Jim Carroll- Futurist, Trends & Innovation Keynote Speaker

As an association executive, are you thinking BIG enough?

That’s the challenge I raise in a forthcoming article for the April / May CSAE Association publication, due out in print any minute.

You can get a sneak preview right now!

How small is your world? Are you thinking BIG enough?

Here’s how I close the article.

There is a lot of transformative change that is underway. This is no time to think “small.” This is the time in which you need to be thinking “big.” How “small” is your world? Do you have a narrow view of opportunity? The reality is that right now, thinking BIG in terms of opportunity and the future will be crucial to your future success.

What does that does it mean for your future? In the old days, companies had “industries” that they worked within, “markets” that they sold into, and “business models” that they pursued. Assumptions that drove their decisions. And associations that represented them in a world that moved relatively slowly.

Every single assumption that you might have about your future could be wrong. Challenge those assumptions, think about the rapidity of future trends, innovate — and you’ll find the growth opportunities that seem to elude so many others.

Think about this NOW!

Here’s a clip from a recent event — actually, my keynote for the national meeting of the PGA — that I think speaks for itself.

I know there’s a big debate going out there, but from my perspective, the problem is real – the scope of the obesity challenge is surreal, mind-boggling and massive in scope.

From my perspective, there’s a lot of opportunity for transformative thinking.

Innovation is always about thinking boldly — thinking about big solutions to big problems.

This problem is certainly a big one, and needs a lot of bold thinking.

An interesting article in the Globe & Mail yesterday on trends with corporate boards. This article struck close to home, because last November I graduated from the University of Toronto – Rotman Director’s Education Program, which provides individuals with a key range of skills to serve on a corporate or not-for-profit board.

"...boards are increasingly searching for younger directors who are up to date with changes in business and technology...."

I certainly keep busy with some 60-80 keynotes worldwide, and this is certainly one of the most thrilling careers that one could imagine. I’m regularly providing high level strategic guidance to CEO’s and senior management teams for some of the largest organizations in the world. Yet being a futurist, I’ve always had in my mind a 5 to 10 year plan for my career, and looking forward, I anticipate taking on some more substantive strategic work on several corporate boards. That’s why I took the Rotman program.

And that’s why the Globe article was interesting, in that it noted that increasingly, the demographics of corporate boards are changing in a big way:

“The ranks of top corporate directors in Canada are swelling with younger directors, which represents a shift for boards, according to a new review of 100 large company boards by Toronto-based director search firm Spencer Stuart. The average age of new directors added in the past three years was 57, down from 62 in the three-year period from 2000 to 2002.

Andrew MacDougall, who leads Spencer Stuart’s board services practice in Canada, said boards are increasingly searching for younger directors who are up to date with changes in business and technology, and who will be able to serve at least a decade before hitting boards’ mandatory retirement ages.

“Boards are more aware now than they might have been in the past that things are changing rapidly in this world, and the fact is that the younger you are – within reason – the more of a sense you’ll have of what those changes look like,” Mr. MacDougall said.

Directors from the baby boom generation (people born between 1947 and 1966) help bring “a new energy and new perspective” to boards, he said.”

Now that caught my interest – “the younger you are – within reason – the more of a sense you’ll have of what those changes look like.” I’m part of that baby boomer generation, and I often find that there is a huge difference in the reaction to my message on the urgency of (business model, strategic, competitive) change for an audience of mine that is composed of baby boomers or below, and those who are of an older generation. And there’s a big difference in the receptiveness to change between boomers and Gen-X. And an even bigger attitude shift between Gen-X and Y….. I think the younger you are, the more open and able you are to deal with change.

As I say in my keynotes, “for the younger generation, constant change is like oxygen.”

And I think here’s what the Globe article is really asking: how can a corporate board possibly be effective if its demographic is primarily a group of CEO’s and senior executives who are 65+? Not to be disrespectful, but I have long had a sense that many corporate boards don’t really have a sense of urgency in dealing with the very fast paced change that is swirling around the organization.  Social networks, technology, changing workforce attitudes, disruptive business model change — it often seems that much of what i focus upon in my keynotes involves extremely dramatic, fast rates of change, often driven by a younger demographic who is intent on changing the business world at the pace that is faster than previous generations, and certainly shaped in a huge way by the tsunami of technology-driven change.

There’s a phrase I use when I open any keynote,: “The future belongs to those who are fast.”

The role of corporate boards, and as a result the role of corporate directors, is changing quickly, and the observations from the Globe article reflect that reality. Now and in the future, corporate boards will take on a greater role in understanding the massive trends that will impact the organization in the future, and make sure that the CEO properly anticipates that very fast change and continually adjusts the corporate strategy to deal with that fast paced change.

There are quite a few boards that are deficient in that regard. And that’s where I’m hoping to help fill the void.

To read about my Rotman experience, read my article, “Learning for a Living“

Last month, I was down in Texas, invited by NASA to be the after-dinner speaker for a leadership meeting of senior executives — mission commanders, project directors, various astronauts now involved in different roles — on the theme of “transformational leadership.”

Going in, I knew this would be one of the toughest keynotes I would take on during my 18 year career – this would be a tough crowd. After all, NASA is at anextremely challenging phase, with a great degree of uncertainty with respect to its future role and mission.

There are big, unanswered questions and issues surrounding the future of the organization; certainly a lot of organizational trauma as the space shuttle program is wound down; a great deal of uncertainty with new directions such as the commercialization of space flight; much internal debate as to whether the recently established direction is the “right” thing.

A pretty complicated situation! Given that, I was honoured to be invited in to speak to them; personally, I was a bit overwhelmed, knowing this to be an extremely complex situation, with a group of leaders who might be all over the map in terms of their acceptance of the current reality.

So what did I talk about? My key goal was to go in and provide some insight as to what history has taught us as to what great leaders have done during a time of great transition, and what current leaders are doing right now to ensure they stay focused on innovation and the future.

In other words, what do leaders do during transformational times?

There were several key themes that I hit upon:

1. In a time of great change, great leaders work fast to shape the focus of their team.

It’s not as if NASA hasn’t been before; it’s history has been one full of volatility in terms of future direction. That’s a reality that comes from being a public institution funded by the shifting political winds which swirl around it.

In my dinner talk, I held up the example of what they were going through  in 1993 when the International Space Station was at risk. “NASA officials allowed themselves Tuesday to talk about the possibility of life without the space station. They clearly didn’t enjoy the talk, but said the nation can still have a vigorous space program — and achieve many of the same goals — without the $31 billion project.” NASA imagines life without space station, Houston Chronicle, 28 April 1993

Of course, NASA got through that difficult period of time; it will go through more. Great leaders keep everyone focused on the future, however volatile it might be!

2. Great leaders provide a message of continuity despite uncertainty

NASA is in a period of great uncertainty from many different perspectives. Yet what great leaders have done in the past and keep on doing — in government, industry and elsewhere — is to work fast to ensure that the team understands that there still is a future, even it if its a different future.

From the 1993 article: “If the space station is canceled, it is my inherent belief that we will continue to have a robust manned spaceflight program that includes science. There will be activities that will become alternative choices to a space station,” Arnold Aldrich, associate administrator of the space agency, told the space subcommittee of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee.” NASA imagines life without space station, Houston Chronicle, 28 April 1993

What was so absolutely wonderful was that the fellow in the article showing that attitude — Alan Aldrich — was in the room as I spoke these words. I knew he was there in advance ; he was speaking to the group earlier in the day. I presumed that he was of a transformational mindset as a leader, and I was delighted to discover his quote during my preparation of my talk.

3. Transformation leaders refocus their team on the opportunities of the future by crystallizing innovation

Consider the next comment by Aldrich in the article: “In other words, I believe we would be very much driven to find alternative ways to meet the same primary goals of the Space Station Freedom.” NASA imagines life without space station, Houston Chronicle, 28 April 1993

What do transformational leaders do? They set a tone at the top — we’ve got to challenge ourselves to accept our new realities, focus on the opportunities of the future rather than clinging to the glories of our past, and work hard to think and act differently as to achieve our goals.

Did my talk work? Mostly: I had some extremely positive feedback, with 79% of the group ranking my presentation as “above expectations” or “greatly above expectations.”

• “Good eye opener brief and well timed at the end. I liked his fast paced style. I did question his 3 global problems for the world – energy, environment, health care. Globally, food and water are the leading problems on the horizon”
• “Good info presented at a good time in the session”
• “Great presentation, great perspective, EXCELLENT on all accounts.”
• “Not big on motivational speakers, but thought Jim did a good job of drawing relevant parallels between NASA’s situation and other big companies.  Appreciated his perspective on the importance of transitional leadership.  Appreciate the fact he didn’t make judgment about what the “right” or “wrong” side of the argument was, but rather how to be effective IN the environment”
• “Outstanding.  Very thought provoking which I believe was the intent”
• “Thought provoking”
• “I resonated with this speaker; it’s very hard, NASA needs more of this kind of attitude to more readily accept changes to explore/exploit opportunities”

I will admit it was not all a bed of roses; some of the folks in the room did not like my focus. 4% rated my presentation as below expectations.

One participant commented: “It was an interesting presentation, but I wasn’t impressed with the content.  I recognize the importance of being positive and optimistic and he captured that thought well.  I just couldn’t relate to the entire conversation.”

I will admit that the unique job I have — challenging people to think about the future — can often be a difficult one. Particularly when people are in the midst of a very difficult transition. Going into the NASA gig, I knew I would be facing a tough audience. It’s a tough situation.

I’m kind of thrilled that I was able to make such a positive contribution — and to me, that’s what transformational leadership is all about. I knew I couldn’t get my message to everyone in the room – but it seems like it worked for the majority of them!

"We really don't understand it all, and so we aren't going to do anything!"

A few years ago, when I was the closing speaker for the Swiss Innovation Forum in Zurich, I made the observation that many  ”organizations fail, because their have failure engrained in their corporate culture!”

Do you?

It can be difficult to try to be innovative in many organizations. Many people with an innovation-oriented mindset often find their enthusiasm stymied when they approach senior management with an initiative. And when their effort is turned back, it can extremely frustrating!

One of the most typical situations today in which we are seeing innovation-dead-in-its-tracks involves the many initiatives that people are pursuing with social networks and/or mobile applications. They know that we live in transformative times in which major changes are occurring with branding, production promotion, customer relationships and just about everything else!

So they set off to build a sophisticated customer-oriented Facebook initiative; they roll out a prototype mobile iPhone app; or they simply get a very basic Twitter feed happening that includes a stream of useful news updates that customers might actually appreciate.

Enthusiastic as heck, they take their project to the senior management team — and its’ rejected, with a litany of reasons as to why the organization just isn’t ready to deal with their new ideas right now.

Any number of reasons can be given; each and every one of them is indicative of the fact that a sort of organizational sclerosis has set in, that clogs up the ability of the organization to deal with anything new. Consider the attitudes that you might encounter if you are trying to get something happening:

• we don’t understand it, so we don’t think we need to do it
• it’s too easy to not confront the tough issues
• we are too busy fighting fires right now!
• we don’t have the skill sets to deal with this. That’s a weak excuse
• we haven’t thought about this in our strategic planning process
• we have really spent a lot of time thinking about what comes next
• we don’t have a budget for that!
• what we’ve been doing all along is perfectly ok, isn’t it?
• there’s so much going on, and we don’t know where it might fit in terms of priorities!
• it’s too far ahead of its time!

Of course, it’s easy to take this wall of negativity and step back from the project and curb your enthusiasm — and give up! Here’s a clip from my keynote in Zurich in which I talk about the challenges you might face.

But real innovators don’t give up! They work to address the organizational sclerosis that might be in place. What you should do  is confront these excuses head on: there are a variety of different reactions depending on the different excuses that are used:

• if they don’t understand it, educate them! This might involve building a better business case for the initiative; bringing them up to date on the key business drviers and trends that require some bold steps and dramatic change.
• help them that those who tackle the tough issues usually win. This is a good time to put into perspective the concept of accelerating change. You need to make sure that the leadership team understands that everything around us today is changing faster than ever before, and will continue to do so: business models, methods of customer interaction, new forms of competition. Business today is all about continually confronting a flood of tough issues; we should be bulking up our capabilities to deal with a world of incessant change.
• if the organization is always in fire-fighting mode, change the agenda. Maybe they won’t be fighting as as many fires over the long term if they have a clear view of the future, and have a strategy that aligns to that future. So rather than asking, “whoah, where’d that come from,” they’re asking “ok, what comes next, and what do we need to do about it?“
• skill sets don’t give us the capability: That’s a weak excuse: if there are shortfalls in certain key skills to deal with current business realities, deal with it and fix it fast. Ensure that you work with HR to undertake a skills inventory with respect to the area you are trying to innovate within, and work to plug the holes.
• if it’s not part of the strategic planning process, make it part of it. Every organizations has multiple processes in which issues and activities rise to the top because they’ve been idenitified as fitting within the overall strategic plan. If yours isn’t part of the plan, work to get it there; and again, this comes through education, a clear business case, as well as internal discussions with those who are involved with and shape the strategic planning process.
• get people thinking about what comes next: Does the organization have a regular series of forward looking leadership meetings? Does it take the time to assess the trends which might impact it on a 1, 2, 5 and 10 year basis? Is it busy looking at we have really spent a lot of time thinking about what comes next
• we don’t have a budget for that! Following the process of getting the initiative into the strategic plan will help to lead to the next step: getting the project properly approved and funded within the overall budget process for the organization. There’s a process for budgeting — and you have to be intimately involved in and respect the process.
• make it clear that it isn’t ok to keep doing the same thing that has been done in the past. You’ve got to clearly articulate the new threats the organizations faces and the opportunities that it can pursue as a result of ongoing change.
• there’s so much going on, and we don’t know where it might fit in terms of priorities! This is a tricky one, because in this type of situation, its pretty well certain that there is some weak management in place who doesn’t know how to set a clear action plan that the team must follow. Best bet is to address the other issues on the list, and work to put in place a clear business and strategic plan for your initiative, with sound business reasoning as to why it needs to be done.
• it’s too far ahead of its time! Frame the future to the organization this way: do we want to always be fast followers, or do we truly want to be market leaders?

In Zurich,I noted on stage that “we develop corporate cultures that stifle — that kill our ability to try to do anything new…..” That’s what you’ve got to work to avoid — it’s not easy to do — but absolutely necessary!

This weekend marks an interesting chapter — I’ll be graduating on Sunday!

It’s been quite a long time since my last official graduation ceremony — some 30+ years ago.

When I graduated from university at the ripe young age of 20, I certainly seemed to look different — the suit size was a bit smaller, the style with a 3-piece suit a little bit fascinating, and signs are evident in my hand of a particularly nasty bad habit (that I ended up bandoning more than twenty years ago!)

So what’s up? On Sunday afternoon, I will become a proud graduate of the University of Toronto – Directors Education Program. It’s an intense, executive level education program aimed at “helping Directors’ become better directors.” The class includes many individuals who play an active role on corporate, not-for-profit or other governance oriented Board of Directors — or those who aspire to do so.

I’m in the latter category. I was active on a TSX listed board in the earlier part of the decade, but the ongoing demands from building a brand as one of the world’s leading futurists and innovation experts largely diverted the time I could devote to such activities.

But always looking forward, I realized some time ago that over time, I would continue to transition back to that role, providing my future guidance to corporate organizations in many different ways — including as an active, independent corporate director.

There are many thoughts which drove my decision to get involved in the Rotman program, including these:

• learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century: read my article that summarizes my goals with the course, which appeared in CAMagazine, Learning for a Living
• future-oriented strategy is more important than ever before. Back in 2007, I wrote a blog post that echoed my long held belief that the role of directors must transition to less “compliance with the issues of the day” and more on active, strategic governance of the direction of the organization
• global, high level strategic insight matters more than ever before. As I note on a bio page on my goals, “there is no doubt that both corporate and not-for-profit organizations are faced with significant challenges, particularly with the continued impact of globalization, heightened market competition, rapid business model change and the impact of new technologies…. organizations need to continually challenge themselves to keep up with rapid change in the business environment in which they operate. Ongoing transformational change throughout the business landscape will continue to lead to corporate baords playing a more significant role in helping to steer the CEO and the organization through these changes.” I intend to play a BIG role in this in the future.

It’s funny, but while I was writing this blog post, “Don’t Stop Believin” by Journey became the next track on my Pandora Quick Mix.

Don’t stop believing — and don’t stop learning!

A new keynote topic was put to my many speakers bureaus partners today, based on some of the recent work that I’ve been doing.

What is clear to me from a  number of recent keynotes for health care executives is that they all know that some pretty major change is needed, and it goes well beyond health care reform. There are a number of huge trends coming together which I cover in my It’s January 15, 2020: What Have We Learned About the Healthcare in the Last Decade trends summary.

Here’s the keynote topic which has gone out, which already generated some pretty substantial interest from healthcare executives interested in getting ahead of the trends through innovation.

Healthcare 2020: The Transformative Trends That Will REALLY Define Our Future

When Jim Carroll began a recent keynote talk for the Minnesota Hospital Association CEO Summit, he announced that he wouldn’t even mention health care reform — and the audience of 300 senior executives cheered! Instead, he told the audience that he would take them on a voyage to the world of healthcare in the year of 2020, and provide them the insight they really need to deal with the challenges and opportunity of the future.

Everyone in a leadership position in the US health care system knows that even with health care reform, the challenges facing the US health care system are substantial and immense. That’s why innovation has quickly come to be one of the top issues that senior healthcare executives and medical professionals are thinking about. There is a realization that there is an urgent need to challenge the very philosophies upon which the system is built. They’re seeking insight into the major scientific, technological, consumer and social trends that will, by the year 2020, allow for some very dramatic change in the concept of health care delivery.

Where will we by the year 2020? We will have successfully transitioned the system from one which “fixes people after they’re sick” to one of preventative, diagnostic genomic-based medicine. Treating patients for the conditions we know they are likely to develop, and re-architechting the system around that reality. A system which will provide for virtual care through bio-connectivity, and extension of the hospital into a community-care oriented structure. A consumer driven, retail oriented health care environment for non-critical care treatment that provides significant opportunities for cost reduction. Real time analytics and location-intelligence capabilities which provide for community-wide monitoring of emerging health care challenges. “Just-in-time” knowledge concepts which will help to deal with a profession in which the volume of knowledge doubles every six years. That and much, much more.

The fact is, we are going to witness more change in the world of health care in the next ten years than we have seen in the last 200. And that’s why organizations have been engaging Jim Carroll. For the last fifteen years, Jim has been providing his guidance into future trends to a wide range of global Fortune 1000 companies, associations, and other groups. In his Healthcare 2020 keynote, Jim puts into perspective why innovation is no longer just a fashionable phrase — it’s the critical new leadership focus for executives in the health care sector. Jim has captivated management teams and health care professionals in keynotes for major US health groups as the St. Joseph’s Health System, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina, Cardinal Health Care, Providence Health, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, the Association of Organ Procurement Organizations, and the American Society for Health Care Risk Management to name but a few. He was the closing keynote speaker for the 4th annual World HealthCare Innovation and Technology Congress in Washington DC, which featured a virtual who’s who of the health care scene in the US today.

With a lot of university graduations and commencements, it might be a good moment and pause to think about a degree that colleges and universities should be offering their students. That’s why I opined a number of years ago that we needed to prepare people for a fast paced future by letting them enroll in a Masters of Business Imagination Degree.

Grab the PDF to the right, and share it around. Here’s how it reads.

“In a time of rapid, disruptive change can be a death sentence – not only for organizations, but for the careers and skills of those who work there! It’s time to abandon the thinking that has had you anchored firmly to the past – and to shift your focus to the future, with enthusiasm, motivation and imagination.

You can do this by abandoning any pretense that the skills of yesterday will be important tomorrow. Figuratively and literally, it is time to move beyond the thinking that has led us to a world of MBA’s – Masters of Business Administration – and focus upon the critical skill that will take you into tomorrow. The world doesn’t need more administrators. It needs more MBI’s – Masters of Business Imagination!

What are the attributes? MBI’s:

• see things differently
• spur creativity in other people
• focus on opportunity, not threat
• refuse to accept the status quo
• bring ideas to life
• learn and unlearn
• refuse to say the word can’t
• accept challenges with passion and enthusiasm
• thrive on diversity
• challenge assumptions
• are solutions oriented

Grab the Masters of Business Imagination PDF

Ask yourself this question: do you work in an organization that just simply doesn’t get it? Who is oblivious, blind, completely unaware of just how much business model change is occurring out there?

Here’s the thing — there are three types of people in the world:

• those who make things happen
• those who watch things happen
• and those who say, “what happened?”

I’ve often pointed this out on stage, and have emphasized the point, by suggesting that  the folks who find themselves last on the list sit back and say, “whoah, dude, what happened? Where’d that come from?”

In other words, they’ve been completely blind to the trend which would cause massive upheaval within their industry, or refuse to accept the significant business model disruptions which are already occurring.

Guess what — it’s happening right now as a lot of financial institutions don’t realize just how quickly mobile technology is going to change everything in the consumer financial services industry! Or in countless other industries where the blindness of current market leaders is leading them to their own “whoah, dude” moment.

So let’s make it simple: when it comes to innovation, make sure that you are in the first camp!

What should you do if you make that conscious decision, and are trying to steer your organization into the future?

• turn forward! establish an overall organizational culture in which everyone is firmly focused on the future while managing the present.
• change the focus: make sure that you link the corporate mission of today to the major trends and developments that will influence the organization through the coming years;
• pursue speed: use a leadership style that encourages a culture of agility and allows for a rapid response to sudden change in products, markets, competitive challenges and other business, technological and workplace trends;
• watch more stuff: establish and encourage an organization-wide “trends radar” in which all staff keep a keen eye on the developments that will affect the organization in the future;
• share more: make sure that you’ve got a culture of collaboration in which everyone is prepared to share their insight, observations and recommendations with respect to future trends, threats and opportunities;
• change responsibilities: ensure that staff are regularly encouraged to not only deal with the unique and ongoing challenges of today, but are open and responsive to the new challenges yet to come;
• take risks: you won’t get anywhere if you don’t make sure that are encouraged to turn future challenges into opportunities, rather than viewing change as a threat to be feared.

I continue to be stunned by how many organizations today continue to be caught flat-footed by the pace of rapid trends that impact them. It seems like it should be so simple to avoid this. Yet there likely still lots of “whoah, dude” dudes out there.

I’ll often be lined up for a conversation with the CEO of a client organization when I’m preparing for a private client CEO leadership/innovation keynote.

It’s part of a careful diplomatic dance. They want to ensure that the framework of my keynote addresses the key issues and challenges that they need to address to ensure that they can become a high velocity innovation hero. I often work with them to help them understand the unique innovation perspective I am bringing into the room.

During the conversation, I often prepare a summary list of the issues that they put on the table that I’ll use in preparing my talk.

I’ve got dozens of scribbled notes from such conversations. Here’s one that I just came across for an event over a year ago; the CEO of this Fortune 1000 organization (obviously, not named) outlined some of the key themes that I needed to address. As he put it, “we need to:”

• increase our bench strength. We don’t seem to have the right skills and the right capabilities at the right time for the right purpose. We need to get better at our skills mix and agility if we are to max out our creative capabilities.
• institutionalize learning. We tend to fall behind and miss opportunities because our people don’t know enough about what is going on “out there”
• grow high value customer relationships. We could get much better in solving customers problems before they know they have a problem. If we could do that, we could extend existing revenue faster.
• accelerate product innovation. We’re slow. By the time we get to market, our competitor has already been there. We need to speed things up.
• have a better talent pipeline. We’ve got a lot of “dead wood” lying around, performing a lot of tactical, non-strategic work. We need to ensure that we are developing/ingesting new talent faster, for the faster emergence of new issues.
• reduce our structural costs through collaboration. Simply put, there is simply too much duplication of effort. It’s the era of social networks; why can’t we be “social” internally?
• suck less. There’s still huge opportunity to reduce product costs through process innovation and better project execution. (Yes, he did use this phrase)
• scale faster. We really, really need to get better at identifying and capturing growth markets.
• plug knowledge gaps. There’s lots to learn about things we don’t know about. We need to invest more in risk oriented projects. We have to fail faster.

What’s fascinating about these conversations is that the CEO knows the challenges that need to be addressed, and is confiding in me those concerns; my role is helping to build a message for the team as to what they really need to do to become high velocity innovation hero’s.

The simple list above — and this is but one of dozens of such summaries — gives a bit of insight into how you can take innovation beyond simple product oriented innovation.

Remember – innovation is all about answering the questions: “What can I do to run this business better? What can I do to grow this business? And what can I do to transform the business!”

A key innovation message that I spend time with my clients focusing upon involves the concept of “thinking big, starting small, and scaling fast.”

(With all due respect, the thought process comes from a customer-service oriented strategy at McDonald’s many years ago, but it is easily extended to encompass innovation in general.)

What does the message imply:

• think big: identify the long term transformative trends that will impact you. These could include significant industry change, business model disruption, the emergence of new competitors, product or service transformation; anything. Essentially, you need to get a good grounding in the “big changes” that will impact your future over a five or ten year period
• start small: from those trends, identify where you might weaknesses in skills, products, structure, capabilities, or depth of team. Pick a number of small, experiential orientated projects to begin to fill in your weak points, and learn about what it is you don’t know. This will give you better depth of insight into what you need to do in order to deal with the transformative trends identified above
• scale fast: from those small scale projects, determine which areas need to be tackled first in terms of moving forward more aggressively with the future. Develop the ability to take your ‘prototyping’ of skills enhancement from the small scale projects into full fledged operations

It sounds simple, but its’ extraordinarily complex. Having said that, it does give you and your team a good conceptual framework for innovation, and orienting yourself to the trends which will provide you with the greatest opportunities and challenges in the years to come.

How might a company use such thinking? Let’s say you are in the banking industry. You know that mobile, text message, and location-sensitive banking trends are going to have a big impact on you. You know little about what is going. Think about how you might have redefined your customer service out on a ten year basis; where you might see new competitors emerge; and what you need to do to ensure that you stay on top of changing consumer demands. Then start small — take on a number of projects that build up the experience of your team with specific mobile technologies: how quickly can we get financial apps developed? From those ongoing efforts, build up the capability to scale — that is, separating the successes from the failures with these smaller projects, and learning how to quickly roll them out on a national or international basis.

Leave a comment : let me know what you think, suggest or ideas where you’ve seen the concept work!

My mantra about innovation is that it is always about three questions: how do you run the business better, grow the business, and transform the business. Address those three issues, and you’ve nailed the essence of innovation.

Since the economic downturn, most of my global clients have been focused on the first issue: how can we run the business better? They’ve been razor-arrow sharp on achieving operational excellence, managing costs, downsizing, and other critical steps necessary to survival.

Now that’s changed.

In the last few months, I’ve had a significant number of bookings — often by senior VP or CEO level execs within  Fortune 1000 organizations — for keynotes at leadership meetings that have the purpose of examining how to grow the business and transform the business.

In other words, folks, GROWTH IS BACK. I think the mindset of the global Fortune 1000 is shifting quickly to strategies that are aimed at transitioning products and markets; generating revenue where revenue hasn’t existed before; growth through acquisition; and countless other innovation strategies aimed at growth. And they’re thinking as to what they need to do this; how do they realign their skills base to deal with rapid change ; how do they more rapidly share ideas on fast emerging opportunities; how do they partner up in order to move faster?

This is the fifth recession I’ve gone through in my professional career. I’ve seen these signs before.

Growth is definitely back in business.

More information

• Read: Success Comes to Those Who Evolve

I’ve been doing a tremendous number of small, intimate CEO level leadership meetings; I’ll work with the CEO or other senior management team member to pull together a talk that will highlight the key opportunities for growth through innovation within an industry.

I often point out that there are significant innovation and revenue growth opportunities when an organization concentrates on mastering the rapid emergence of new knowledge within a specific sector.

Take the world of construction; I’ve recently spoken at quite a few building management, construction and real estate conferences, and have focused on the fact that we are now witnessing very fast knowledge exponentiation with “green” design concepts.

What’s happening is that we are seeing:

• the rapid emergence of new building methodologies, design concepts, materials, eco-design principles, all of which have the goal of reducing the overall energy footprint of the building, or reducing its environmental impact
• the result is that green building methodology is continuing to evolve at a furious pace
• there is so much new knowledge emerging that a new profession of “energy engineers” is beginning to emerge
• their skill and role is simply to keep on top of furious rates of change in terms of new energy management solutions within the building and construction sector
• developments are occurring so quickly that these individuals possess three key skills: how to rapidly ingest new knowledge and new ideas; awareness of where this new knowledge is emerging; and the ability to tap into other specialized skill sets and form rapid skills partnerships in order to tackle growth opportunities

The result is the emergence of a new career of “green engineers” who simply know where to find all the new knowledge and expertise that is appearing out there!

This is pretty significant stuff: after all, some 40% of total US energy consumption can be attributed to operating buildings: the heat, light, cooling, hot water and other systems. Another 8% of energy use is related to the materials used. All the SUV’s in North America? Three percent!

Clearly, there are BIG opportunities for growth through innovation, through the mastery of fast knowledge.

That’s why I always challenge a CEO and senior management team to challenge themselves with workforce innovation.

That involves innovation with different workplace policies, career paths, workforce structure, experiential oriented job descriptions, skills banks for specialized skills, and a rapid focus on growth through the rapid emergence of new knowledge within that workforce.

Another report on my keynote for 4,000 at the annual meeting of the National Parks & Recreation Association, putting into a concise summary the key trends that I covered (from the Parks & Rec monthly magazine).

“… a solid turn-out of nearly 6,000 park professionals and advocates made the 45th edition of Congress a resounding success. …. The theme, “Looking to the Future,” permeated nearly every facet of the event held at the Salt Center Convention Center.

In keeping with the Congress theme, Looking to the Future, opening session keynote speaker Jim Carroll did not disappoint. The Canada-based futurist built his address around key themes and issues likely to confront the field of parks and recreation in the next 10 to 15 years.

Carroll encouraged the packed convention hall to think in terms of transformation.

Other trends Carroll advised attendees to be aware of included:

• healthcare (we’ll be treated for the conditions we’re likely to have before they set in)
• hyper connectivity (mapping, body sensors, and sports equipment)
• Next-Gen re-engagement
• fragmentation (the result of a faster, more connected world that will shape sports, recreation, and hobbies)
• re-defined communities (society’s big problems will be solved locally)
• water/energy/environmental conservation issues
• demographics (think baseball diamonds that evolve into cricket pitches)
• workforce trends (Gen Y has a radically different set of job expectations than its predecessors)
• gaps in expectations (expect a disconnect between what the public wants and what it can afford)

If someone today were to ask me what the most challenging trend will be for first-world nations to deal with — it would have to the last issue.

I’ve got a lot to write and say about the “expectation gap” issue, and have been covering this in dozens of speeches over the last while.

The “expectation gap” is a trend that will define both the opportunity for innovation, as well as distinct perils for standards of living should it not be carefully managed. And to a huge degree, it relates to the political and social maturity that a country can display as it tries to deal with and manage the gap.

More to come!

When you open up a conference for 4,000 people, you really need to get them inspired and ready to take on the challenges that they face in the future!

Here’s the first few opening seconds from my keynote earlier this year for the National Recreation and Parks Association annual congress. An insprirational clip!

Just over a year ago, the global economy changed.

What has it changed to? When I keynoted the Missouri Governor Economic Development conference in St. Louis two weeks ago, I offered this quote from the American Chamber of Commerce: “It’s going to be this move from a bad economy, to the next economy.”

What is that next economy? No one is certain, but what we can be sure of is that many industries will be fundamentally different; business models will continue to evolve at a faster pace; new revenue opportunities will continue to emerge; customer expectations will ramp up in terms of quality and service; we’ll see the ongoing emergence of new competitors; product life-cycles will continue to shorten as innovation speeds up; and a lot of transformative change will occur in markets and industries as really innovative people continue to shake up the fundamentals.

So how are companies adapting to these realities?

Since the events of last year, I’ve been out on the road working with dozens of organizations. I’ve seen and have worked with two different types of organizations and leaders. I’ve seen innovation failures — companies that are stuck in their economic rut, and unable to figure out what to do next. In other cases, I’ve encountered some real pioneers and fast-movers. They are the innovation leaders — they have the same sentiment that I posted in a blog a year ago, in that they know they can’t panic — they have to go forward by innovating, changing and adapting.

So what’s holding the innovation laggards back? I think there are several common attributes:

1. Fear of the unknown: I still see many organizations who are driven by uncertainty. What happens if our market doesn’t recover? What happens if we can’t rebuild the top line? What happens if our customers don’t start spending again? So much fear and uncertainty causes a form of leadership and organization wide paralysis to set in; they’re like deer caught in a headlight, and are frozen in time. Avoid that fate – and fast!
2. Inertia is easy: when confronted by change, many people react by …. doing nothing. When things are uncomfortable, the easiest thing to do to deal with that discomfort is to avoid it. Such thinking causes many organizations and the people within them to fall asleep. They keep doing what they’ve been doing before the recession, hoping that will carry them forward into our next, different economy. Obviously that can’t work, for a whole variety of different reasons.
3. It’s easy to avoid tough decisions : organizations are faced with a lot of change, in terms of business models, customer expectations, cost pressures, new competitors, and countless other challenges. To deal with any one of these issues requires tough decisions, but in many cases, it’s easier to put those decisions off into the future rather than having to deal with them.
4. An unwillingness to confront the truth: your product might be out of date; your brand might not been seen as relevant and keeping up to date with fast paced innovation in your marketplace; your sales force might be wildly out of date in terms of their product knowledge; your competitors might have a more efficient cost structure because they made the heavy IT investments that you did not. I could go on, but the point is this: you might have serious systemic problems, and are simply unable or unwilling to focus on fixing them. Have a reality check, and use that as a catalyst for action.
5. A short term focus: you are still caught up in the economic-downturn hysteria headlines, and don’t think about business trends longer than three months. By doing so, you are missing out on the fascinating transformations occurring in many markets and industries, and don’t see the key drivers for future economic growth, with the result that you aren’t capitalizing on them. Innovative organizations have moved beyond the meltdown, and are already busy positioning themselves for the inevitable long term recovery.
6. A culture that is risk adverse: so far, you’ve survived through cautious, careful manoeuvres. Yet the recession has left you naked with that strategy: going forward now requires trying to do a lot of things you haven’t done before. You’ve got a culture that doesn’t accept such thinking. Change that — now!
7. Paralyzed by the fear of failure: related to your risk aversion is a culture that abhors mistakes. Anyone who errs is shunned; people whisper quietly about what went wrong, and what it might mean. Can that thinking: you should take your failures and put them up on a pedestal. It’s more important that you try things out, and learn about this new fast paced, post-recession world, since what worked for you in the past obviously won’t work for you in the future.
8. Failure to adapt at fast markets : I’m dealing with companies that know that constant innovation with top line revenue — which means product and service innovation — is now all about time to market. You’ve got to have an innovation pipeline that is constantly inventing and reinventing the next revenue driver. What you sold in the past — you might not sell tomorrow. How are you going to fix that? By getting into the mindset of the high velocity economy.
9. A refusal or unwillingness to adapt to new methodologies and ideas: in the manufacturing sector, it’s all about Manufacturing 2.0 or 3.0 or the next phase … in every industry, there is no shortage of new ideas, methodologies, processes, and fundamental change in terms of how to get things done. Maybe you’ve closed your mind off to new ideas, with the result that you fail to see how your competitors are rapidly shifting their structure, capabilities, time to market, product line, and other fundamentals. Wake up — we’re in the era of the global idea machine, and the result is that there is a tremendous amount of transformative thinking out there about how to do things differently. Tune in, turn on, and rethink!
10. A loss of confidence: this economic downturn has had the effect of causing such widespread damage in various industries that some people and organizations and leaders have lost their faith in the future. They aren’t certain they can compete, adapt and change. Perhaps this is the biggest challenge of all to overcome — but you can only overcome it by getting out of your innovation rut and moving forward.

Bill Gates once observed that “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.”

It couldn’t have been put better. What’s your choice – to be an innovation leader, aware of where we are going in the future, or an innovation laggard, still mired in short term thinking?

Think growth!

Here’s a brochure extract from another upcoming conference. The theme : “Moving Beyond the Meltdown: Focusing on Growth Through Innovation.”

It’s been a busy six months since the meltdown.

Throughout this time, I’ve been keynoting events all over North America, for organizations and events large and small, focused on the theme of innovation and working our way through challenging economic times.

What has been fascinating is that in sharing the stage with a variety of CEO’s, for both massive, global organizations and smaller associations and businesses, there are many who share a relentless focus on opportunity.

There’s no doubt that there is lot of pain and retraction and pullback out there. But my experience in the last six months indicates to me that there is an equally fast pace of innovative thinking, as to ‘what should we be doing with these new realities in which we find ourselves.’

My most favorable moment comes from one particular event: before I went on stage, the CEO of one particular global organization went on to give his “call to action” to his team.

He spoke about the challenges of the global economy for a little less than a minute — and then went on a fascinating 20 minute outline of the great things that the company could accomplish with revenue growth by focusing on 8 succinct strategies.

I now use his story (and many other similar stories) when I’m on stage, in order to get people thinking about GROWTH again.

What I’m out there talking about are the real, practical strategies that organizations are pursuing to stay focused on opportunity. There are dozens of things I’m seeing happen first hand. Some of the other strategies, off the top of my head (most of which I’ve written about in this blog):

• act faster to respond to fast changing consumer demands
• innovate locally in a global economy
• focus on customer retention as a core strategy
• go upside down – innovate with supplier partners to achieve faster product or service innovation
• enhance community knowledge – rapidly leverage best practices
• speed up efforts to collaborate internally, and reshape hierarchy to be able to respond to faster change
• innovate with skills access in order to form fast teams
• anticipate customers needs before they know they need them – stay in front of your market

The list goes on. The key thing is: when do you innovate? You do it NOW. Watch this Youtube clip.

There’s a lot of research that goes into every keynote and workshop I undertake. Recently, one key theme has been looking at how innovators break through the recessionary blues, and create new markets and revenue through disruptive innovation. This was the theme of a recent column that I wrote, “Keep Those Ideas Coming.”

While preparing for a recent keynote for a Fortune 500 leadership event, I came across an an article from The Hindu newspaper from January 2009, which featured an interview with Vijay Govindarajan, Chief Innovation Consultant at General Electric in Chennai; he’s also a professor at the Tuck School of International Business.

Here’s a key observation from the article:

He has researched four U.S. slowdowns of the last half century: the oil shocks of the early 1970s, the crippling unemployment of the early 1980s, the recession of the early 1990s and the dotcom bust of 2000. “In each period, about 60 per cent of companies barely survived, while 30 per cent died. But the remaining ten per cent or so actually became breakthrough performers and that’s mostly because of the choices they made during the recession period.”

The key word there is choice. The choice that you need to make right now is to focus on growth, and particularly, growth through innovation.

Many of my recent events have involved having me on stage directly following the CEO of the client. I’ve been fascinated by what I’ve witnessed in the last few months. Many of these individuals, in their remarks, have quickly moved beyond talking about the recession (i.e. “we’ve got good strategies in place to contain costs to work our way through this thing“), and are immediately talking to their team about the growth markets and opportunities that they intend to pursue. They are challenging them to think about innovation in the context of opening new markets, enhancing existing revenue sources, transitioning the product line, moving beyond commodity products into a lineup with more inherent value; the list goes on.

It’s a critical and important leadership message, and I think it bodes well for the future potential of the economy. I have no difficulty finding and identifying growth opportunities in countless industries. It might take some time, and it’s difficult to think about growth with all the doom-and-gloom, but its there.

More information

• Read the article: Keep those ideas coming

I was in a conference call yesterday with the CEO of a global organization; I’ll be doing a leadership session with them this winter. It’s one of several pre-planning calls that I’ll do with this client as I shape my remarks for their meeting.

I love the clarity of the CEO mind. At one point early in the call, he stated how quickly they’re transitioning through fast-paced economic events.

“We established three strategic priorities. Number one, survive. Number two, innovate. Number three, grow. We’ve got the survival thing down. Now we’re into phase two.”

Phase two is the reason why they are having this leadership meeting, which has just been pulled together over the last several weeks. My role is that I’ll provide them with an overview of key trends to think about; how I see other organizations dealing with fast paced economic change, not to mention my fundamental insight on “innovating in the high velocity economy.”

The comments of this particular CEO certainly outlines the stark reality of the speed of the global economic pullback.

Yet, it also offers up some evidence to my theory that some organizations are going to come out of “this thing” quicker than most people think. Organizations that focus on innovation can act faster than they did in previous recessions. They’ve learned how to be more collaborative; they can share ideas and insight faster; they can react and re-react based on fast paced trends. The result is that they can try out a variety of strategies to re-align their business for new realities.

It’s back!

Aggressive indecision! With all the economic turmoil, leaders, executives and staff have the “deer in the headlights” syndrome.

I spoke about this trend extensively on stage during the last recession in 2001-2002. People got into the message, and it restored their enthusiasm for the future and innovation.

I actually wrote about “aggressive indecision” in my book, What I Learned From Frogs in Texas: Saving Your Skin with Forward Thinking Innovation. Ask yourself if you are seeing these signs:

Take a look around you – at yourself, your co-workers, your organization, and the business world at large. What do you see? People mired in the thick mud of aggressive indecision. They tend to wait for absolutely perfect information which will help convince them that the time is right to make a decision, rather than making decisions based on imperfect information as they had done in the past. They’ll take a look at the information they have, decide that it’s just too darn risky to make a decision on what they see, and do nothing.

The result is an economy in which everyone seems to be stuck in a rut, unwilling and unable to move forward. The fact is, our confidence in the future has been shattered. Corporate nervousness has become the watchword, with the result that everyone is taking the easy way out: deal with uncertainty by doing nothing.

An era of “aggressive indecision:” a very dangerous attitude to have, given that organizations must be in a state of continuous innovation in order to cope with the rate of change that now surrounds us.

Look, organizations that innovate and adapt at high speed, while trying to deal with the harsh new realities that surround them, have a good chance of coming out the other side of this thing. On the other hand, if you let aggressive indecision rule your corporate culture, you are probably not going to do well.

Share the video, and the original article around. Get out of your funk! Innovate!

More information:

• Read the original article Paralyzed by indecision: Just Do It
• Read Jim’s blog entries on the global economy