Moving on

My work is to help people with the future.

Futurists spend a lot of time thinking about, and mapping possible futures - our worldview is naturally forward-looking, orientated towards focusing on what lies ahead.

Looking ahead is the easy part - the tricky bit is learning to let go of the past in order to achieve the future vision that is being held in mind.

Ironically then futurists need to be experts in helping put history to bed, putting the past in its place. Not in the same way that a psychologist helps to unpack deep mental wounds from the past, but rather to contextualise progression and welcome in the process of moving on.  

Without a full surrendering of the past, including a wholehearted acceptance of the unique path, which has brought you to the point in space time that you find yourself now; the future remains elusive.

That's why many organisations find innovation so difficult to achieve; it's not that they don't have the ideas or ability to unlock new avenues of business growth, but rather that old ways need to be surrendered before new ways of doing things can be accepted.

People hang onto the old tasks and processes that give them security; they'll do everything in their power to kill the new ideas and processes that they perceive as threatening to their continued existence.

'Change is hard', which is how management will label it, but the challenge isn't so much the change than the acceptance and letting go of the past.