One of the world’s largest restaurant companies had me in keynote a massive global leadership meeting – and asked me to share my insight on what they could do to align themselves to the high velocity change which surrounds them. This was the result!
Daily Inspiration: “May your hope for the future outweigh your doubt about your potential for success!”
“May your hope for the future outweigh your doubt about your potential for success!” – Futurist Jim Carroll
A shoutout to @keithlkerswill for the genesis of the idea here – he knows when I am grabbing a concept from him while he speaks of it!
In this case, he was mentioning the song “Like a Force of Nature” – Todd Snider, which features the phrase “may your hope always outweigh your doubt.’
If there is ever a more perfect phrase for how you approach your future, that’s it!
So with a little bit of spin, I’ve started to use the concept while on stage.
People have big dreams for the future, but they also carry within them an innate fear of what comes next. That’s because the future is uncertain, unknown, unpredictable…..
The result of the uncertainty is that we can often begin to doubt our potential at the same time that we have big ideas about what we might be able to accomplish.
Different people approach this conundrum in different ways.
Some people manage to let their hope override their doubt, and bust through to success; in other cases, the doubt far outweighs the hope and failure is the result; for other people, the two are in equal balance, and mediocrity rules their life.
Bust the equilibrium! Shift the balance! Tilt the scale!
Recognize that you have a choice as to how your future turns out, and a lot of it depends on the attitude that you carry around with you; the determination that you embed within your soul; and the focus that you feature in your mindset.
Be relentless in thinking about your hopes and dreams, and actively work each and every dispel the doubt!
That can be the one key thing that tips the scales in your favour!
Daily Inspiration: “Your best ideas should be exactly like nothing else!”
“Your best ideas should be exactly like nothing else!” – Futurist Jim Carroll
A shoutout to the Autograph Collection of boutique hotels – “Exactly like nothing else” is the key slogan to their global branding campaign. The phrase certainly caught my attention last week while staying at one of their hotels in Denver.
It’s brilliant! And it’s really easy to see how the idea can easily stretch to the concept of innovation.
I’m a big believer that the more unique your idea is within a crowded field of ideas, the better your chance for potential success. The more original your plans for your personal growth are, the more likely you are to succeed. The more offbeat your thinking, the better positioned you are for our faster future!
When you are like everyone else, you are following on the path of failure that comes with bandwagon innovation.
Jumping on a trend because everyone else has never works because, as I wrote in a blog post:
“Bandwagon innovation? It’s lazy: true innovation takes hard work. It involves massive cultural, organizational, structural change. It involves an organization and leadership team that is willing to try all kinds of radical and new ideas to deal with rapid change. An innovative organization can’t innovate simply by jumping on a trend. Trying to do so is just trying to find an easy solution to deep, complex problems.
Read the post: “Why Bandwagon Innovation and Pursuing What’s Hot is Doomed to Fail”
A culture that involves a lack of unique ideas encourages a culture of mediocrity. It reduces innovation to an “idea of the week,” and does nothing to encourage people to really look at their world in a different way.
Innovative organizations – and innovative people – seek uniqueness. They thrive on being different. Their ideas are different too.
Their ideas? Like nothing else!
Daily Inspiration: “The future is right now. Are you here?”
“The future is right now. Are you here?” – Futurist Jim Carroll
15 years ago, I’m on stage talking about the fact that the era of oil is soon to be over; that it has become a sunset industry in decline. Today, most every energy experts will tell you that renewables, batteries and EV’s have so much momentum that, guess what – oil is over!
10 years ago, I’m on stage talking about a futuristic idea known as 3D printing. Today, both Nike and Adidas have made the concept a key part of their customized sneaker strategy going forward.
5 years ago, I spoke about the acceleration of bio-materials and the ability to grow human body parts for organ replacement. Today, experts in the field have moved up their estimates from its arrival from decades to years.
2 years ago, I spoke on stage about the acceleration of brain implant science and human-computer interface technology. Today, I can barely keep up with all the announcements of research into this accelerating field.
There has never been a more exciting time to be alive, an era to be overwhelmed by the pace of change, and conversely, an ability to keep up and participate in what is happening.
Are you part of it?
Are you an active participant in the future, or just a passive observer?
Do you set out to make the trends that are happening *right now* a part of your strategy, education, skills, knowledge, activities?
Or are you just sitting back, such that one day you’ll react: “Whoah, where did that come from?”
Successful people watch the future, ingest the future, seek to become a part of the future.
And they know that it isn’t some nebulous concept that will one day impact them, but that it is actively unfolding all around them at this very moment.
The future. It’s happening. It’s here. Are you?
Video: 10 Great Words
Daily Inspiration: “Be like Oblio. Embrace your inner oddness!”
“Be like Oblio. Embrace your inner oddness!” – Futurist Jim Carroll
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 37th 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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iA6rOUw6bYA&
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 sulphur 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 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!
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