In this solo monologue, certified high‑performance coach Sean Butner explains how to anticipate future trends – what he calls “seeing around corners.” He argues that true foresight comes from disciplined critical thinking, not just rapid execution. He outlines a four‑step process: (1) gather exhaustive data on past and current attempts, (2) collect a wide range of stakeholder perspectives, (3) formulate educated guesses about what will succeed next, and (4) test those guesses through rapid prototyping and action. He illustrates the framework with the iPhone’s evolution from fragmented MP3 players and phones to a unified, app‑centric device, showing how simplifying and consolidating created a market‑changing product. Throughout, he warns that neglecting this thinking leads to privacy breaches, rogue AI, and other unintended consequences. The talk ends with a call to share the video, engage in discussion, and consider his coaching services for personal and professional development.
Chapters
Great. Starting your day with the coach. I am your certified high performance coach, Sean Butner, hosting the show this morning, as always, because I'm the only one that hosts the show. But if you, if you follow me, you know that if not now, you know, and anyways, today we're talking about how to see around corners. Because if you've ever had a product you've really loved, you know, and I think the first time I remember hearing this phrase, it was on Steve Jobs and the iPhone, you know, but the ability to kind of see where markets are going, the ability to kind of see trends out in the world and to get ahead of it, to be able to take the opportunity that it affords, which is a very corporate way of saying being there to, you know, reap the benefits of thinking things through critically. So, you know, if you've ever had that person on your team or in your life that seems to have this sixth sense, or you've had it yourself and you have, you want that feeling of flow and satisfaction from really getting into and discovering everything about a topic and, you know, kind of being the expert on it, then this is the video for you. So first off, do the social media thing. Share like this video. If you think some folks will like it, I'll tell you, do that again at the end of the video because that's what we do on social media, it seems. But really getting back to the topic of how to see around corners, I think it's really just spending more time to think. Right. I think especially in tech, where I came from, there was this world of design thinking where you, you learn by doing, and that's an important component of getting data. But when you're so caught up in doing that, you're not thinking of the implications of your work. That's when we get privacy issues, that's when we get rogue AI that ends up eating the world. That's when we have all these unintended consequences that we're defenseless again because we weren't anticipating them going forward. Information security is a really great thing. Like, we never thought people would try to put like SQL on forms online to get to databases. And that's, you know, one of the common ways that people get attacked, our businesses get attacked or used to, you know, there's now safeguards if you're doing the right thing. I digress. But it's all because an engineer is like, you're only going to type your comments and your name in this field. You're not going to try to get. Do you Know this query language to get data back, right? Not anticipated, not thought out. Huge problem when it happens to you or your organization. So that's kind of why it's important to really think things through. And you might think like, especially in today's world where everything is so reactionary, so gut, you know, you say something online and people are going to, you know, use the flaming arrows of the Internet to try to bring you down or hurt you or make you sad or anger you, you know, that whole thing. But we need to get out of this reactionary mode and we need to use some of our superpowers, right? And the ability to take a topic, think it through and you know, come up with something new from that is more important than ever. So how do you do that? Right? You know, thinking through the times when I've been a little bit ahead on some of my peers in software tech, it is getting all the data, right? So what have people tried before? Everything people have tried before, what are people trying now? What are kind of the best practices and whatever thing you're trying to, to develop or think through. And so getting all the data points, right? And some of that is using this design thinking stuff to, you know, hey, I want this thing to load this way on this like software, Type it up, type it up, type it up, you know, run the code. Does it work? Does it not work? You get feedback in real time on that, right? But you need to know what everyone else has tried. You want to know where people spend a lot of effort and it's dead ended. This is all just the prep work in really thinking something through. The second thing to do is to get all the perspectives, right? So all the people that love the idea that you're going after, all the people that hate the idea that you're going after, all the people that don't get it, all the people that are super enthusiastic about it. If you can capture and at least understand all of those different perspectives and be on the lookout for things that you might have missed, you're going to have a better result overall, right? And all this takes time. And that's why a lot of people I don't think do this. But if you do this, you do this consistently, it could be a huge advantage and superpower for you. Okay? So first get all the data. Second, get all the perspectives. Third thing is to make guesses on what's next, right? So in the example of like the iPhone, we had these ipod, you know, MP3 players that were, you know, really bad, bad user interface. If it was simplified. It would be way easier. You have phones that are kind of bloated and if you ever tried to run software on an old phone and I know you have Dave, it's like a whale game, shout out, you know, it could be clumsy to develop it, to load it up, to get it distributed. And so there's all these things that, that seem unrelated at the time that if you simplified and meshed into one thing, you get an awesome product. Right? And so that was the guess that Apple made at that time, was that if we had an easy, you know, app store where people could develop and post things pretty easily, if we could, you know, consolidate all these devices on the one device, people would go nuts for it. And they did. Right. And so that leads to the fourth point, which is to test the guesses, right? If you now have all the data, all the perspectives, all of the things that people are trying and you're like, okay, I think this is going to be the game changing thing in this idea, in this field, in this product, in this market, then it's just, you know, try it out. Okay? That's the final step, is to follow through. Because if you do all the thinking and you don't end in action, what ends up happening is nothing. And people don't get to hear your good ideas. People, you're always left wondering what could have been. So that's why if you've ever wondered how people can sort of predict the future, it's all about critical thinking, getting the data and the perspectives. So guys, I hope you like this video. Let me know what you guys are thinking through right now. Below this video, maybe we can get everyone kind of helping you gather the data or different perspectives on it. I'd love to help facilitate that for you. If you are in your life and you're like, man, I really would like someone to talk things through a bit more, to have some different perspectives in my relationships, in my health and my career or personal life. Then make sure you go below and check out the link to SeanButner.com coaching to qualify for a free one hour strategy session with the certified certified high performance coaching that I do, which is just helping people live it to their full potential. Helping people really just live their best lives and there's a process to it. I can talk you through that. I can help you get some different perspectives so that you are looking around corners, you are that person on your team that everyone's like, wow, that guy is really smart. So I can help you with that. So check that out below this video or in the link in my bio. And I'll see you guys tomorrow at the same time. Take care.
