Top Ten ideas for capitalising on the future.

10. Set aside time for exploring ideas, reading, self-development – or just day dreaming. Try putting this time in your calendar as a recurring appointment and treat it with as much respect and preparation as your other appointments. Surely you could find 2 hours a week for this?

9. Write a painted picture document – allow yourself the luxury of writing your dreams and aspirations down. Share it with your team. Keep in mind this is a ‘what will the future document’ not a ‘how do we get there’ plan.

8. Have a place where you write loud and proud what the world of your business will be like in the future. Use pictures to help visualise this.

7. Focus on a few things – choose which tasks fall under the in and which tasks comprise the on the business. For me, the in might be ensuring I answer calls from customers and respond to emails. Whereas, the on might be writing a vision document or creating strategic partnerships. Write a stop doing list. Know where you spend time in doing the every day- nitty gritty tasks versus on the business.

6. Listen to customers, have the feedback loop in place – but remember they cannot imagine beyond what they know. Customers will give you evolution, not revolution. (‘If I had asked my customers they would have asked me for a faster horse – Henry Ford’).

5. Challenge the status quo for the sake of it. Have an ‘imagine’ meeting. What would you do if you were a competitor to you? Question why do we do things. Create some worse case scenarios and how would you handle them. What if you lost you, 10 top customers?

4. In a global economy, people want to be treated as individuals. They want their jobs to be personalised, customised and just for them. What are you doing to make people feel unique and special? How are they noticed?

3. ‘The planet is worth the benefit of the doubt’, says Rupert Murdoch. This philosophy has the power to create revolutions in business practices and provides us with great opportunities. This kind of thinking must make you consider which part of the wave are you going to be on… are you going to be a leader or be forced to follow?

2. People are living longer. Imagine what the world will be like when the retirement age moves to 75 and people live to 115. Forty years of non-income producing retirement is a long time. We need to enrich our working lives now so that we don’t burn out.

1. Remember whatever idea you come up with – it needs to capture your imagination and inspire you. ‘Are we having fun yet?’ As more people question ‘why?’ they do things and the impact they have – the more people realise that having some fun – whether it be at work or home is important. There is a melding of the work week and social time because the reality is we are looking to have a good time no matter where we are.

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