The fact that we don’t know what the future will look like is nothing new. No one has ever been able to predict the future. Yet, ‘the future’ feels different now than it did before. Before corona, it was normal to make plans for next year and set goals for five or even ten years from now.
Ben Hammersley , futurist at Wired, makes a sharp observation: the rate at which the world around us is changing is, for the first time in history, faster than the rate at which we as humans are changing. It’s hard to accept that, and even harder to deal with.
Don't get nostalgic, be open to the unknown
For companies that want to return to normal after corona, Ben has a clear message: there is no normal to go back to. We will have to reinvent ourselves, our organizations and our brands. We can no longer plan ahead, there is no roadmap and the dot on the horizon cannot be moved further than a few days. What does this mean for our daily life on a professional level? How are we going to prepare ourselves for a world we do not yet know?
We are forced to do the totally unexpected. Ben warns us that when we think about the future, we don't get nostalgic. Until recently, we were taking ideas from 60s science fiction books and making them real. I'm not going to translate the following sentence, because it hits the nail on the head:
If we take the old ideas of what the future would be, we would be building a nostalgic heritage dream.
Diversity will make the difference
A pretty abstract story, not so crazy from a futurist of course. What can you do concretely? How can you prepare your team for the future without knowing what it looks like? To achieve that, you want to italy telegram data surround yourself with as many different people as possible and come up with as many ideas as possible to maximize the weirdness.
Don't do what you've always done and ask yourself more often whether the project you're working on is still relevant (and for how long the outcome will remain relevant).
Where other speakers are pushing for structure, Ben argues that the way to be future-proof is to increase randomness. Maximize the chance that you discover new things. If you do the same thing every day and stick to the same routines while the rest of the world continues to develop, you will soon be behind. So much so that you can no longer catch up with the rest.
In short: when you are dealing with an unpredictable future, you want a team that is as diverse as possible. In that case, there is always someone who can explain new developments and has the knowledge. Look beyond your organization, beyond your sector and you will encounter so many new things and that will give you so many new ideas. 'Yes, the world is in lockdown, but we are not locked in.'
