This is the final video in our four part mini-series on the disruptive forces shaping our world right now. We call them the “Great Grey Elephants” because they’re here – in the room – waiting to be noticed. Instead of reacting with fear and concern, we need to respond with opportunity mindsets and excitement for change.
Let our team help you do this. Check out my Futures Club for resources to guide you to a new way of engaging with the future and with change.
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to Throw Forward Thursday, my name is Graeme Codrington, and we are finishing out a little mini-series, that we’ve called The Great Grey Elephant. It’s some research that our team at TomorrowToday has been doing around the forces, those massive, disruptive forces that are going to fundamentally change the way that the world works at the moment, that are definitely already here.
So this is not about future predictions. It’s about looking at the forces that are changing the systems of the world and changing the rules for success and failure in different industries, but these are often ignored. We know that they’re there. When we talk about them, we understand what we’re talking about, but not many of our clients actually integrate the disruption, integrate the understanding of the deep structural shifts into their strategies, into their planning, into their thinking.
I wonder how you’ve responded to the last three weeks, where I’ve been talking about these seven disruptor forces. You might actually add a few extra to the list that are industry or regional-specific. But if I talk about aging and the fact that we are going to live a lot longer than we thought, if I talk about an angry planet, which is not just climate change and extreme weather, but everything from pollution to all sorts of ways in which the planet itself, the natural habitat that we find ourselves in, is under stress at the moment.
If I talk about inequality, wealth inequality, being the biggest version of that, but just the gap between the have-nots and the have-yots as I talked about, well, that leads to the big squeeze, the big squeeze, mainly of the middle class, but the big squeeze on the world’s energy supplies, the world’s water supplies, the world’s food systems, the squeeze that we’re all feeling. Well, unless you want to have yachts, but that we’re all feeling in our lives and in our lifestyles. That leads to angry people and the response that people have to that.
Then we can talk about multipolarity, the realignment of the world’s wealth, economic and political systems, and then finally, intelligent assistance. AI, yes, that’s coming not really here yet, but the integration and augmentation as humans and machines learn to be bionic and work together, a huge conversation. I think mainly people are having the wrong conversation about technology, It’s a bionic IA conversation rather than anything else.
Those are the trends that we’ve talked about, and I wonder how you feel about them. If you’re human, your brain is designed, your brain is evolved and programmed to see the threat, to see what could go wrong, to be scared. That’s an instinct reaction you can’t stop. So don’t worry that that might be your response. But put that to the side because what we need is we need to take the opportunity mindset. We need to be looking for the opportunities that each of these great, gray elephants give us.
So that’s really, in my mind, what thinking like a futurist is really about. As futurists, we don’t try and predict the future, although we try and do a good job of anticipating it, but we think about tomorrow’s world and how people prepare for it today. And in our minds and our research shows this clearly, those who bring an opportunity mindset to the party, those who sense the urgent optimism that is really the ingredient that will take us forward in a positive and valuable way, those are the people that are going to make the most success of this moment. That’s what we would like to help you to do.
I hope that you’ve enjoyed this miniseries, I hope you grasp our understanding of this Kairos moment of era-shifting change that we live in that gives us wonderful opportunities. And I hope that you recognise what it means to think like a futurist in this moment.
This is what our team at TomorrowToday do all the time. Hopefully, you enjoy our resources and enjoy these ThrowForward Thursdays. We put a lot of research out for free. You can look for tomorrowtodayglobal.com, the TomorrowToday Futures Institute. You can follow me on LinkedIn, YouTube, and all the other social channels. Plenty of free resources.
But if you don’t mind me asking you to, please also check out The Futures Club at jointhefuturesclub.com There’s a price level that hopefully will suit every wallet, and there’s a money-back guarantee as well. If you sign up, have a look around at what we’re trying to do with the club, at all the resources we’ve got available, at all the discussion guides and cheat sheets and additional videos and resources that you can use not just for yourself, but to share with your team to get the right conversations going about the future.
Well, if you look through all of that and you don’t find anything that is valuable or worth the money that you’ve spent, just let me know. I’ll give you your money back, no questions asked, no mess, no fuss. It really is a risk-free offer, a risk-free request that you check out My Futures Club and see if there’s anything there to help you to be able to open your eyes to the future.
I am going to take a week’s break, maybe even two, from Throw Forward Thursday as I prepare to come back strong with Season 4. I’m really excited about what we’re going to do next with our ThrowForward Thursday videos. So maybe the best way to ensure you keep up to date, is to go to YouTube, go to my channel, Graeme Codrington, the YouTube channel. Subscribe, follow me, and make sure you hit the bell so that you get updates when the next ThrowForward Thursday video drops.
But it’ll probably be two weeks from now at the end of September 2023, and we’ll see you for Season 4 as we really go a lot deeper into what the future holds for us and what we need to be doing today as we think like futurists. I’ll see you in two weeks.
At TomorrowToday Global, we help clients around the world analyse major global trends, developing strategies and frameworks to help businesses anticipate and adapt to market disruption in an ever-changing world.
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Graeme Codrington, is an internationally recognized futurist, specializing in the future of work. He helps organizations understand the forces that will shape our lives in the next ten years, and how we can respond in order to confidently stay ahead of change. Chat to us about booking Graeme to help you Re-Imagine and upgrade your thinking to identify the emerging opportunities in your industry.
For the past two decades, Graeme has worked with some of the world’s most recognized brands, travelling to over 80 countries in total, and speaking to around 100,000 people every year. He is the author of 5 best-selling books, and on faculty at 5 top global business schools.