored, he was ready to quit the profession and asked me for my advice.

Let me play out in a series of screenshots the story: starting with the original message.

I wrote him back, suggesting that he ‘stick with the program’ and get his designation:

I expanded on my views:

Imagine my surprise, years later, when he wrote me back – he passed!

And it doesn’t end there! Mathieu followed up with me almost two decades later, telling me the story of the remarkable career that he had the opportunity to define for himself.

What’s the lesson from all of this? Your future? It’s yours to own, yours to create, yours to pursue. Chase wisely!

As for the acocunting porofesion? Years later, EY invited me in to open a major conference, and I told a great little story of my own experience:

 

“Don’t waste a lot of time wishing for what you had – dream instead for what you could have!” – Futurist Jim Carroll

Too many people spend too much time looking back and not enough time looking forward.

The result is that they become emotionally tied to what was, instead of motivated by what could be; they become reliant on what worked yesterday instead of developing new skills for what will be necessary tomorrow; they end up repeating the same old mistakes – instead of accelerating their insight by making new ones.

Organizations do the same thing. They build a structure, culture, and leadership style which involves looking back in time to judge what might come next – the thought process being that what happened yesterday will be the best guide to what tomorrow will bring. And so they design accounting and financial systems that use past performance as a guide for the future; insurance risk and actuarial assumptions that use yesterday’s risk factors as a guide to future risk; agricultural systems that use old data to try to identify new trends; demand forecast systems that use purchasing patterns from the past to drive manufacturing systems for production for tomorrow.

In today’s fast-paced and volatile economy, this often does not work – the past is a poor barometer for what tomorrow might bring.

Look forward – not back!

Here’s a clip from a leadership series I ran just before the pandemic hit – valuable insight for volatile times!

“What comes next? A rather imperfect reality!” – Futurist Jim Carroll

What comes next? What should you do about it? When should you start? These are the questions that should define your day today! Because, it’s at this very moment, right now, that you have a chance to redefine your future!

But you should expect that what you define might instantly change because our path going forward will be defined by the uncertainty and volatility of the trends that will define our voyage.

I’m fielding *a lot* of calls for the autumn; it’s pretty clear that a lot of major organizations are now realizing that as we emerge from this thing, they need a bit more clarity on their future. They’re looking for a conversation starter at a corporate retreat, a keynote for an annual conference, or a thought-provoking talk for a senior leadership meeting. It’s pretty clear that I will slowly be emerging from my virtual cave, into the bright lights of a cavernous conference hall.

It’s going to be weird.

Not just my experience, but yours too. Our whole world is going to be weird for a time. We’re all going to be skittish, wary, circling each other in a haze of distanced ambiguity.

But it’s not just our social experience that will be odd – so too will the industry in which we work, the business model by which we function, the market in which we operate, the customers with whom we interact. We’re just beginning to emerge from the most seismic event of our entire lifetimes, and we have yet to define the parameters of our return. We won’t be going back to 2019 – what we are headed towards will be defined by the edges of a rather imperfect reality.

Buckle up. Weirdness beckons – imperfection defines!