Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
81 lines (59 loc) · 4.78 KB

The-7-Habits-of-Highly-Effective-Time-Travellers.md

File metadata and controls

81 lines (59 loc) · 4.78 KB
Raw

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Time-Travellers

with Trevor Haldenby

“It is our future in which we will find our greatness” - Pierre Trudeau

What does it take to be a good time traveller? “The Butterfly Effect” - inspired by Ray Bradbury’s ‘Sound of Thunder’ - a small action in the past can have huge (and potentially dangerous) ramifications for the future.

Financial tabs are not necessarily a meaningful or exciting way to think about the future of your organization - the future is treated as a science, ignoring the artful side of the future - imagination and speculation.

Trevor is part of The Mission Business - an adventure laboratory that researches alternative futures and brings scenarios to life.

TMB occupies “the wonder zone” the middle space between science and art.

“What if we could improve our vision by blurring lines between reality/fiction, present/future?” (as opposed to making it clear/determinable)

When TMB talks about the future, they use the language of corporate brand through a fictional company called ByoLogyc - they set up a phone number/website/twitter so you can engage with this fictional company.

The idea of “prehearsal”: ByoLogyc allows you to workshop the idea of living in a world where things like being diagnosed by a facebook app could be a reality.

Strategic Foresight - “the art of bringing the future to life”

A lot of the visioning in the business world leans heavily towards science. But it is also art, specifically, imagination.

Rather than leaning on charts and graphs, we are leaning on the corporate brand (of the fictional company) - their values and beliefs.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Time Travellers: Powerful Lessons in Experiential Future

  1. Be Proactive
  2. Ground yourself in the present; your body could be present, but is your mind?
  3. The version of the present was somebody’s future
  4. The future doesn’t last forever
  5. THINK: If you could Time Travel to any year in the future for one day, when would you go? 1. If “1 year later” = likely hedge fund people
  6. CASE STUDIES: 1. CBC short-term future - take us to September 27, 2021 (September 27, 2021 is “CBC Day”) 2. Home Depot = ceases to be a store but a robot 3. Toronto Zoo (on their 25 year plan) = certificates of different animals they were able to breed in captivity
  7. Don’t feel bad if it sounds ridiculous: Dator’s Law of the Future(s) - GET WEIRD 😋 “Any useful statement about the future should at first seem ridiculous”
  8. Begin with the End in Mind
  9. Dive into dystopia (but don’t stay there), the worst case scenario
  10. Human beings make the same mistakes/hubris/arrogance again and again and again
  11. “History doesn’t always repeat itself. Sometimes it just screams, ‘Why don’t you listen to me?’ and lets fly with a big stick” - John Campbell, Jr.
  12. BUT: Make sure people don’t overdose on dystopia. Straddle the sweet spot between utopia and dystopia
  13. Put First Things First
  14. The ‘Basic’ Time Travel Toolkit
  15. How does getting to the future work? 1. Head straight on Rocket Science for about a year, then take a left at SciFI Storytelling 2. STEP 1: Signals and Horizon Scanning to come up with Trends + Drivers of Change; note, though, that trends are the tip of the iceberg and drivers of change are at the bottom. Trends are driven by Drivers of Change.
    1. Technology trends are NOT the only type of trend
    2. E.g. STEEP Analysis - Social, technological, economic, environmental, political 3. STEP 2: Identify Critical Uncertainties - two drivers that conflict with each other 4. STEP 3: Scenario Planning
    3. Use a 2x2 matrix that pairs up those critical uncertainties against each other
    4. The outcomes of which will be in written scenario form
    5. Science Fiction Prototyping (Brian David Johnson)
  16. Pluralize futures
  17. Ditch the Singular Future; make everything into a POSSIBLE future than a specific future
  18. Understand, then be understood
  19. How: Cultural Probes
  20. IMPORTANT: The future isn’t always the loudest voice in the room - these are often the least interesting visions of the future 1. If you want to understand what could be, listen to the quiet voices
  21. Synergize
  22. Time Travel should be exciting: EXCITEMENT over an increase in metrics
  23. “Doing” the future means greater understanding (and experiencing it)
  24. A vision of the future is moved by the senses than price tags
  25. E.g. The Jetsons and Star Trek is a time machine
  26. “This is not science fiction, it’s science eventuality” - Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park Production Notes
  27. Sharpen your saw
  28. Always Keep Learning

Time Travel is powered by stories that start in your mindset and imagination.