Milan: [00:00:00] Good morning,
Ged: The future. Now, this is a club card. So Milan, what, what are club cards again? Let’s, let’s remind the viewers.
Milan: Oh, wonderful. Clubs are all about mindset and inner games, meaning how do we do the work that is not necessarily seen but that affects the outcome once we, once we start executing on it. And imagining a future is very, very important tool in any CEO’s toolbox because that’s our job, right?
As a visionary, we have to create a vision imagining the future, and then plot the path to it [00:01:00] to get the organization there, and it comes with a whole bunch of things. It’s how do we communicate that, that image? How do we do that? But it’s, it’s quite disturbing to see how often this is actually not being practiced.
Ged: Yep. Mm-hmm
Milan: How many companies do come to you, and when you say, “Okay, so where are we going?” “Well, we are doing this now, so let’s say at 12%. Would that be okay? Is that healthy growth rate?” And you’re like, “Oh my goodness, what are we doing here?
Ged: Mm-hmm.
Milan: Start from scratch.” What do you want,
Ged: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Milan: The key question. Do you wanna be? What would feel good? How do you know that you succeeded in that future point? Try to get them, do that time travel that we talked about in luxury to waste time episode. And to move to that point, and then being able to look backwards, see what’s true. You know, Harold Cameron Herald in Vivid Vision is calling it reverse engineering of the,
Ged: Yeah,
Milan: [00:02:00] Of the vivid vision, right?
Like, what, what needs to, what needs to happen in, in order to get us there?
Ged: I, I see a lot of… Sorry, you go, you go, you go. Keep going.
Milan: No, I, I was just about to wrap up and hand over because I was like the same, the same thing, right? Like, it feels- Or sounds so obvious. Of course, like in order to get somewhere, we have to imagine where we, we are.
Ged: Yeah.
Milan: Are a species, right? We are constantly planning. We don’t go instinctively. We say, “Okay, I want to go and make breakfast because otherwise I will get hungry in an hour,” right? The, the future thinking is innate and, and ingrained in us. We just need to expand it for the you know, over time for a, a longer
Ged: Yeah,
Milan: Of time and then bigger system like the organization that we are working in.
But the principle remains the same. You know, we are imagining the future of having had the breakfast and not being hungry anymore, and now [00:03:00] we need to do the steps of going to crack some eggs to get to that
Ged: So I, I f-
Milan: Right? We, we naturally think that way. We just need to do the same thing with a, with a company or any, any organization we’re
Ged: I find that probably about 30% of the CEOs I talk to could reasonably well describe where they wanna be by the end of their current quarter. And about 10% can probably describe where they wanna be at the end of the year. But less than 5%, probably 2%, maybe even less than that, can actually describe where they wanna be in three years’ time.
And if they can describe it at all, they’re just plucking a number out the air. You know, 15 million, 20 million, 50 million. But they can’t describe Anything else about that future-looking target. You know, they can’t say, “Well, okay, this is where we think we wanna be playing. You know, this is where we’re gonna expand our product line.
You know, this is [00:04:00] what we’re gonna do to be able to reinforce our position in the market.” They just don’t have that perspective. They haven’t done the thinking. You know, they– So they haven’t imagined through to the future, you know. And, you know, u-use the, you know, we, you know, why don’t we grow 10, you know, 10, 12% a year?
And, you know, th-that’s probably as good as it gets for most CEOs. Now, what did we do last year? Well, we did eight last year. What did you do the year before? 10%. Okay. Well, why don’t we just extrapolate 9% per year over the next few years and, and that’s where we’ll be, you know? That shows complete lack of imagination.
As you said, where do we want to be? And then you’ve gotta back-backtrack and say, “Okay, what do we need to do to be able to get there?” It’s flipping it over on its head. You know, rather than saying, “This is what we did in the past, so this is what we think we’ll do in the future,” say, “Where do we wanna be, and then what have we got to do to make that come true?”
Milan: I absolutely love… And you know, what really cemented this thinking for me [00:05:00] was the talk you and I both listened to of Dr.
Ged: Hmm.
Milan: Hardy.
Ged: No
Milan: He was talking about the, the way many people live their life is that the past informs the present, and the present determines the future, right? Well- When the reality actually is that the
Ged: Hmm.
Milan: We’re making those stories, right? I remember having a massive, massive crisis. Like, I had a really tough, year. You know, identity crisis, therapy, anxiety attacks, just, you know. We are here among friends with our listeners, so we can go there, right? It was really, [00:06:00] really tough. But f- from my– from the perspective of five years later, I want that because that formed who I am, and I can see the positive impacts of this. And yes, it’ll– the, the situation that led to it was not pleasant and who knows what, but it’s experience I needed, and I am in so much better place for it, you know?
So I, I went from complaint to gratitude on– for that particular one, right? Even the darkness is a gift. And it– that’s a quote from somebody. I had it on the wall somewhere. I really like it, you know. I– Somebody gave me a pot of darkness, I think, and it took me a while to realize that even that was a gift. I’m paraphrasing, and I don’t know the author. I’m sorry. But that is, you know, that is what it is. Like, our past is what we, what we make of it as a story, what we take from it for today. Our present actions be not driven of– [00:07:00] in– by habits, b- by instincts. They should be driven by our goals. And in order to do that, we have to imagine the future first. You know, I love food analogies as I’m, you know, I’m a little bit of a foodie. A little bit is an understatement. I have a mild case of very severe obs- obsession with food, especially with ramen. You know, that is what’s going on, right? That’s what’s going on. You’re imagining a state of, having the plate in front of you or having just eaten it or having had that experience of sharing the meal with friends, then you work backwards all the way to to mise en place, right?
To going and, and get to that point. That term as well. By the way, it’s French. I- if you didn’t know what it means, it’s French for having your shit together before you start doing anything
Ged: Yeah. Yeah, mise en place, everything in its place.
Milan: But it but it applies but it applies to pretty much everything we do.[00:08:00]
Ged: Yeah. So, so this is about, you know, being able to not just think it, it’s also about being able to articulate it. Because if you’ve got a really clear picture in your mind, but you can’t share it with anyone, it’s on you. Yeah. You’ve gotta bring it to life. If you can articulate where you wanna get to in the future in a way that is simple and clear, and that people can swing behind, then you’ve got 1,000% more chance of actually bringing it to life.
If it stays in your head, no matter how clear it is, it’s just the power of one person, not the power of 100 or 1,000 or 10,000.
Milan: Look, I have a few, a, a few books references that are ru- running through my head right now, and they’re you know, I think that they’re all equally important so I’ll just list them. You know, Vivid Vision by Cameron
Ged: Mm-hmm.
Milan: About how to materialize this.
Ged: Yeah.
Milan: Self Now, Dr.
Benjamin Hardy. S- very, very similar [00:09:00] concept, right? So slightly different execution. Oh, oh, fabulous. Interesting. What I also like which helps a lot okay, if you pull the third one, I’ll be really impressed. Chip and Den Heath, Decisive.
Ged: I’ve got it. I’m read- I’m listening to it on Audible right now.
Milan: Okay, okay, okay. You get a pass for that one. Look because they have this beautiful, beautiful concept. Like, okay. Okay, three for three, I’m impressed. They have this beautiful concept. Everybody knows what postmortem is. Something went wrong, so what are we going to learn from it? So they came with a concept of a preparade, right? Everything’s going to go great. This is how it’s going to look like. Now, what can we learn from right? Like, putting ourselves into that future place. Again, Dr. Benjamin Hardy would absolutely agree with that. Cameron would say that’s the, [00:10:00] that’s the reverse engineering of the past to the desired future Norman Wolf would say, you know, w- fr- from the from the, the living organization, would say that’s the roadmap to your strategy compass, right? Like, we are using different terminologies, but ultimately we’re talking about the same thing. This is imagining how good looks like. You know, how do we know we got there? And then what needs to be true in order to get us, and what, which of those truths we have under our control, and therefore what are the actions we need to take to make them into being? That’s the whole process of planning, of getting the organization somewhere.
Ged: Yeah.
Milan: To start with that bullseye you’re aiming for because, as Greg Crabtree famously said, “He who aims at nothing hits it every time with amazing accuracy.” And that was a lot of book [00:11:00] references and a lot of name-dropping. I hope it will
Ged: Okay. We recently did an episode on the lu- waste- luxury of wasting time, you know. And in that we talked about reading books is not a waste, it’s actually essential. So you know, if you, if you’re not reading, you’re not learning, and if you’re not learning, then you’re not getting ahead.
You’re not keeping ahead of your competitors
Milan: And look, and because learning is hard, because you, you know, the book is a commitment and, you know, we, we have the luxury because of our job and because it is actually our job to a lot of information so we can sift through it and, and then help our clients with finding what is relevant to them and hitting them with just one book. That’s partially why these cards were created.
Ged: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Milan: You know, you can go through them and say, “Oh, this looks relevant,” and then you can do the three to five-minute read, and then if you find it relevant, then you can follow down the rabbit hole. But because sometimes, like, where do you start your daily trai- [00:12:00] learning habit? That’s actually a term that one of my mentees brought that, you know, go to cards and say, “Hey, you know, I have new learning habit. I’m gonna pick one card every morning at random, and I’m just gonna read it over my coffee in the morning and see where it takes me.” wonderful. You know, obviously hugely satisfying to me.
I won’t you know, I won’t deny that, but th- th- that is the point. You know, learning needs to happen. You have to make time for it. It will help you imagine the future and then find a way and find the tools and get help in getting there.
Ged: It’ll help you imagine the future, but it’ll also help you create the future. Yeah. Because that learning is essential to be able to doing– do things different or do things differently in a way that’s gonna get you ahead of your competitors. And ultimately, you know, we wanna win. We wanna be winning business, we wanna win in life, and we need to have a goal to aim for.
Milan: Mm-hmm. And start with the want, [00:13:00] right? You don’t compromise by thinking what you can or can’t do. You know, when we do our three-hack process, you know, the three-hack is a want. This is where we want to be. This is, this is what would feel good once we get there. Notice the fact that I didn’t use the word if, I used the word once we do.
Ged: Yeah, when or once we…
Milan: Then of course you iterate through that, and
Ged: Mm-hmm.
Milan: You’re validating it, and of course you’re challenging the goals. But you have to start with that imagining on, “Hey, this would be great if we get there. Would be really happy. Now let’s make it a reality.”
Ged: Yeah. Had a leadership team member once say to me, “Well, what do we do when you get there?” I said, “Well, we reset it.” But actually we don’t. We reset it every year, so we’ve always got that three-year want out there in front of us. So we’ve always got, always got that thing that we’re looking to, to get to.
That thing that we know that when we get there, yeah, that’ll be success. That will be we’re winning.
Milan: [00:14:00] Starting with the imagining though. You have to make
Ged: Mm-hmm.
Milan: You have to solidify that vision. You have to find a way to communicate it to the rest of the team, and sometimes outside to customers, vendors, you know, partners, whoever you’re working with, because you will need help to get there. Again, you cannot ask for help unless you communicate the vision, and for that have to imagine it first.
Ged: Nice ending. That’s a wrap.
Milan: We got some energy in there. That was good.
Ged: We did, we did. It’s the want and it’s the future, and it’s the imagining. That’s what gave us the energy.
Milan: Beautiful. Yeah. It, it is, it is beautiful thing when it, when it works. Yeah, absolutely.
Ged: Mm.
Milan: Well, all
Ged: Okay. Teaser, and then we’ll be finishing just on time. So only two episodes, but hey, look, you know, maybe we can do one in Phoenix. I don’t know. My… I’ll, I’ll be traveling with some tech stuff, but not that much. But let’s do the teaser first, and then we can stop the recording and talk about that.
Milan: Yeah, absolutely. [00:15:00] Absolutely.
Ged: Mm. Yep.
Milan: So I did the intro and I finished, so if you would do the teaser it would make sense.
Ged: Yep. Mm-hmm.
Milan: Yeah,
Ged: Now, we’ve just finished recording the latest episode in the Cardcast podcast. Now, the card that we picked at random out of the deck is called Imagining the Future.
Milan: Adding
Ged: Over this episode, what we talked about was the need to actually spend time thinking about where we want to be into the future. Now, is that three years out?
You know, you get understanding what, what would be a success, what we want to bring to life in that timeframe. Because if you can’t imagine and visualize and articulate where that is, you’re gonna have a real job communicating that to anyone else. And if you can’t communicate it to anyone else, they’re not gonna be able to swing behind you.
They’re not gonna be able to support you. They’re not gonna be able to help you achieve your want. [00:16:00] And that’s really, really important. You’ve gotta give the time to be able to do that.
Nice and short.
Milan: Know, single teaser.
Ged: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Milan: Because you can take it, you can post it as your own video, right? And then, you know, link to the, link to the full episode at Cardcast. So
Ged: Yep. Mm-hmm.
Milan: Should get into the habit
Ged: Yeah,
Milan: We both do it, right? And then,
Ged: Yeah.
Milan: Yeah, because
Ged: Well, it was.
Milan: That sort of goes with your idea of unscripted things and say, you know, “This is what
Ged: Mm-hmm.
Milan: And da, da, da, da, da, and ping and, and go to there. But let’s wait until- Which should be within about a week. Well, when you’re back from Phoenix,
Ged: Yeah.
Milan: Cardcast site should be up.
Ged: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Milan: Again, if I need any copy, I’ll let you know. You can stop the recording. I think we’re done, [00:17:00] right?
Ged: Mm-hmm. Oh, just to
Might as well go straight in.
Milan: Excellent. You want to tee it off?
Ged: Yep, yep. I’m just noticed you’re not central there of you. Is that intentional? Yeah, that’s better. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Milan: Thank you.
