Jim Carroll- Futurist, Trends & Innovation Keynote Speaker

This kid is soon be the next lawyer in your legal practice - or the lawyer you hire to support your legal issues. Are you ready to deal with him? He's wired, uber-connected, collaborative, fast, and is unlike any lawyer you have ever known!

I’ve been remiss in blogging – 20+ keynotes since January, so I’ve been on the road. I’ve got lots to report on what I’ve been focused on in a huge range of different industries.

Back at the start of this travel odyssey, I found myself in Palm Springs, California, as the opening speaker for the 2012 California Community Associations Institute annual conference. In the room were several hundred lawyers and legal professionals supporting condominium and other community developments.

My focus? The key trends that would impact their role, both as lawyers and as individuals involved with complex real estate, construction and building design issues. So I did my homework, and put together what I thought was a great keynote. Certainly the instant Twitter feedback emphasized that I likely hit a home run.

I addressed numerous issues — including what will happen to the legal profession when the next generation of kids — who have grown up never knowing a world without an iPhone — enter the legal profession. Everything changes….

And here’s the fun part of my job — its’ always fascinating to find, after the keynote, the impact that I might have made on some people in the room. Which leads me to a post I found at the blog for Goodman, Shapiro and Lombardi LLC, a firm specializing in this industry, but based in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

After a brief intro, the post, headlined “Embracing Technology: Insights from the CAI’s Law Seminar,” gets right to the point:

I was somewhat skeptical about what I’d glean from the keynote speaker, Jim Carroll, a corporate consultant who describes himself as a “futurist.”

 I’m often greeted by such a reaction. But that’s my job — I spend a huge amount of time thinking about future trends, undertaking research in dozens of industries, meet hundreds of executives at the events that I speak at and prepare for — and synthesize all of this into a concise 45 minute to 1 hour overview of what the folks in the room should be thinking about. In this case, my keynote focused on two big issues: the future of the legal profession, and the key trends that would impact the construction/condominium industry and communities going forward into the future.

After that introduction, the blog post goes on:

“Turns out he is recognized worldwide as a “thought leader” on global trends and has helped many companies, including NASA and the PGA, transform their businesses through creativity and innovation.”

This is true — you can read about my keynote for NASA in this post, and a simple search for PGA on my Web site reveals all kinds of posts on my keynote for the “largest working sports organization in the world.” You don’t get to to do my type of job if you aren’t on your “A-Game” all the time!

So what did he think? This makes for a good read:

Part of my keynote in Palm Springs focused on my "10 Big Trends for the Legal Profession" - read the PDF by clicking on the image.

“Among the intriguing facts he imparted was a study citing that 65% of today’s preschoolers will work in jobs and careers that do not even exist yet.  He piqued our interest with other obvious-yet-provocative statements… our kids have never known TV without a remote and have never heard the phrase, “Please get up and change the channel.”

It bears emphasizing that he was talking to a roomful of lawyers – people who, by definition, practice in a conservative profession averse to change or novelty. Indeed, much of the law is based on precedent and the notion that if it hasn’t been done before, it probably can’t be done now.

Yet our challenge, at this particular moment in history, is to get ahead of the curve, to dare to be groundbreaking.  This may seem threatening, but it’s a message that should resonate within our industry as we think about what this means in concrete terms. On the horizon, I see more green buildings; eco-design; solar panels; and electric cars, among other innovations.  There will certainly be legal implications for all this, and we need to be ready.  In short, we need to think creatively and to embrace change.

And there’s my home run from the keynote – right there: “In short, we need to think creatively and to embrace change” and “Dare to be groundbreaking.” My job is to get people thinking about the future, and challenging them to think and act differently to deal with an ever faster rate of complex change.

It’s always a thrill to look back to see that I’ve pulled it off!

Read more in another post I wrote: “What Goes Into Building a Great Keynote?”  

The International Dairy, Deli and Bakery Association has invited me to be the closing keynote speaker for the 2012 international conference in New Orleans. I’ll appear before an audience of 8,000 key players in this massive global industry.

I’m honoured to join a list of previous keynote speakers that includes Mike Ditka, General Colin Powell, Emeril Lagasse, John Cleese (!), and even Sinbad.

This is another sign that innovation, and keeping up with high velocity change — my main themes — continues to rise to the top in many corporations and associations. Consider what I’m talking about : here’s the brochure copy which announces my participation:

The New Normal: Innovation, Hyper-niching, and Transformative Change

The “new normal” says nothing will ever be normal again. Instead, deep substantial change is transforming nations, markets, industries, jobs, and knowledge. We’re at the leading edge of the merger of three perfect trends: the rapid and massive mobile infrastructure with increasingly intelligent devices; pervasive location awareness as a result of GPS and location intelligence-mapping trends, and a consumer mindset that is increasingly open to new forms of interaction. The result is massive business model disruption, market change, and obliteration of old assumptions aobut the nature of customer relationships. Futurist, Trends & Innovation Expert Jim Carroll will show new ways to uplift product in retail space, how to change customer loyalty through new forms of interaction, and how to enhance one-to-one conversations through hyperniching. He’ll walk us through the impact of increasing business intensity, innovation, and creativity as it relates to the world of food.

The key phrase to think about is “deep substantial change.” And the key thing to think about, is are you ready for it? Is your leadership team, innovation strategy, partners, infrastructure, culture and mindset aligned for transformative change?

Folks, we’re going to look back at 2012 as a year in which the world began to change even faster than any other year prior.

My key phrase has always been, “the future belongs to those who are fast.”

Are you?

Anyone who follows this blog knows that for quite some time, I’ve been putting out a message through a variety of meeting, event, and association publications, that many asssociations really need to pick up the pace in ensuring that they stay relevant to their membership base.

NPR just ran an article, “Time for Associations to Trade in Their Past?“, which covers the issue and quoted some of my observations from a recent article on this issue.

Futurist Jim Carroll, author of Ready, Set, Done: How to Innovate When Faster is the New Fast, says, “Many associations came together to represent a particular profession, area of interest or sport, or for some other reason. Yet that very reason is changing at a furious pace.”

In 2010 Carroll wrote that many of the trade groups “remain stuck in a rut of complacency. They deliver the same old program. They focus on the same old issues, generate the same old knowledge, plan the same old conference, and have their agenda managed by the same old membership has-beens.

“Meanwhile, they bemoan the fact that membership is declining; that the Millennials seem to have little time or inclination to join them; and that the world is just becoming, well, too complex to deal with.

“So they form a committee, hire a consultant, study the issue, and lull themselves into a false sense of future-security.

“By doing so, they are almost guaranteeing themselves a march into oblivion.” If an association “doesn’t evolve at the same pace,” Carroll says today, “or doesn’t keep up, or doesn’t define the future, it risks becoming obsolete.”

One solution: An association must be in the business of providing “just-in-time knowledge” to its members, Carroll says. He defines it as “the right knowledge at the right time for the right purpose for the right strategy, all revolving around the fact that the knowledge is instant, fast and transitory.”

I certainly spend time with a lot of associations; probably half of the keynotes I do are to open or close major association events. I certainly see many who are making great progress in ensuring that they evolve with the times; however, I also see many that aren’t, and I worry about their future.

It’s a theme I’ve covered liberally here, and you can go through my Association Trends page

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!

A semi-regular report of search phrases on JimCarroll.com

A few weeks ago, I began using the Reinvigorate.Net “simple, real time web analytics & heatmaps” service on  my Website.

I thought it might be of interest to put in perspective, on a weekly basis, some of the things that people have been discovering on my site. With over 1,100 blog posts full of insight and content, there’s a lot of information in there!

So here’s the 2nd version of ‘search phrases’ that people were using this week — and the Web page on my site that the search engine directed them to.

Listed first is the search phrase; next is the page that they ended upon at my site.

• Trends or Innovation in retail: Retail trends blog category
• Corporate agility – “What makes for corporate agility?”
• Health care trends 2010 – “10 Big Realities for Healthcare in 2010“
• Food industry trend – “Food Industry Trends: Faster is the New Fast!“
• Importance of innovation and creativity – “The importance of innovation in the era of the new normal“
• Future trends associations – “Is There a Future for Associations?
• Next billion dollar industry – “Competing with analytics: the next billion dollar industry“
• Sporting goods future – “The future of sporting goods in a world of high velocity“
• What to do to be innovative – “How to be innovative with the six C’s of innovation“
• The insurance industry in 2015 – “The insurance industry in 2015“
• Reason for consumer moving from – “We shop faster: the new fast world of retail, food and consumer products“

I was in Baltimore last week, where I was the opening keynote speaker for the 2010 Passkey Corporate Housing Forum.

Passkey is a company that provides software for the corporate and association event management industry; in attendance were meeting planners, executive who manage corporate functions for hotels, and a lot of folks from various convention and visitors bureaus. My goal was to speak about the trends impacting the meetings and events industry, such as found in  my recent article, Does Your Future Suck?

I ran a quick text message poll at the start to find out what these folks see as the big challenges they are faced with.

There are some obvious issues : budget cutbacks, organizations beginning to explore more virtual event technologies, or challenges with delegates bypassing conference facilities and booking on their own (‘booking outside the room block’).

But what is most fascinating is that fully 1/3 of those in the room felt that the biggest challenge / trend that they are seeing is that more organizations — particularly corporations — are organizing more strategic meetings at the last moment, of a smaller scale than before.

That’s certainly what I’ve been seeing: I continue to get bookings for a significant number of small, CEO or senior management level strategic planning meetings. These folks want to bring their team together to discuss innovation, future trends and key strategies for exploring growth opportunities.

I’ve framed many of these talks around the theme of What Do World Class Innovators Do That Other Organizations Don’t Do?, which is a theme that has been quite popular since January of this year.

In my talk for PassKey, I noted two key statistics from Dana Communications, a company that specializes in the events industry:

• only 17% of meeting planners have “meeting planner” in their job titles
• less than 20% of meeting planners spend over 50% of their work time planning meetings

This echoes my experience: many of the calls that I get exploring my services are from a senior executive, or the executive assistant to an executive.

Clearly, organizations are of a mindset that is focused on taking them out of a recession, and into a world of exploring future opportunities. The fact that event planners, CVB’s and hotel event managers are seeing the same trend is a significant sign that the economy continues to bounce back.

by Jim Carroll
From: The Boardroom, a publication for Association Executives

Every association executive is regularly inundated with information on the leadership skills they must need to properly guide their association into the future. As someone who spends a lot of time talking, writing and speaking about trends and innovation, and who is constantly taking a look at where we are going in the future, I have my own list that might be rather different from some of the others that you’ve heard.

Here’s what I think you should do to ensure you know the issues that will affect your association.

1. Listen to the grassroots

With the rapid rate of change within every industry, trade and profession, it can be extremely difficult to keep up with what’s important and what’s not, not to mention keeping on top of the trends, challenges and opportunities that should be guiding your activities and strategies. There might be plenty going on within your member organizations, as they wrestle with new business strategies, rapidly evolving business models, heightened market competition, ever growing volumes of research and knowledge, and countless other challenges.

To be effective at what you do, you must keep on top of these trends, and determine how to adjust your activities and strategies accordingly so you are continually meeting your members’ needs. That’s why 21st century association executives should focus on building a strong collaborative culture with their membership base, using both leading edge tools and technology as well as ensuring they have a heightened degree of informal, personal contact.

Take the time to engender and build an informal, “open-door” culture that promotes regular and ongoing contact by your membership base, whether that be by e-mail, telephone or in person. Encourage feedback, complaints and observations, as well as a culture that provides for sharing of leading edge trends, challenges and opportunities.

2. Listen beyond the grassroots

You can’t listen only to your membership to spot the trends that will affect your association — you have to go beyond them and listen to what others are saying as well.

That’s why figuring out the future is no longer restricted to listening to the “usual suspects” within your association membership base — 21st century leaders recognize that everything in their industry or professional association base is being affected by events, trends and developments far beyond the norm.

The problem for any association executive is that it is all too easy to become isolated and focused on the issues of the day – the management issues and all the fine details that come with running a major organization. There’s so much going on within your industry or profession that there can be precious little time to come up for air and simply see or “think” through what is going on elsewhere.”

And yet, taking the time to listen “outside of the box” can be one of the most important things you can do. That’s why you shouldn’t just “think” outside of the box – but you should on a regular basis “step” outside of it. One way of doing this is by ensuring that you take the time to place yourself in completely different circumstances. Pick 2 or 3 conferences each year – in completely unrelated, different industries or professional that are far beyond your membership base. Go and listen – and see what another industry is saying!

That’s but one example – you can also subscribe to professional publications from other associations. Grab your copy of the national association directory, and pick a few associations at random – and sign up for their magazines, publications or newsletters.

You might be surprised by how invigorating an experience it can be to open up your mind to what is going on elsewhere. You may find that it will help you discover the trends that will affect you in the future, long before your traditional trends radar might have picked them up.

3. Listen to the rebels

Often, the trends that will affect your association and members can be found in the offbeat chatter by those who are busy redeveloping the future right around them.

Those leading edge trendsetters are often at odds with the typical association member. They’re the rebels in the crowd, eager to cast off the past to develop a future that will be very, very different. They’re busy tearing apart the conventional business models that have guided your members for ages; they have different ideas as to the nature of the product or service that is delivered; they are all too eager to change everything around them to create the future as they see fit. They are often marginalized, simply because their aggressive attitude in changing the future can make them rather unlikable by many.

What should you do? Learn to learn from them! Seek out the rebels in your membership base – you might not like what they have to say, but often, they are probably right in what they will tell you. Great leaders recognize that while many people have an attitude, outlook, culture and approach to life and business that is completely at odds with their perspective – they are willing to listen to what they say because change often emanates from such people.

4. Maintain a willingness to do a right turn

There’s no doubt that things change very rapidly in our world today.

Need evidence? A year ago, the guilt trip that you have when eating a Big Mac isn’t quite what it is today. Within the space of but a year, we’ve had a major issue – our obese society – bubble up, come to the forefront and gain front-runner status as a key  trend and issue to be managed.

The result is that many associations within the food, health care, agricultural and other communities are now scrambling to deal with the new focus on “healthy living” and “healthy eating”. The issue has the potential to become a major topic within your events and conferences; and a topic within your publications. That’s but one example – many other such issues can quickly go super-nova (i.e. SARS), so you’ve must have the ability to suddenly refocus yourself, and your association, to deal with new realities as soon as they emerge.

5. Continually reinvent relevance

Most association members – regardless of what type of group you might represent – live in a state of relentless shell-shock.

If they are in the business world, they’re witnessing ongoing market disruption, regular business model change, consumer revolt and empowerment, heightened competition and constant new demands on their time. In the public sector, they are subject to decreasing budgets, increased public expectations, political turmoil, departmental and role transformation, and ever more challenging management issues.

The result is that on a daily basis, they’re in crisis mode, and are having to constantly reassess their plans, careers, goals and activities. With so much change going on, it’s critical that your association continues to provide services, value and activities that match their regular new realities.That’s why you should ensure that you are constantly and regularly assessing and reinventing the relevance of your association to the membership base. Are you delivering what they need, at the right time, in the right way? Are you on top of all the emerging issues affecting your members so you can change what you are doing to ensure you are helping them? Do you continually reassess your roles and your strategies so you are delivering value, not routine?

6. Redefine your membership

Part of the process of reinventing your relevance consists of making the effort to reach out to new members who exist within your association market, but in a completely unconventional way.

Many people in our economy today don’t work within the traditional corporate model that has defined your association base in the past. For example, many young workers continue to reject the traditional career path of long term careers with large organizations. Instead, they establish themselves in small, micro-organizations that provide needed skills to a corporate audience regardless of where they might be. Are you reaching them with your efforts?

Then there are nomadic workers – those white collar workers who were laid off in the last 10 years through a variety of recessions – and who have established small, home-based businesses from which they provide their skills to a global audience. They’re working within your community of interest, but are they a part of your strategic plan?

Step back and consider where all of your members might exist today, and ensure that you change your strategies, activities and capabilities so that you reaching out to all of them.

7. Adjust for hypercompetition

Many associations are responsible for setting educational, professional and membership standards, and spend considerable time ensuring the value of the service or skill provided by their members is properly recognized for the value provided.

Get ready for a new challenge – that which comes from “offshoring,” a trend that is picking up a speed that is simply stunning. In the first wave of offshoring, we saw simple manufacturing such as toys and shoes migrate to third world countries. Then, the second phase saw simple clerical and service work move away (such as the processing of credit card receipts). But now, we are seeing actual “knowledge work” move, a trend that will provide every association with significant challenge in the years to come.

The high-paying, highly professional jobs are now moving offshore. A recent Deloitte & Touche study suggested that upwards of $356 billion in American wages – or more than 2 million jobs – will move offshore in the next several years. What impact might this have on your members, as they see less demand for their skills as a result of competition from a highly knowledgeable offshore workforce?

That’s a loaded question – and it’s easy to realize the complexity of the challenge when you consider a one square block area in Bangalore, India, a hotbed of the offshore trend. Consider these 4 companies: GreenPoint Mortgage of Novato, CA has moved their home loans processing to one company located there; the Massachusetts General Hospital has engaged a number of radiologists to examine CT scans; Texas Instruments has a number of engineers working on chip design; the Bank of America has moved some of their software development to this location. Each of these situations would have an impact on the members of associations in a variety of industries and professions.

Those are the people who are going to have a major impact on your association members in the not-too-distant future. We are now seeing the emergence of a global skills marketplace, in which highly talented professional workers can provide services of almost any type. The result is that professionals – lawyers, accountants, consultants, medical technicians, will now find themselves faced with an increasing degree of skills competition.

Begin thinking and planning now as to the reality of this important business trend, and undertake a plan of action that will help your members to survive and thrive into the future as hypercompetition takes hold.

8. Seek offbeat solutions to difficult problems

hen a food manufacturer was trying to find out how to improve the changeover time of one of their assembly lines, they hit upon a novel solution: bring in an Indy race pit crew to show them how. Their thinking was, who has better mastered the talent of “quick- thinking, quick work” than a group of people who can instantly change several tires in a highly coordinated team effort that lasts only a few seconds? It was an offbeat solution, but it certainly did the trick.

That’s why you should keep an eye out for the quirky, innovative, unusual things occurring within your association and other associations.

9. Kill indecision

There is no doubt that every association has suffered from rather aggressive indecision through the last several years, brought on by war, terror, a challenged economy, and much uncertainty.

The impact has been dramatic – many associations just can’t seem to make decisions about many matters of the day. I certainly see this as a speaker – while I used to be regularly booked as far as a year in advance, now some organizations are booking me just a few weeks before their conference or event. Why? Because uncertainty has led to a degree of decision stagnation.

Pummel this trend to the ground before it goes any further. Make sure your association continues to run by timelines, deadlines and clear goals and objective. Carefully ensure that your culture provides for regular decision making, not deferral and discussion. There are quite a few issues you are probably wrestling with, and maybe some of them have been around for far too long.

What should you do? Encouraging risk taking is one method of ending complacency, as is rewarding failure. If your members or association board can’t make decisions, then a bit of a cultural change is probably necessary!

10. Restore your sense of passion and purpose

Last but not least, get excited about the future again!

There have been so many challenges through the last few years with recession, war, terrorism and other problems, that many people in the business community have lost their sense of purpose and their passion for the future.

The key message for you and your membership base is – get over it! We’re in for a bright and wonderful future, and it’s by getting excited about the future again that you can best prepare and plan for it.

Does your future suck?

by Jim Carroll

Written for “Content Matters Newsletter, March 2010″, Content Management Corporation

So the big question, of course, is this: is there a future for the meetings and conference industry?

What a silly question!

Of course there is: the fundamental trends that are shaping our future demand that organizations continually deliver regular, short sharp shocks of updated knowledge, and despite all the new fangled technology that surrounds us, many will demand that we continue to do so in human-to-humanget-togethers.

You know what’s fascinating about a recession? We all know how the movie ends: we return to a period of economic growth. What’s also fascinating about recessions is that it provides an opportunity for all the naysayers to suggest that meetings and conferences are going to go virtual, and that we’ll all meet online. Then, when the recovery comes about, we all start scrambling to pull together our events, because people demand a form of non-silicon based networking. There’s nothing like people getting together at a conference for a cold beer or a glass of wine after a long day of sessions: that’s when the real business gets done!

Back during the last recession of 2001-2002, “those in the know” said that this would be the end of meetings and events. I wrote an article in Successful Meetings magazine, ‘Get Real,’ that said no, that wasn’t going to happen. And so from 2003 to 2008, we saw some pretty impressive growth in the industry, followed by an inevitable pullback. Such a cycle will continue.

I’m a futurist, and spend my time providing advice and guidance to some of the largest organizations and associations in the world. And as I futurist, I have to be optimistic about the future. After all, there aren’t a lot of folks who want to hear a futurist come out on stage and say, “Guess what? The future sucks!”

So here’s my belief on what is really going to continue to drive the meetings and event business forward, and why the future doesn’t suck.

We live in a period of ongoing, relentless, fast paced change. I’m dealing with associations who are witnessing the disappearance of traditional careers at the same time that new careers emerge. I deal with companies that are seeing product life cycles collapse due to the furious rates of innovation within every industry today. I’m witnessing companies challenged by new competitors intent on disrupting their business models. I see professionals who realize that the knowledge they need to know to do their job is going out of date at a ridiculous pace, and who realize that the way to the future is to concentrate on developing the capability for just-in-time knowledge.

Given all this change, what do people and organizations need to do? Continually adjust and prepare themselves for a future that will be constantly different, changing faster, with a lot more volatility. That’s going to require a lot more innovation, and certainly the ongoing delivery of a lot more knowledge and information.

And it’s the pace of change that is perhaps the biggest factor at work here. Bill Gates once suggested: “People overestimate the change that will occur on a two year basis, and underestimate the pace of change on a ten year basis.” Add to this the observation by Rupert Murdoch: “The future belongs to those who are fast.”

In essence, successful professionals, associations and companies will be those who can adapt to rapidly evolving trends.

How do we do this? I’m convinced that one of the primary tools will continue to be a get-together where people share insight, strategy, knowledge and tips.

Associations are in a world in which they must help their members adapt to massive, fundamental transformation in their role, scope, function and purpose. I’m a big believer that such transformations can only occur if the membership is given an overwhelming sense of purpose, passion and enthusiasm through the focus that an annual conference provides.

That said, I recently spoke to 4,000 professionals at the annual National Recreation and Parks Association annual conference in Salt Lake City. I challenged the audience — most of them responsible for civic or state recreational activities and park infrastructure — to think about the baseball bat of 2015 or 2020. From my vantage point, it’s going to look the same, but it’s likely to have a variety of sensors built into it that will provide a kid with instant feedback as to the strength and accuracy of their swing; the same sensors will trigger their nearby cell phone to automatically capture a video of their time at the plate.

Far fetched? I don’t think. Weird? To us maybe, but perhaps not to the next generation. As I stressed to the crowd at this event, “When we think of the strangeness of the future and our likely negative reaction to some of what might come next, we have to remember this: it’s not bad, it’s just different.”

The world is going to be different; the role and mandate of the recreation professional is going to be different; the concept of recreation will be transformed. You can read about this in a magazine or see it on Twitter, but it won’t have the same impact as having 4,000 people in a room realizing that their lives are going to change — fast!

Consider medical professionals – it is estimated that medical knowledge is now doubling every eight years, with the result that the vast majority of individuals in any field of medical science are unable to keep up to date with the most recent new treatments and protocols. One study suggests that the typical patient is receiving the most current medical treatment only about 50% of the time. The same holds true in almost every single profession and career, and leads to some significant association challenges, all of which revolve around the ongoing need for continuous knowledge delivery.

Sure, we’ll see more knowledge delivery online; new business models around the conference and event industry; and continued rapid change in the sophistication of online conference tools. And most important, the next generation of silicon-enabled 25 year olds might not think about annual meetings in the same way that their forebears do. But I believe they’ll still go — and as we are seeing now, will make it a far more different and interactive experience. Heck, maybe the beer bottles in their hands will Tweet each other. It’s still beer.

So the bottom line is this: you’ve seen this movie before. You know how it ends. So prepare for the future now, rather than waiting for the full economic recovery to be underway. The winners in the meetings, conventions and conference industry of tomorrow will be those who are willing to be an optimist about the future, as I am!

Association Magazine has published my article, Metamorphosis: A Defining Success Factor for Associations.

A huge number of my keynote presentations are for professional, industry, trade or other associations. All of them are faced with some serious challenges — a decline in membership, an inability to maintain their relevance, or a lack of capability to innovate in terms of program delivery.

The article takes a look at the obvious trends which are to impact associations in the years to come. I don’t hold back any punches, opening with these words:

We know we live in a world in which new trends change everything we know at a furious pace. Rapid change envelopes us, consumes us, and pounds us with its reminders of its urgency every single day. There are many obvious trends that impact us; we often refuse or are incapable of assessing their impact.

And so the future marches on, and many associations remain stuck in a rut of complacency. They deliver the same old program. They focus on the same old issues, generate the same old knowledge, plan the same old conference, and have their agenda managed by the same old membership has-beens.

Meanwhile, they bemoan the fact that membership is declining; that the Millenials seem to have little time or inclination to join them; and that the world is just becoming, well, too complex to deal with.

So they form a committee, hire a consultant, study the issue, and lull themselves into a false sense of future-security.

By doing so, they are almost guaranteeing themselves a march into oblivion.

This article is a must read for any association executive today. Quite often, the trends that will impact us are right in front of us. This article puts those trends into perspective. In doing so, it provides a good framework as to how to start some innovative thinking in order to deal with those trends.

Read the articles

• Metamorphosis: A Defining Success Factor for Associations
• Are you prepared for the new role associations will play

I’ve had a new article published for Association Executives for the CSAE, about how you can innovate and jazz-up your annual meeting or conference.

Here’s an extract:

Does your conference marketing suck? Maybe it does, and you don’t know it.

People today don’t want to go to an “annual conference” and attend “plenary sessions.” Kids (and today’s 30-40 somethings — the demographic you increasingly want to get to attend!) go to FESTIVALS.

I think they’re expecting the same brand image velocity for the conferences or events that they might attend. Would you rather go to the “121st Annual Tree Farmers Association Annual Meeting and Trade
Show?”

Or would you rather go to “TreeFest 2009 – The Place Where Tree People Rock!”

Me, I’m all for idea of TreeFest!

• Read the article Get Fest-ed!

I just returned from a keynote for the Direct Seller Association; the industry dedicated to selling products to individuals in their homes. One might think in the Internet era that such an industry is on the skids; yet organizations like Avon, Mary Kay, and new direct selling companies continue on a growth trajectory; through innovation in traditional markets, and through fascinating growth in the Asia Pacific region.

My keynote focused on two primary trends: how the customer of today is changing; and how marketing and advertising are changing. I then spoke about how these organizations need to continue to keep up with the rate of change that is occurring around them.

So what’s with the picture? One of the trends I covered was that today’s consumer is influenced differently when it comes to their purchasing activities. It used to be all word of mouth; it still is, but WOM has changed to a significant degree: it’s widened to include the world of social networking.

For example, a recent New York Times article commented on the role of Celebrity Baby Blog when it comes to the clothes that parents are choosing for their children. US Weekly also comented on this trend, noting that when it comes to selling, “In the 1990s, everyone wanted to know about handbags…..now it’s all about, ‘What stroller is Naomi Watts’s child in?‘” (Apparently it’s a Strider 3 Steelcraft in slate at $449US).

That’s but one trend of about 20 key consumer, advertising and marketing trends I took a look at. House parties have been social-networked too, through Houseparty.com! As noted in the Times, “Jarden Consumer Solutions, which sells appliances under names like Mr. Coffee and Sunbeam, hired House Party to put on 1,000 parties over the Memorial Day weekend to promote the Margaritaville Frozen Concoction line of drink-making machines, which cost $199 to $379.” To a degree, the more things change, the more things stay the same. Direct selling still happens; the mechanism and methodology is changing furiously.

The key issue is this: no matter who you are, what you sell, and who you sell to, your markets, products, customers, touch points and brand issues are changing at a furious pace, and you need to as well. That’s why innovation in the consumer goods sector is critical.

My blog post of a few weeks ago caught the attention of the folks at the Canadian Society of Association Executives — and so I quickly rewrote it to challenge their members to think about the role of “associations in the future.”

A few years ago, I wrote regularly for The Boardroom, a publication for association executives, on how trends are impacting professional and other associations. I covered workplace issues — such as integrating Gen-Y into the workplace — as well as rapid career, knowledge and skills change. The articles still generate a lot of traffic as people find them through search engines; and continue to bear relevance today.

Why are associations finding things so challenging? According to a recent study out of the University of California (Berkeley,) we now produce as much new information every six months as was produced in the first 300,000 years of human existence. That type of rapid knowledge growth changes careers faster than ever before, and the associations who represent these career areas must relentlessly focus upon innovation within the areas of professional education, strategic direction and the nature of member services.

These articles were often reprinted in various state and national “associations of associations”, and still bear relevance today, so they might be worth a read.

b>More information

• Read the association executive articles
• Details on Jim’s keynotes in the association sector

As we end the year and start a new one, it’s a good time to be thinking about some of the trends and issues which will impact us in the future.

Take a look at my newly released quick-report, What Comes Next: A Trends Perspective for 2008 and Beyond.

My message for my clients throughout the year – whether it was 2,000 executives at the World Congress for Quality, or the senior management team of one of the largest commercial construction companies in the US — was consistent. The high-velocity economy demands that we think, react, plan and manage differently.

Some of the guidance I shared with global clients concerning future trends is found in the report; I highlight what I think are some of the most important ones that we need to be thinking about, broadly defined as:

• revenge of the math geeks
• small is the new R&D
• attitude and amusement is the new motivation
• time disappears
• resistance to change retires
• careers end
• knowledge & skills banks dominate
• interactivity redefines markets

It’s an Adobe Acrobat document; feel free to grab it, share it, and distribute it!

I prepared the document on a MacBook Pro — I made the switch from Windows this year! — using the TokyoRPG Style Template for iWork 2007 Pages from KeynotePro. They have awesome styles for Pages and Keynote; if you’re an OS/X and iWork user, take a look.

• Grab the What Comes Next PDF now
• Learn more about iWork Themes from KeynotePro

The business of speaking has evolved dramatically in the last five years — have you noticed?

It used to be event planners would spend quite a bit of time planning for next years annual conference. A committee would begin a slow, careful, and routine process of planning a program agenda, which would include finding a celebrity speaker or two to fill the agenda. Year in, year out, they’d carefully follow the same old process. Often, they’d end up with the same old conference.

Today, of course, faster is the new fast, and we’re witnessing a different role for both the speakers and the bureaus who represent them. Let’s call it “strategic knowledge delivery” — we’re helping organizations to get the right knowledge in the right place, at the right time, for the right purpose. Events have evolved from, well, events, to critical get-togethers that help a company, association or organization adapt to sudden new realities.

Today, a company might find itself in the midst of a rapid product launch — after all, product lifecycles are collapsing. (Just look at your iPod, and think of the rapid changes occurring in the consumer electronics industry!) There’s now a new requirement for fast knowledge — they need to pull together their sales force quickly, update them on the forthcoming marketing plans and sales strategy, and give them a strong motivational push out the door. They call a speakers bureau, and quickly line up a retail expert, an expert on selling strategies, and a top motivational speaker to boot.

Oh — and they need these people in two weeks!

That’s the new reality of the speaking business today. It has now evolved into a highly specialized industry, in which knowledge-brokers (formerly known as “speakers bureaus”) provide their highly specialized insight into who-knows-what, to provide their clients with the key knowledge-experts that they need. By doing so, they’re helping the client to quickly solve new business challenges, adapt to new markets, stay competitive, and deal with the reality of all the circumstances that come with our fast-paced world of today.

Every organization on the planet today is working hard to ensure that it can “keep-up.” I’ve certainly witnessed the trend first hand through the last five years, doing exactly this type of thing with some of the largest organizations in the world.

When you end up advising companies like Disney as to how to be creative, you get a different perspective of the world. Disney, for all of its vaunted reputation as a cauldron of creative genius, is like every other organization out there: it finds itself immersed in a whirlwind of rapid change, whether with its’ business model, product line, or rapidly changing consumer demand. (Anyone with pre-teen kids has seen the huge and sudden take-off of the hit High School Musical, or the explosive growth of the Hanna Montanna franchise, knows what I am talking about!)

Like any organization, Disney is constantly working to ensure that they can remain on top, by understanding the trends that will continue to impact them, and by ensuring they keep their creative spark fresh by seeking to learn what other innovative organizations are doing. For Disney, it’s almost as if they are beyond faster-is-the-new-fast : they’re in an industry in which tomorrow is simply today’s urgent problem. And that’s why they call in outside experts — someone like me.

The changes in the speaking industry — and the role that bureaus and speakers play — mirror the changes occurring in the fast paced world of business today. It’s all about just-in-time knowledge delivery. Understand that, and you’ll understand the context of the solutions that this industry and speakers bureaus can provide you.

My new book, Ready, Set, Done: How To Innovate When Faster is the New Fast, is now available in print.

You can purchase it directly through this site, with immediate shipping. In addition, the book is available worldwide via Amazon.com.

• purchase direct
• purchase via Amazon.com

Ready, Set, Done : How to Innovate When Faster is the New Fast is a timely book – it captures the rapidity that is found in our world today, whether it be rapidly shifting business models, technological change, the rapid advancement of science, the emergence of new competitors, and rapidly evolving professional skills and knowledge.

The book takes a look at the concept of innovation in a new, and well, innovative way, in that it helps you understand how to link your innovation efforts to the high velocity change that surrounds you. It examines the concept of agility: how organizations can ensure they structure themselves to take advantage of and resopond to fast-changing circumstances. It builds upon that message, by examining some of the key innovation success strategies that you should be thinking about.

Sprinkled throughout the book are various observations that I have made, of some of the innovative practices I’ve seen wtih various organizations, large and small. When you’ve been looking for innovative stories for close to a decade, you discover quite a bit of wonderful insight.

The book will provide you the inspiration to adapt and change in order to keep up with high velocity change. It will also open up the minds of your staff as to the need for day to day transformation in what they do, how they do it, and why they do it.

And it will frame the issue of innovation for you in a new and critical way. As I noted in the opening chapter, “Forget about the concept of innovation as simply involving the design of cool new products. In the high-velocity economy, where faster is the new fast, it’s your ability to adapt, change, and evolve, through a constant flood of new ideas, that will define your potential for success.”

Take a look at this kid.

He’s your next employee. How are you going to recruit, retain, manage, interest and amuse this fellow? What’s your workforce going to look like in 2012, 2020, or beyond?

There’s quite a bit of focus on trends relating to the future of the organization — and organizations are seeing innovative strategies to cope with the world of high velocity change that we find ourselves in.

Last week I was the opening keynote speaker, and a panelist later in the day, for an offsite of one of the world’s largest professional services firms. Tomorrow, I keynote a get-together of key clients of a multi-billion insurance/financial services company. A few months ago, I ran a Board of Directors/CEO level meeting on the issue for a major industrial company.

If you don’t have this issue figured out yet, you’d better start thinking about it in a hurry.

There are certain things we know for a fact that relate to the future of the organization.

• there is a huge amount of expertise walking out of the economy. In 2010, 3 people will leave the economy for every person that enters it; by 2012, 4. By 2016, 6 people will leave for every new worker that joins. Those are staggering realities.
• the current generation entering the workforce is completely rejecting the concept of a traditional career. More than 50% of young people in a US survey indicated they believe self-employment to be more secure than a full time job. They don’t want to work for big organizations. They’ll be nomadic, contingent workers, entrepreneurial and global.
• skills are fragmenting and specializing at a furious pace. Knowledge half-lives in most industries are compressing to a matter of just a few years. Knowledge extinction is real, and massive skills fragmentation is occurring at an extreme velocity. The result is that most organizations will find future failure will come from an inability to get specialized skills. A strategy that is focused on global access to extremely specialized skills will be a transformative factor for winning.

The whole issue is massive, and is one of the areas in which innovative thinking is needed now. It’s a CEO / Board level issue. It’s transformative. It’s urgent.

More information

• What’s Happening with Our Workforce: Achieving Competitive Advantage Through Skills
• Critical Trends: 10 Unique Characteristics of 21st Century Skills

An interesting article in InformationWeek, covering my Sunday night keynote for the Society for Information Managementa annual conference in Memphis.

First time I ever had to follow Elvis on stage : and maybe that’s what had me fired up!

Noted InformationWeek: “Carroll, the author of “What I Learned from Frogs in Texas: Saving Your Skin with Forward Thinking Innovation,” seemed to embrace the atmosphere of secular spiritualism. He prowled the stage like a preacher, exhorting the assembled crowd to take the message of hyper cultural and economic change fueled by information technology back to their companies and use it to force a closer examination of the role of their own technology efforts in new business models, management structure, and collaboration.”

You can read the full article, In the High Velocity Economy, IT is the Engine, here.

I often talk on stage to my clients about the concept of organizational agility: that is, the ability to respond to fast-changing circumstances. In the high velocity economy, everything can move quickly : markets, customer expectations, competitors, products ….

In this video clip, I take a deeper look at the concept of agility, outlining that organizations that master the capability have several key attributes:

• they are rapid movers
• cost excellence is a major focus
• their customers have set high expectations
• they establish instant, need driven relationships in order to get things done
• they excel at rapid response to new market demands
• they focus on fast time to market
• they have mastered the ability for quick marshalling of resources
• ….and they have instant scalability!

In the last year, I have been the keynote speaker for three different conferences of funeral and crematorium directors.

As with any industry, I’ve focused on the wide variety of trends that will impact them — and yes, I’ve provided them guidance on innovation and creativity. These folks are the “ultimate event planners” — they are called upon to organize extremely complex affairs in a dramatically short time in very difficult circumstances. We could all learn from their resourcefulness.

One of the trends I’ve spoken to them about is what I’d come to call “the new mourning” — that is, how the younger generation I call Gen-Connect has a different relationship with the process of mourning.

We’ve all seen it; 9/11, Virginia Tech and elsewhere — spontaneous, large public gatherings, where people deal with an unforeseen tragedy by coming together. Technology — cell phones, instant messaging, email — results in an often instant and large-scale social means of dealing with tragedy.

It’s one thing to talk about a trend; it’s another thing when you witness it literally in your backyard. Ten days ago, a young rugby player died after an altercation near the end of the game — at the high school that my home office looks onto. My son and I had been at the game just ten minutes prior. When we heard the sirens, we knew that something was not good.

Through the next six days, I came to witness firsthand the ‘new mourning,’ as his teammates, classmates, teachers, friends, neighbors and strangers gathered in various ways, at various times, spontaneously, instantly, silently. My son went to school with his younger brother; we visited the memorial that the kids assembled, several times.

Earlier this week, the kids at the school returned to the field, and played a game. The neighborhood has laughter, cheers, noise and happiness once again, but the neighborhood has also forever changed.

As someone who speaks on trends and the future, I do know this: the new mourning is very, very real, quite substantially different — and is yet another example of how quickly our world around us is changing.