Silicon Valley owns the speed of innovation in financial services. It’s Moore’s law everywhere, and it’s all mobile. People expect to be able to apply for a car loan on their smartphone – and get approved in 45 seconds or less! If you can’t keep up – you aren’t in the game.
“The greatest risks you face are found with the undefined – the trends that have not yet occurred, the science not yet discovered, inventions not yet invented, and ideas not yet crystallized!” – Futurist Jim Carroll
I’ll be on stage in about 4 hours in San Diego for my leadership keynote for the National Safety Council NSC19 conference – the largest workplace safety conference in the world!
My talk? The future of risk!
The quote captures the essence of my talk – while safety professionals are all busy understanding, managing and mitigating existing risk, it’s the unknown that might get someone in the end.
And those unknowns are coming at us from staggering speed.
How will we know if the spatial vision algorithm used by a cobot (cooperative robot) working next to a human has been properly programmed?
When we have fleets of interconnected, AI driven packing and shipping devices scurrying around our factory floor, how do we ensure the proper assumptions have been built into the model?
When we build and implement the Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT) into our processes, how will we ensure their security and integrity, thus providing for proper safety?
These are the things that I think about as a futurist.
We’ve got a lot of challenges around us today, but there is a lot yet more to come.
The key thing is that an organization must commit to keeping up and managing complex new safety risk – and these safety professionals need to make sure that they have a seat at the strategy table to ensure their concerns and actions are properly heard.
That can be a challenge, since organizations are scrambling to keep up with our faster future. They are busy investigating 3D printing, new methods of manufacturing, the acceleration of robot technology and more – and often, don’t take the time to think about the new safety risk that might be unfolding.
And in the end run – it’s the unknown that will get you every time!
This is the largest occupational health and safety conference in the world, with over 15,000 professionals in the field attending. I was invited in for a keynote to look at the future of safety risk – how an era of device connectivity, the Industrial Internet of Things, robots and robots, the virtualization. of the workplace, the acceleration of new material science and other trends might impact the future of safety going forward!
Pre-Keynote Video: A Sneak Peek of My Topic
Do you really understand what is meant by the word ‘disruption?’ Maybe not – there is a little bit of descriptive overkill that comes with its use. But it is real, and you need to understand why your world is changing faster than ever before.
With that in mind, watch this clip. Then, read my post on why disruption is bigger than you think!
“Your worst case scenario? Blind loyalty to a disruptor without a plan, and disruption that turns to destruction!” – Futurist Jim Carroll
Imagine your world as you finally realize that you have a fraud artist without a strategy, a storyteller without a plot, a stable genius who really lacks in intelligent agility.
Everyone told you so – & you knew it deep down all along.
Yet, you now watch in horror as the walls start to come tumbling down. Talk swirls around you that things might not be as great as they were supposed to be.
What happened? You had a successful company, a number of great products, a fantastic global brand that people looked to with admiration. The future seemed so bright that you really wondered why you and so many others felt some dissatisfaction with your success.
And then in comes a wrecking ball of a CEO, who has somehow convinced people that they are the only one who knows how to ‘fix’ things; to correct something that really isn’t off course; to repair something that isn’t terribly broken.
They convince those around team as to the brilliance of their strategy, and the show called reality commences…
Time goes on, and then you wake up and realize that the really had no strategy; they had no plan; and in fact, had no competence.
They are utterly incompetent, and you watch in horror as disruption turns to destruction, strategy turns to insanity, success turns to failure, an admired brand turns into a laughingstock.
The ultimate reality settles in when your CEO draws simplistic pictures to try to prove a point that things are working – but you know deep in your heart that they are not.
Kodak. Blockbuster. Polaroid. Blackberry. Sears. Names get added to the list of ultimate failures. You watch as your name increasingly finds a path onto the list, following a route on a map drawn with a sharpie.
It’s hard to admit that you’ve made a mistake – no one likes to admit that they were wrong. And so your only question at this point is how to undo what has been done!
A shoutout to @Brian.Struthers for the idea of a ‘disruptor without a plan’ while out on the golf course!
This global professional services organization had me on stage in Montreal, Canada, at their annual client tax conference. In the room were senior tax executives for major corporations from around the country. They’re responsible for managing complex tax situations for the multinational corporations for which they work; keeping up to date with a myriad of new global tax laws; ensuring that their organization is in full compliance with a complex world of ever changing regulations. Even so, the CEO’s and senior strategy executives for whom they work are busy with other challenges – often dealing with the realities of business model disruption, fast changing markets, the rapid emergence of new competitors and more. With that, my keynote took a look at the disruptive trends that will change their world in the future!
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