JimCarroll

“It’s your future. What’s holding you back from finding a different path to meet your original goal?” – Futurist Jim Carroll

Let me toss you a challenge this morning: five years from now, when you look back on the decisions that you were making today, will you be happy with what you see?

Will you see someone who accepted that your future would never go back to where it was before, but only to a new and vastly different place? Will you see a person who believed that we would soon be ‘back to norma’ and that you avoided making the big shifts necessary to align to a completely different realty? Will you see someone who incessantly used that most annoying phrase of the pandemic, ‘new normal’ – signifying a belief that only a few minor tweaks to your universe were required?  Did you see someone that thought the global pandemic might be over in but a short period of time – or that it would take years, and perhaps decades, to wind its way through the course of history? (Hint: It’s the latter.)

Bottom line: do you minimize the long range impact of this seismic era in human history? Or are you someone who truly believes that this is a universe-shifting period of time? The scope-equivalent of the two World Wars and the Great Depression – events that massively shifted and disrupted the future?

Consider this context: I posted this image yesterday in a group of event and meeting planners in which I participate, offering it up without comment.

Which person are you?

What belief system drives your actions today?

Because if you are in the ‘new normal’ camp, there’s a pretty solid chance that you are going to wake up in five years and be pretty sad with the decisions and actions you were making today – and pretty horrified in considering the person that you are today.

The origin for the photo and the quote? It’s based very much on my recent video “Transformation Leadership – My Keynote @NASA”

 

“The future? It sometimes has a crude way of asserting it’s inevitability!” – Futurist Jim Carroll

If Covid-19 was around when the Jetsons met the Flintstones, can you guess who would be wearing a mask?

About two months ago, I made a pledge to myself that I’d be very careful, and work hard to stop with any type of political commentary on my social media channels until at least the middle of November. I’ve been mostly pretty good at sticking to my vows.

Obviously, today, Friday October 2 is going to start a period of wild volatility with everything we know around us. 2020 probably has a few more curveballs to throw at us too.

Those of you know know that I have had one consistent refrain – follow the science.

Science. It’s a bitch at times, you know, having the rude habit of interrupting your false reality.

The thing is, unintelligent people often don’t accept that fact until it is too late.

Weak a mask. Wash your hands. Stay socially distant. Reduce your bubble.

Because, reality.

 

“The impact of Covid-19 on our future? Speed was once a competitive advantage. The lack of it is now a destructive disqualifier!” – Futurist Jim Carroll

I put up a long blog post and a related topic page yesterday, based on an article I wrote for ThinkTwenty20. It’s a new publication for financial professionals that is sponsored by CPA Canada, among others. You’ll find the full edition here.

The editor, Gerry Trites, has known me for over 40 years, and has seen my professional career go through a continual wild career evolution. He’d been watching my latest reincarnation through my virtual home broadcast studio, and asked me if I would write an article for their inaugural edition about the impact of Covid-19 on our future.

I knew exactly what to do, with this key line highlighting the article:

“The impact of Covid-19 on our future? In a nutshell, organizations have learned how to think, act, innovate, collaborate and disrupt at a speed faster than they might have ever considered. Speed was once a competitive advantage. The lack of it is now a destructive disqualifier!”

You’ll find the full article in my blog here: “Remember the Future? How Has the Pandemic Reshaped And Accelerated Our Reality? Here’s What You Need To Know!” The article was shaped around my “20 Trends into 2030” article which I pulled together just before the pandemic hit – it was a detailed overview of how the future would reshape 20 different industries.

Here’s the key issue : none of the trends I spoke about previously have gone away – and in fact, they’ve accelerated. If you don’t understand both the scope of the industry change, and the new metric of the speed with which they are occurring, your are missing out on the disruptive forces swirling around you.

I’m now fielding an increasing number of inquiries from potential clients for my future insight on how Covid-19 has reshaped the future of their industry, and so this article comes with perfect timing. With that in mind, we’ll be working at speed here in the home office to skew our Website topic content and other information to this new demand and reality. Once people wake up from the election insanity, and as we hopefully begin to see a bit of a stable future as we learn to better manage Covid-19, the future (rather than survival) returns as a key leadership focus.

Want to get started on your “futurizing?” You can find a nicely formatted page with the article through this link.

Remember the Future? How Has the Pandemic Reshaped And Accelerated Our Reality?