By Sherif Attar
In a world of ever-changing ambiguity and uncertainty, executives have to face two challenges: excellent performance and people development. Where many managers think those endeavours are “competing”, this author believes they are “completing”. GET DOWN TO BUSINESS argues.
1. Take a ten-year trip to the future.
Thinking on a ten-year timeline will lift the ceiling on your imagination and give you that magical feeling of “time spaciousness” to achieve transformative change. It will help you open your mind, take in new information, reduce your blind spots, increase your empathyand see a much bigger picture. Whenever your mind feels stuck or rushed, give yourself a ten-year deadline, make a ten-year resolution, create an event on your calendar for ten years from today. It will change how you think and feel today.
2. Be ridiculous – at first.
It’s the possibilities that make us say, “That’s ridiculous, that could never happen,” or “I can’t even imagine it” – those are the possibilities we have to spend time taking seriously. Those are the futures that will be most shocking, disruptive, and challenging if they come to pass.
We need to prepare our collective imagination for “unimaginable” possibilities – so if they do happen, we’re not frozen with anxiety. Any future scenario that you instinctively dismiss reveals a potential blind spot in your imagination.
3. Look for clues.
A sculptor works with clay, a computer programmer with code, a chef with ingredients – every form of creativity has its own raw material. For futurists, the raw material is clues.
We collect, combine, and build future scenarios out of clues to how the future might be different. To find future clues, you need to develop a
way of observing the world in which you spot weird stuff that others overlook. You must constantly home in on things you haven’t previously encountered, things that make you say, “Huh…strange,” and “I wonder why that’s happening.”
You can see signals all around you. Finding signals can be as simple as a quick search on news or social media. This week, I searched for “future of learning,” “future of mental health,” and “future of pets.” You can also throw in terms like “innovation,” “experiment,” “surprising,” “trend,” “leading-edge,” “weird,” “strange,” “creative idea,” “new phenomenon,” “scientific study.”
Make it a habit to find at least one new signal of change every week, or even every day. Let these signals spark curiosity.
4. Turn the world upside-down.
If your imagination feels stuck in the present, then rewrite the facts of today. Make a list of a hundred things that are true today, then flip them upside-down. Rewrite every fact so that the opposite is true. For example, you could say that libraries are mostly quiet spaces. Flip that fact upside-down: ten years from today, libraries are loud, raucous, wild spaces.
Whatever you come up with, spend time mentally immersed in “upside-down worlds.” Make sense of why these changes could happen. How does this new reality work? Look for clues – in the news, on social media, and in your own life – that make these flipped facts seem more plausible. Type your flipped facts into search engines and discover signals of change that you would otherwise have missed. This is a fun, mind-stretching game, but it’s also profound.
5. Build urgent optimism.
Urgent optimism is a highly motivating, resilient mindset made up of three key psychological strengths:
Mental flexibility is to recognise that anything can become different in the future.
Realistic hope is knowing which threats make sense to worry about and which new solutions, technologies, and ideas make sense to be excited about.
Future power is a feeling of control to directly impact the future, by taking action today.
The good news is that urgent optimism is not a fixed personality trait. It changes throughout our lives and, crucially, it’s changeable – we can purposefully build more of it through future imagination training.
For questions or suggestions, please send your comments.
Sherif Attar, an independent management consultant/trainer and organisation development authority, delivers seminars in the US, Europe, Middle East and the Far East.
Discussion about this post