This summer, I went in search of my Next Big Thing. I’ve been feeling uninspired for a couple of years in my business and knew something needed to change. I began reading a lot of books by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and new ideas began to form.
Astro Teller, who heads up GoogleX, an internal think tank at Google, coined the phrase “moonshot thinking” to mean the ability to not merely think out of the box to arrive at innovation–but out of our known atmosphere.
I began posing questions to myself that stretched my imagination—not out of the atmosphere, perhaps, but certainly out of my normal thinking—and that necessarily required looking at the future of society. When I work with subject-matter experts to develop their thought leader brand and messaging, we cover the future because one must be a futurist to stand on a thought leader platform. However, I’ve never had them project societal changes ten years down the road; the questions I presented to myself did that.
And the answers I arrived at set in motion a very new direction for my work and I couldn’t be happier…though they also revealed a possibility that I will be out of a job in a decade or less. And maybe you, too.
One of the questions that brought me this insight is on page 12 of a new workbook I developed, which you can have at no cost by clicking her: Unleash The Brilliance of Your Next Big Thing!
The question was, What major changes are likely to happen over the next ten years in key societal areas?” So, I considered the areas of “education,” “religion” “politics,” to name a few, and concluded with–“my field.”
I’d already considered the current zeitgeist (spirit of the times) and when I looked ahead, I could see one phenomenon in particular exploding. I call it “crowd connection” –and I think you know just what it is because it’s everywhere: strangers connecting, both online and in wildly popular in–person Meetups.
If “crowd connection” is this strong just ten years after the birth of social media, which is wholly responsible for this exploding event–how powerful will it be ten years from now?
But there’s more to “crowd connection” than just connection–and it is in this that I see untold potential. Today, crowds are coming together to solve problems that were once only the domain of government, churches or big business. They’re educating the poor in developing countries (instead of the educational system), as well as making entrepreneurial ventures possible there. The crowd is paying medical bills for those who can’t afford to; putting successful pressure on dictators and college administrators. Open-source niche crowds are together materializing world-changing innovations—Wikipedia being just one small example.
There’s been a lot written (pro and con) on the “wisdom of crowds”—how accurate a crowd can be versus an individual—but what’s happening now isn’t about the wisdom/accuracy of crowds, its about the ingenuity of crowds. I call what we are witnessing now “crowd genius,” and we haven’t even begun to tap its potential. Think about it: “crowd connection” is in its infancy. Can you imagine what we’ll be doing together when we’ve had a few more years of experimentation under our belts? A few more decades?
When I take to imagining it, I experience a profound joy because I am an anti-establishment kind of gal; “buck the system”; “leave the pack”—“power to the people not the few” and all of that. In time, “crowd genius” has the power to crowd out the establishment and bring us a far more equitable world; it has already begun to do so.
So, as I was working out the idea for my Next Big Thing, I took what is happening now with “crowd genius” and projected out ten years to answer the question: What major changes will be happening in my field (advisory/education roles) over ten years–and my response surprised me.
I had to confront the possibility that there won’t be a need for subject-matter experts to advise or educate others—because collective genius will be more powerful, more creative, more inventive than one advisor or teacher. If the (more progressive) branches of our educational system are already shifting teachers into “guides on the side” rather than “sages on the stage,” it stands to reason that within ten years, that expert businesses everywhere will either be obsolete or in “on the side” roles, facilitating the brilliance of the collective.
But we’re not all out of jobs yet. (Smile) The truth is that today there still exists a need for “sages on stages”–for your knowledge and expertise—and for mine, in helping subject matter experts construct their ideas, strategies and thought leadership narrative. As likely as I believe the future scenario is, another truth will also likely prevail: no matter how ingenious the creative group mind can be, the blind leading the blind will always be trouble. We can always learn from those who’ve gone before.
Yet, in response to the zeitgeist of our times and the future I foresee, I find myself compelled to design a new way to do my work, to blend my “sage from the stage” role with “collective genius,” so that solo proprietorships build the most extraordinary businesses and Next Big Things.
In this new model, represented in my 10X series, I will bring the encyclopedic knowledge I’ve amassed from being in business for fifteen years and use it to focus a group on only the most important business projects. Focus has been proved to precede “flow”—a phenomenological state where performance goes through the roof; it is high-speed problem-solving.
Imagine the possibilities for an already “genius crowd” when it is guided into flow through focused attention on certain business tasks–to build 10X (10 times) better businesses? This is my new calling.
And it brings to mind one of my favorite movies of all times, Witness with Harrison Ford, and one of my all-time favorite scenes, when all of the men in town gather to build a neighbor’s house. It gets me every time I think about it.
We are in a time when “barnraising” one another’s dreams is our now and it is absolutely our future. Building businesses as lone wolves will very soon be as old a practice as sparking fire with sticks.
Join me on the front lines of this future: where together we will go farther than we could ever go alone.
And be sure to register for the first-ever free online collaborative “idea lab” January 5!
What do YOU think. Will you be out of job as an expert in 10 years?
As an expert, you must offer a Teaching Story. An artfully formed narrative that teaches what no one else is teaching. This is the ultimate in education-based marketing.
I teach a “new paradigm”