How to Think Like a Futurist webinar

Official welcome to everybody. I'm Charlotte Kemp. I am a futurist, keynote speaker, workshop leader, and also a futures thinking coach. So I help people to find ways to think about the future in ways that are more helpful to them. I'm based here in Cape Town in South Africa, and I've done quite a bit of traveling this last year. last 12 months or so. Thank you, Pat. And to various parts of the world. And what I really enjoy doing is connecting with people from different parts of the world so that when we have a conversation about how we think about the future or what kind of future we want, that we can hear from different people and not just have a small kind of isolated perspective of what the future could be, because we are all creative, intelligent, curious individuals. If you're on this call, then you're definitely one of those, and it might just be curiosity, like, what is this futurist thing? But that means that we can create. We have got agency over the future. We can create. We can influence how our future turns out, which means we need to take action on that. But if we only create a future that satisfies Just you and your small circle of friends or family. It's not good enough. We can do better. We have the potential to create a future that honors and embraces so many other stakeholders rather than just trying to survive on our own. Welcome to Tony, who is on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland. That's really fantastic. Viva's asked, and I might have just answered that, but you know where I am calling from. So I'm in South Africa. I have lots of contacts though in India and quite a few clients that I'm working with there as well. Okay, so I kind of half introduced myself, but I will also explain this. I was having a conversation with someone the other day and explaining some element, and the guy kind of like took a breath and he goes, Wow, you're so passionate. So I hope that my overwhelming enthusiasm doesn't overwhelm you. I really just want to be able to share the fact that there are resources and tools available to you so that you can use them. I don't want anyone to feel like a victim to the future, so we need to find ways to change how we think. So let me share the presentation here. We'll start going through these slides, but this is a time for us to share. I'm not going to force everybody to come on camera and do anything you don't want to do, but if you have a question, pop it into the chat box. If you want it to be a private question, then you can do that as well, and I'll have a look at it later on. And otherwise, we'll— when we finish up, we'll just have a little bit of a conversation about some of these issues. The first thing we need to realize when we're trying to think like a futurist, when we're having a session like this, that it is a philosophical endeavor. We are actually thinking about how we think about the future. So we want to have that kind of philosophical approach because we need to think differently. We need to have a different perspective than we might have at the moment, especially if there is anxiety or tension about the future. So I love these— beg your pardon. I love these stereograms that you look at and you try and see what the picture is. You can take a screenshot of that if you like and come back to it. This particular one I enjoy because the message in it actually says in and out and out and in, and it's all kind of like a little— it's challenging our perspective. How do we think about things? And I cannot stress this enough, how important it is that we understand what our thinking is. What is our foundation, our mindset? This quote from Albert Einstein: the most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or a hostile universe. If you go into your day expecting to be attacked or maligned in some way, you're going to have those experiences. But if you go into the world expecting wonderful, creative, embracing things to happen, you're going to find more of those opportunities, and you are going to behave based on the way that you think, and how you behave will actually influence things. And none of this is any kind of esoteric approach. We're not even talking about quantum stuff here. We're just literally talking about the practical way that we engage with people. So I'm going to ask a question: why are you here? We're talking about how to think like a futurist. I'm a professional speaker who's losing their voice. This is really, really bad news. Um, we're going to talk about, you know, how we think about the future, how to think like a futurist. But you've taken time out of your day to spend on this call, um, watching this, listening to this, because you want something. Um, there is something that you are looking for, something that is absent, something that you're confused about, something that you have an ambition or a desire for. in the future, what is that? If you want to put into the chat box, I would love to know that. But if what you're looking for, if the reason you're here is a little bit more personal, you don't need to share that with everyone. But think about it. Why are you here? What are you curious about? What do you feel about the future? And allow those questions to percolate. This is philosophy. We're going to need to spend some time thinking about it, and we do not spend enough time in our very busy days where we kind of keep aiming at high levels of productivity. The more productive we are, the more statistics we satisfy, the less time we have given ourselves to contemplate important things. And these things need to be contemplated. Otherwise, we are just victims to the future. We are just falling in line to other people's ambitions. So you need to know. Mary is curious about what she's missing. How do we think about something that has not happened yet? Very good. Sharon, the world is changing rapidly, so I get into every webinar I believe will help me through these changes. Brilliant, Sharon, first class. And Stefan wants to understand what could be, especially from a business point of view in South Africa. For those of you who are not in South Africa, we are in election season, season, and elections happen next week, and you can't walk down the street without there being people's opinions about what should be happening and how bad previous leaders have been. So yeah, there's a lot of challenge there about what could be in the future in terms of our politics, business, personal lives, etc. Welcome. I love having you in our sessions. Thank you very much. You need a refresher and a reminder about why I practice foresight. So foresight or strategic foresight is kind of the sophisticated version of futures thinking. And Umar is a futurist there from Pakistan. Really very welcome. I love having other futurists in as well that they can bring their perspectives and experiences. Erica, thank you very much. I love that Association Execs. I was actually looking for a photograph earlier because there's one photograph that I have of that conference that is really so helpful in terms of describing the fact that there are things that we do in the world that is very different from how we prepared, those of us who are of an age when we were in school and university, we could not prepare ourselves for most of the jobs that we have today. All right, so we have a little bit of an agenda. I know this looks like quite a bit to cover in the next, um, just under 50 minutes. What is futures thinking? How can you think like a futurist? There are some models and tools to start thinking about like a futurist today, and then 3 really simple tips, really simple tips to start developing your futures thinking ability so that you can start today to think like a futurist. So we're going to start with what is futures thinking? And futures thinking is just everything that we need to anticipate what comes next. Anticipation is a lovely word as well. And if you subscribe to the Futures Alchemist website, I started a series there where I'm kind of defining some of these words, and one of them is anticipation. What do we anticipate from a conversation, a relationship, a webinar? What do we anticipate from our government, our elected officials? What do we anticipate for the future? And the more we are clear about what we anticipate, what we would desire, or what we don't have, the closer we can get to the kind of future that we're aiming for. You're all in this call right now. But there are a lot of people who would have, when I sent out the invitations, rejected them outright because when they anticipate the future, when they think about the future, the picture that they have is very dystopian. It's very negative. They are afraid of the future. I got one friend who does not want to know about science fiction because it's all bad news. It's all scary. The whole thing is scary. And she equates science fiction with the future. It's a very useful tool, but it doesn't define the future, it helps us to think about scenarios. But there's a lot of us who fear what could happen in a situation in the world in the future without realizing that all of this is happening right now. Somewhere in the world, someone is living your dystopian nightmare. That is the reality of today. And it's really difficult for us to, to kind of wrestle with that. How do you go on in your day and enjoy everything that is available to you and experiences that you have knowing that there are other people that are having really difficult times, who are in the middle of wars or displacement or human rights abuses. There are a lot of things going on. There's a lot of economic pressure around the world. And then if you come down to the practical level, there are people with problems and illnesses, and it is really difficult to kind of balance that appreciation and respect for those people while you're trying to go through today. And I don't want to depress anybody. I just need us to be realists sometimes that anything that you fear in the future, someone is already dealing with right now. So it's not a fear of the future. It's a fear of a situation or a consequence of actions. So let's find better ways. Let us find better ways to live out our lives and to hold other people responsible and accountable for decisions. Let's really challenge that. And that is the foundation of futures thinking. It's being intentional about the actions you take, what you accept and what you do not accept, what you reject, what you vote against, what you speak up against. All of those actions will build into the future that is better for everyone. So let's look at a few practical things. The first one is this, that there are 3 levels of futures thinking. This is just a very simple model to kind of When you're thinking about all the stuff that is out there, when you think about all the futures tools, when you're thinking about what could happen in your own business, your own field, your own city, your own country, how do you kind of like frame all of this information? And I like this very simple model. The first is at the, at the base, it is mindset. How do you think? That's what we're discussing today. Are you negative or positive, hopeful or anxious? Do you have a model about how you think and make decisions that you've used for decades that is no longer serving you? As a futurist, anything that no longer serves you, you want to get rid of, find something new, find a new way to think about it. And these are some of the ways that I'm suggesting you might explore today. But as we move into the future, anything that no longer serves us, the business tools, the business models that we used to create the big businesses that exist no longer work for those businesses to still remain in business in the next decade or so. So if you look at those like Fortune 500 companies, so many of them that were there for years and decades just, you know, changing position on that list, so many of them have disappeared entirely because they could not respond to how the world now is. They could not change their business mindset, and because of that, they are now irrelevant. So what got you here in career and your business will not get you there. Wherever there is for you, you need new tools to get there. So you've got to start with your mindset and be prepared to give up what doesn't work. Then you need a new toolset. You need to gather new tools, models, approaches, uh, things that you can use so that you can craft a new future. But as with any set of tools, you need to develop the skillset. So if you are new on this journey and you read about some of the things, and I'll share some slides with you later on, I'll share the the slide deck and the recordings with you later on. But when you look at that, you could try and use a tool and not make progress, feel like it's a bit messy, you know, what you're trying to do didn't work, and you're going to need to try again because no toolset can automatically be used to create something great. So think about, think about whatever your hobbies are. I'm married to a wonderful man who cooks all of our meals for us, but once, once a week I try something in the kitchen. And I always go online and I find this crazy recipe, and then I try it, and halfway through I'm going, this is a mess. This is not what it looked like in the picture. This is not what my husband would have created had he done the same meal. And he'll come in and he'll explain to me how I've done something wrong very nicely. But I don't have the skill set. I got the tools. I've got everything I need, but I don't have the experience. I haven't practiced. I have not developed that, that skill in creating something really great in the kitchen. That is what you might experience when you're trying to use new models and tools. So don't feel frustrated. Just know that you're on a learning journey and that it will develop. All right. So that's just like a very basic approach. 3 levels. You start with your mindset, your tools, you know, what tools are you using and what skill set can you develop? There's another lovely way of looking at what we're talking about here. I started off by saying that this is a philosophical endeavor. And it is important that we take time to do some philosophy, to think about what we want. A lot of people say, especially like when you hit birthdays with a zero, like, you know, 40, 50, 60, you go, I'm not where I wanted to be. I— this wasn't what I wanted out of life. And when you ask a person, well, what did you want? They don't quite know. They just know they don't like this, but they don't know what they actually wanted. You have to take the time to do that. Uh, we have got a mastermind where we, um, have some deep conversations. We have some philosophy every week on a Wednesday morning, and Ian is part of that group. Um, and one of the practices that we have is that there's an app online where you can send yourself a message, um, in the future. So you, you log into this account, you send yourself a message, and then on that day, that site will send you back your own message to you. And it's such a lovely way for us to remind ourselves about what we're trying to achieve. So we have this philosophical anticipation of our own future, and we can remind ourselves of what that is so we can kind of keep ourselves on track. So find a way to do some philosophy. It's a question of like, you know, why are we trying to do this? Why do we think that this is good or this is bad? But philosophy is no good if you don't have the psychology. When we're talking about the future, there is, you I love that message, Sharon. Thank you. With psychology, we're talking about how do we make this change, especially for those of us who are working with teams, working with other people. Anything into the future, we're implying that there is a change, and change is difficult. So, you know, how are we going to go about this change? How are we going to help ourselves to navigate changing careers when our industry sector suddenly becomes irrelevant? How are we going to help our team to deal with the challenges that are coming up? And then practicality. So this is all great, having philosophy and psychology, but if we don't have a practical plan, then it's just, you know, so much navel-gazing. So if you put this lovely little Venn diagram together, if you just do philosophy and psychology, you've got an impossible plan that, that's not going to work. If you just do philosophy and practicality, it's implausible because we don't know how to make it work. If it's just psychology and practicality but we don't have the philosophy about why we're doing this, then it's an irrelevant plan. We can succeed at a plan that does not give us any benefit. It is irrelevant. But if we get those 3 lenses together, we have an ideal situation. And that I just, I love this way of just thinking about the future. We want to balance all of those things together in order to make a future that is valid and helpful to us. I will send these slides to you later, but that's a good one just to kind of like, you know, sketch it out. You don't have to remember all the little I's, but it's the philosophy, psychology, and practicality. When you get them together in in the middle is the ideal approach to how you think about the future and discuss it. So we talked a little bit about there about the psychology. I've mentioned the tools. So let me give you another model, and I know I'm throwing quite a bit at you here, but I'm just wanting to give you a taste of what is available so that you know that there is a journey, an expedition that you can go on into the future and find ways to navigate that. So a compass is really nice. If you go on a trip somewhere, I, I'd never leave the house without putting on my GPS because I've got a terrible sense of direction and I can't work out how different parts of the, the city kind of connect to each other. So I always need that GPS to get me in the right place because that is kind of like the restriction that I have. But my GPS knows how to take me to a place that is defined. So I can go from here to there. It can tell me down to like a difference of like, you know, 2 or 3 minutes how long it's going to take me to get there. And for that, it's really useful. A compass tells you which direction you're going in, like north, south, west. When the GPS says go northwest, I don't know where northwest is until it tells me to turn left or right. I don't know where that direction is. When we go into the future, we're not going on a journey. I know I just said it earlier, but it's not a journey. A journey is a place where you know what the destination is. What we are going on is an expedition. So think about those old-fashioned maps where there was this unknown land, this terra incognita, and we don't know what is there. The people who have traveled around and done expeditions, they've mapped out certain parts, but there's this big chunk of the map that they don't know what is there. So the cartographers would either drop you know, a mountain range in there, or they would drop a dragon in there and they say, here be dragons. There is danger here. There's danger because we don't know what is here. It's unknown. That's what we have in the future. We are going on an expedition into the future without knowing what is happening. We cannot tell, we cannot predict exactly what is going to happen, but because of the compass, we've got an idea which direction we want to end up in. And we'll explore that a little bit more in a few moments. But the compass really helps us just to kind of keep on track about which direction we're going in. But know that there are no actual clear predictions. The future is still out there and undefined. And that's why very often you'll see the reference with the plural S. We talk about futures thinking, and every online spell check wants me to correct that. but we're thinking about the multitude of potential futures. It's not a single future because we don't know. The GPS takes us to a single place. The compass will give us a broad direction about where we want to go to. So I like this compass model because it encompasses every single futures tool that is out there. So it doesn't matter which futurist you listen to. It doesn't matter what they're talking about. It's all good. There's a lot of really good stuff out there. But whatever it is, whatever tool they are using, whatever model they are using will fall into one of these 4 stages. And that's why I love this, because you can take a screenshot of this particular campus and you can start thinking about the future as soon as this webinar finishes. You can start plotting out whether it's your own career, where it's your education or your children's education, if it's your health, if it is your business, if it is the country Um, this, you know, this kind of structure is what you'll be looking at. So let's go through them first. The very— oh, I jumped there quite quickly, jumped right into the future. All right, so the first one is to gather intelligence. So this is the, the, the— what is that— northeast side. Gather intelligence. What are we dealing with? What is the information you need to know? You're being on this call, you are gathering intelligence, but there are other things like, you know, trends and, uh, you know, all the other kind of tools that you can use to work out what is out there that you need to deal with. So you're going to gather intelligence again about your industry sector or about the city that you're in, the country that you're in. What is the information that you need? What models do you need? What approaches are going on? You're gathering intelligence around there. The second part is to explore change, and this is the kind of psychology part. There's a lot of A lot of really good tools here, but there's also lots of really great tools in other fields of study where we look at how change works. We know that when a change comes from us, we're excited about it. When a change is imposed on us, we don't like it. So if you are not well and you go to the doctor, maybe you just go for a checkup and the doctor says, Your your blood pressure is too high, your cholesterol is too high, and you're carrying too much weight. You must go on a diet, and you must start exercising, and you must do all these things. And somebody else is telling you to do that. It's a lot of pressure to take that on. It's it's uncomfortable. You feel like you know you you don't have the the space to make your own choices. But when you decide that perhaps your blood pressure is too high, you're carrying too much weight, your cholesterol is too high, you're going to start living a healthier life. You're going to start addressing it. When that change comes from within you, it's so much easier to actually work with. So that is something you want to look at if you're working with teams, is that when you walk into your team meeting and you say, okay, I've worked out what needs to happen and these are the things we're going to do and this is what management wants us to do and you have to make these reports and you have to, you know, hit those kind of targets, you're imposing a lot onto people who will feel automatically rebellious. But if you sit down with a team and say, these are the goals and missions and values of the company, how are we going to support that? And that team starts to say, this is, this is what I'd like to achieve in support of that goal. This is what I'd like to see happen in support of that value. And those things come from them. Then there's hardly any effort in facilitating how they make that happen, as opposed to having to micromanage and force them to do things. So that exploring change is really important. We have to recognize in ourselves that we're going to rebel against a change that is imposed on us. And if we're going to rebel, then other people will too. So how can we, how can we co-create these futures that we're looking for? How can we find ways to initiate that change from within? And again, a whole lot of tools that are really good there. The third part of this model is to describe the future. And as a futurist, this is the part I really enjoy because now we're looking at what potential futures could look like. And again, a whole lot of tools there that we can explain, and we'll look at one of them shortly as well about scenarios. I mentioned science fiction earlier on. Science fiction is also kind of like in a genre called speculative fiction. So we're telling stories about how we think the future could look like or how a situation could play out. So Have some fun if that is the kind of thing you enjoy, looking at, reading, or watching science fiction or fantasy where you're seeing how our universe could be very different from the universe that we're in. And the more we open our minds to think about that, the more able we are to identify different scenarios of our own realistic future and say, we don't want to go in that direction, we do want to go in this direction. If you want to look at all the directions you don't want to go into, Black Mirror series on TV is really a good and scary option to look at. And then the 4th step is to test your strategy. And there again, a whole lot of tools like, you know, how if we define what we want in the future, what we want to avoid, what we want to lean into, if we've got all the data and everything, what is the strategy that we're going to use to get there? So those are the 4 steps: gather intelligence, explore change, describe the future, test your strategy. That is a futures model, a futures plan that you can do straight away this afternoon. All right, I'm going to introduce another topic to you again, and, um, uh, called the Futures Code. I just want to see if there's anything in the, uh, chat that I need to— again, any questions or comments, pop them into the chat and we'll explore them a little bit more. Hardships have always been there, always will be in the future. Live by keeping your own immediate circle positive. Yeah, and even that is difficult to do. In my own immediate circle, we got some very serious challenges right now, but it's about— it's not about— and again, I could refer half of this to Ian today. Ian talks a lot about how we don't want to have toxic positivity, so we can't just pretend that we can just grin and bear it and, you know, smile and it'll all work out right. it doesn't sometimes work out right. Sometimes there are things that are really bad, but we do not want to wallow in that. We do not want to cover ourselves with ashes and mourn all the stuff that will never work and just stay in that state. We do have to every now and then step back and appreciate the tough things that we're going through, that other people are going through, and then find a way to still Find joy, you know, in every day. Find a way to move forward in that. Good. All right. So, futures cone. I love this one. It's— there's a couple of different ways of looking at it. The first one is this. If you look like— think of an ice cream cone, any kind of cone. You got the small part that is close to you. This is our present moment, the moment that we're sharing here. And when we look out 5, 10, 15, 20 years into the future, there are more and more variables and more different ways that this world could play out. And so it's really difficult to kind of pinpoint exactly where we'll be. And the closer we are to this moment, the more insight, the more predictable the future will be. But the further out we get, the less predictable. So for example, I know that we're going to be on this call until about 10 o'clock, the top of the hour. I know that I have another webinar at 12 o'clock, and I know what is on my plan for the day, so I can relatively securely anticipate what will happen in today, in this present moment. I've got some things penciled in for tomorrow. I've got some things kind of like I'm dreaming about next year, but the further I get away from today, the less clarity and definitiveness I have about this. So if we're going to change anything, we need to change it in the moment. This is the only moment we have to do anything in. Whatever we've done in the past is gone. Whatever we're doing into the future is not yet here. So this is the only moment we can act. And that's why we need to look at those tough things, but then decide how are we going to act? Are we going to feel like we have something that we can act on, that we can be positive, or are we just going to throw up our hands and say, just whatever happens can happen to me? So this model is also shown in this particular way, and this looks like a crazy complicated picture. So don't get too distressed about it. We'll go through each kind of layer. But what we're showing here again, now in this present moment versus what could happen out in the future, and the further out, the more potentially preposterous this looks like. So this is what it looks like. We got all these nested circles. Don't worry, this will come clear. The very biggest circle is preposterous. This is science fiction. This is The 3-body problem, aliens are coming, you know, to the planet and they can do things, you know, all these crazy things that we can think about, and it's preposterous. We don't really think that these things are going to happen. Within that circle is something that is more possible. It's more possible that these sorts of things could happen. It's more possible that we could get people onto Mars. That's far more possible than all those, you know, preposterous ideas on the outside. Within the possible circle, there are things that are far more plausible. It's far more plausible that we'll get people back onto the moon before we get people onto Mars. That's more realistic. But these are the things that could plausibly happen to us as a species or to our country or to our business. So you want to look at all of those different circles. Within that, there is a probable circle and a projected circle. And probable is like, given the sales figures that we have at the moment, given the cash flow that we have at the moment, given the marketing efforts or whatever is happening in the business, it's more probable that we're going to have these kinds of figures. We're not going to, you know, 10 times, 100 times our sales figures in the next quarter. That's like, that's preposterous. But it is a bit more probable that we could 2 times it, given everything that is going on right now. But actually looking historically and looking at different things, there's this projected circle, this tiny little projected circle, and that is where if you look at all the data in you know, a reasonable length of time. This is where we project. So we're normally going to project like a quarter out or a year out rather than 10 years out because we don't have data for that kind of thing. We have no idea of all the changes that could happen. So we have those kind of nested circles, and the closer this— the smaller the circle, the more sure we are of what is happening, but it's also in a shorter time frame. But then we have another circle, and it's this kind of like this this green ellipse here, and this is the preferable future. So this is when you and your team or you and your family sit down and go, what would we really want? What would really be awesome if we could achieve this? And that preferable future, you can see it kind of overlaps some of those other circles because some of it is possible, but some of it, you know, maybe a little bit more out there, a little bit more improbable. And in that case, if it is, What can we do? So you can look at this and say, we would really like to, you know, buy a big family home so that, you know, all the kids and grandkids can come and visit. We'd really like that. And but projected right now, we can't afford a big home. We'd have to have a small home. But if we prefer to have a big home, well, then we've got to explore some other things. We've got to change something now in this, this present moment to go in a different direction so we can aim more towards that preferable future than to our original projected future. So what change do we need to make now? And those changes are easier to do. It's, you know, be healthier, save more, pay down debt, find more clients, you know, create another marketing strategy, get a coach, you know, create a new plan. Do something today that will change the direction of where you're going. What we do today kind of adds up over time into the direction that we are going in. But if we just carry on today as we did yesterday, wishing for something else but not making any changes, we are going to go far off the mark. We will never get to that preferable future. So I really love those circles. The circles are fun, but it is that little part of the ice cream cone, that little part that if you do not eat the ice cream fast enough, then it starts to get soggy and drip on you. That little part that is so important, that is the part that you want to spend time on. And that is today. That is what you do today. It's the choices you make today that will start to change that direction for you. Alright, so that was the Futures Code. Let's move on to something else. Lots of ideas for you to explore today, and this one is about scenarios. And I love scenarios because it's such a helpful way to look at the future, especially when you've never tried this before. So There's, there's various ways of doing this. If you've ever had to create a business plan, like if you had a small business, or if you need to go to the bank and get a business loan, or if you've got a coach who's helping you look at your business, you'll create a business plan, and the business plan will have the normal headings. Beg your pardon. So you're looking at like your, your sales and your marketing, your positioning in the, in your market, and your ideal client avatar and all the things that you need, and you create that business plan. And that is a scenario. You've sat down and considered how you would like your business to unfold, and you'd like it to look like this, and it's practical and probable that it would look like this if you do all the right things, if nothing goes wrong. That is a scenario about your business. To be a futurist, And if you're on this call today, you are all natural futurists. To be a futurist, you need to create at least 2 more scenarios. You need to create other pictures because when you create those other pictures, you help your brain to think about alternatives. You can anticipate different things, and the more you do that, you allow your brain to identify indicators, flags that you're going in one direction or another, or opportunities or threats that say that you're going in one direction or another. So there's lots of different ways of creating scenarios that some, you know, you can spend a lot of time really doing some good deep research in an organization. It can take a couple of months before you come up with relevant scenarios that the business can then act on. But as a quick exercise for yourselves, there's 3 ways. So your middle way is what you expect. It's your regular business plan. It's your regular personal career or professional development plan. Then you've got 2 other plans. Let's say the one is a utopian version. This is like, oh, brilliant. Like, you get the best clients and they love you and they just, they want more and more of your time or more and more of your product or your services. And, and they're willing to put down a retainer or a huge deposit because there's so much business coming in the future. And this is like so exciting to you. The problem is when our brains get excited about a potential future, um, a story that we're telling ourselves, our brains don't know whether this is a story or whether this is reality. And again, this is not even esoteric. This is just literally brain chemical. Your brain doesn't know that this is just some— something that you're imagining. So your brain could get really excited and produce all the really good hormones, you know, the, the endorphins and the adrenaline and everything. It's all very exciting going on in your brain here, and while you are in that state, you are actually drugged. Your brain is producing all these chemicals. It's like being in love for the first time. Do not make any important decisions when you fall in love because your brain is producing chemicals, and you you may not be making relevant practical decisions for the long term. So just give it a bit of time. So your brain produces all these chemicals. The chemicals rush through your body. Your pupils are dilating. You feel really excited. Oh, everything. Is going to be so great, you're thinking, how am I going to spend all the money that I'm going to make? How am I going to just like revel in all this attention I'm going to get? It's a really, really bad place to make decisions. So while you're creating this scenario, allow yourself to think about that. What is this brilliant, awesome picture? Allow your body to feel what the brain is producing. Then take a deep breath and get really practical. If this were to happen, What would I need in order to prepare for this? Who do I need on my team? What cash flow do I need to make sure that I can actually facilitate this happening? What obligations do I have that if this happened, I wouldn't actually be able to take this, this great opportunity? Thank you. Pardon. I wouldn't be able to take this great opportunity because I've got all these other responsibilities or burdens. What kind of expertise would I need? You know, what kind of like talent would I need in my organization to make this happen? So you want to sit down, make practical plans about people and, and money and opportunities and your actual calendar. If, if you've packed your calendar full of smaller projects to keep yourself busy or to keep little bits of money coming in, and this great opportunity comes, you're either gonna have to let down a whole lot of people. or something's gonna shift. So you need to be ready to patch it. So you create this business plan for, wow, this is awesome. That is your one business plan. Carl's brain is drugged half the time. Okay, but you're reading fantasy and writing fantasy, so I can understand that. On the other side, you wanna create, and these pictures don't relate to, you know, the future being, you know, negative or positive. It's just different paths. You know, are you going by ocean? Are you going by air? Are you going by road? These are different scenarios that you can create. But the other one is a, is, um, it's the dystopian version. It's the negative version. It's what if something happens in the next couple of months that directly affects my business or my career? What if something, what if that thing that happens is, is bad than COVID, worse than COVID and, and artificial intelligence all combined? What if something comes along that just really knocks The feet out of whatever it is I'm trying to do. That is a terrible scenario to think about, and most of us do not want to think about that. When you bring it up for some people, they say, "Oh, you don't want to dwell on the negatives." Like no, we don't want to dwell on the negatives, but we do need to spend a little time anticipating them. The ancient Stoics, Greek Stoics, they had a practice called premeditatio malorum. It's a premeditation of evils, and it's a philosophical practice for an individual to sit down and contemplate the end of their own life. And what would that look like? What would that feel like? And you're meditating, a premeditation. You're meditating on something that would happen in the future that would be really bad, the end of your life. And it's a horrible thing to think about. It's a horrible thing to think about. everybody left behind and, you know, responsibilities and things. So that, that kind of dystopian version, when you start thinking about it, when you start anticipating that, whether it's, you know, your own life or in a business situation, your brain produces chemicals. Now it's cortisol, it's adrenaline, it's stress, it's all the anxiety chemicals. Your mouth goes dry, your hands go sweaty, you hear that like sound in your ears or your eyes go kind of like in tunnel vision. It's really horrible. But once you've allowed your brain to think about it and your body to experience it, then you just remind yourself, okay, I'm in a safe place. I'm just thinking about this. You take a deep breath and you make some practical business plans. Am I carrying too much debt so that if something happened, I would be wiped out? Um, have I committed to too many capital projects? Um, have I got too much, too many staff on board? During COVID all those tech companies hired so many people because we were all going to be online and we all needed, they needed this backup so we could all do stuff online. And then when it ended, they just got rid of everybody. Um, they don't care. But assuming that you care about the people you work with, you don't want to be bringing people on and, and giving them the hope of a you know, a future that they can rely on, only for you to then say 3 months later, I'm sorry, you know, I have to retrench you all because we can't afford you because bad things have happened. So are there more practical ways to do it? There's a lot of, it's a lot of different ways of, you know, being flexible with staff, being flexible with land or buildings or things like that, so that you don't overcommit if there's a potential that something could come along realistically and wipe out your business. Now, this part, this warning is really sincere here. Do not do this exercise when you are in a bad place or when you are not in a safe place, and I'm not joking. You don't do this scenario exercise on a Monday morning. You don't do it before you're going to be seeing clients. Find a good, safe space and time to sit down and think that through so that you can Allow yourself to feel those emotions. Take that deep breath. Create that practical plan. Allow that to pass through your body so that you can then go back and refocus on what you really want. But now what you have are 3 scenarios: brilliant, awful, middle of the road. And because you've now primed your brain to think about it, to see those things, you will start to see flags or indicators. You'll see a headline somewhere that goes, if that headline becomes truer and more people do that and more businesses do that, it could affect my, it could affect my supply chain, it could affect my clients, it could affect something that I'm doing. So I better find a way to mitigate that danger because the brain is now looking for it. Or you see other things go, oh, if that part of the world is now wanting to do this kind of work, That's, that's a really good market for me. I should start investing in that direction. So those scenarios are incredibly powerful to do that. And I would encourage you to play around with them. You can sketch it out again. This could be like a 1-hour exercise, or it could be something that you dwell on personally for a couple of weeks. But if you do it with your team, if you do it in your business, you're going to create something that's really powerful. All right. So I've given you a whole lot of different ideas and tools there that you can think of. But we're going to come back to the question why. Why do we want to think about— think like a futurist? We want to think like a futurist because we don't want to miss the opportunities that are out there. We don't want to be so busy day after day just grinding through the day, just hustling to get money, to get to the weekend, to get to the month end, just to survive. We want to do more than that. We want to create. We want to create something of value for our clients, for the world, for our family. We want to be able to appreciate the life that we have. We want to leave a legacy for people. We want to do more than just simply survive as a cog in the machine. That is why we're futurists. That's why we're thinking about the future. We all— nobody just automatically looks at the future and just anticipates it all being terrible. We all have this illusion that it'll be better next year. But thinking like a futurist isn't just going, it'll be better next year. It's saying, in order for it to be better next year, I better learn these things, do these things, make these changes, and I better make sure that those potential things, that there's some kind of insurance or some kind of way to, to deal with those risks. And that's how I know next year will be a better year than this year, because you're starting to create it. So that why question for you is, is really important. So I've given you some really good tools here, lots of things. So we're gonna close in just a moment and then chat. So if you have questions, I'd love to be able to discuss that. I will send you these slides. I will send you this recording. But I want to start— we looked at really good tools, but I want to give you 3 tips, 3 very simple things that you can do today to start thinking like a futurist. And they're so easy. Be curious about what is out there. Be curious about what other people do. Be curious about what people are talking about in a different part of the world. Scan far and wide. Subscribe to newsletters from different parts of the world, from different industries in your supply chain. If you're a small business, subscribe to some big business that is in your field. If you're an NGO, then subscribe to something commercial that's kind of in your field. You do not need to read all this stuff. You do not need to get degrees and studies and things in this, in this kind of exercise. All you're doing is scanning. But by subscribing to those things, and if you've got a really good mail program, you create rules so that they all go into a folder so that you don't have to think about them day by day. But on a Friday afternoon, perhaps you open up that folder, you see like, oh, 300, 400 emails from all over the world, from different parts of different kind of companies and organizations. And just scan through the headlines. And if something looks a bit curious, open up that email, just see what they're talking about. All you're doing is, is creating awareness in your brain, allowing your brain to kind of go, oh, I saw this 2 or 3 weeks ago. There was, there was this kind of comment and now I've seen it again. Maybe we need to take 10, 15 minutes and go and search for that. Go into a search engine, go onto a different search engine from your default so that you can find different kinds of results. Go and look for things that are interesting to you. So you're curious, you're scanning, you dig in a little bit. You do not need to read all the stuff. Your lives are busy enough, okay? But just keep yourself aware of things so that you, you're prepared. And then seek alternatives. Every time you come to a decision in your life or in business, you come to a decision, you go, ah, this is the decision we're making. Go, hang on, how did I make that decision? What, what is the frame of reference that I use? What is the model for decision-making that I use? Could I use a different way? Could it look differently from this? I've made the same decision, you know, 7 times in a row. Maybe I should get a couple of people together from a different team and we sit down and we look at the same thing and see if they don't have a different approach or different decision that they would come up with, because then there could be a new opportunity there. So challenge yourself to keep looking for whatever is different, seeking those alternatives and exploring deeper. You do those 3 things, you're automatically basically priming your brain to think like a futurist, which is what you need to do. All right, so what is next? Like I said, I'll send you an email. I've got something that I've just launched very recently. It's not even a month old yet, and I'm still kind of learning how it works, but there's— we call it the Futures Alchemy Collaborative. It's on Patreon, and you can join for free, or you can join for one of the paid levels. But the Futures Alchemy Collaborative is a way to kind of access some ongoing futures tools and insights so that you can explore them and play with them and learn different Um, and, and yeah, so over time, it, like we said earlier on, you've got a new tool set. That doesn't automatically mean you're, you're skillful. Uh, if you've got a mindset that you want to change, you can't just change. It's not a decision and then you switch to something new. You have to keep kind of moving your brain to think in a different way. So this Futures Alchemy Collaborative will keep sharing, um, content and ideas and thoughts and musings and webinars and masterminds and things so that you have a place to develop your futures thinking skill. Then we also have some practical workshops. So there is a series of 4 workshops coming up in the Think Like a Futurist series, and we'll go through a whole lot of very specific skills and really kind of dig into them so that we can learn. That's online. Anybody can join that. It's a public course. And if you miss 1 or 2 and you come back later on, it's fine. They all work together, but any one of those courses, workshops can be done by themselves. So have a look at that and feel free to share that with your team if you want to. It can also obviously be done in-house. I'm just sharing in the chat box 2 links here that you can look at. The calendar of events is, you can see these workshops and the dates and times, etc. But just mark that or subscribe to the newsletter so that any of the other public webinars like this one you'll get notified of. And then there's a link there to the Futures Alchemy Collaborative as well on Patreon, and you can join us there and just share some of those ideas and thoughts. Okay, so I know I've just like given you this brain dump of so much information and content and ideas. Are there any questions? Hi, Ashleigh, lovely to see you here. Any questions or comments that you'd like to discuss? And of course, you would have received some messages from me, so you're very welcome to drop me an email as well if you'd like to chat, or maybe to have a longer chat on Zoom.