Signals from the Front Line: Developing foresight in the age of COVID-19
Today marks the end of probably the most intense four months of work I have undertaken in the past 15 years.
In early-March I returned to Toronto from a workshop in Detroit and I couldn’t imagine what was going to transpire.
One week prior I had been in Vancouver, BC in Canada presenting to a large conference full of Doctors of Optometry. During that trip I spoke to a number of people that were worried about the potential for COVID-19 to roll into Canada and shake things up significantly. Back in Detroit I had refused to shake the hands of the amazing people I met over a two-day workshop. When I fist-bumped I disappeared to wash and sanitize. They all thought I was crazy.
I wasn’t.
The short-term as relevant futures
It was a cold, dark day in mid-March and I stared into the screen showing my business plan for 2020 and 2021. My business coach (who I had just brought on) helped me think big and structure ideas around good intent (doing things that really mattered), more events (taking Dark Futures to NYC and restarting Future Camp), and generating income.
In March all keynotes I had booked were indefinitely postponed. And, all of my 2020 plans vaporized. The weather in Toronto was less than welcoming as well (and that would continue to mid-June).
Some 18 months earlier I had considered that speaking wouldn’t be the activity that I wholly relied on and I built out a stealth foresight consultancy with some friends called Exponential Minds. We had worked on projects with Procter and Gamble, DB Breweries, Kantar Futures, United Nations, and others. That work proved to be invaluable for this time.
Within two weeks I was deep in developing research that was helping a couple of clients make sense of the world. I had to help them see a path forward where all we could see was confusion and an unravelling of events in a hyper-complex real-time theatre of events. Geopolitics smashed against the failing industrial complex and humanitarian crises accelerated. It was truly terrifying, exhilarating, and really essential work.
I was a futurist thinking 3 months was a long time into the future.
Being real in the face of the new possibilities
I started a vlog to share ideas on what I was seeing. Around the same time the usual cast of futurists started talking about ‘the great pause, ‘our post-corona future’, the future of remote everything.
There’s nothing worse than a hyper-privileged futurist hunkering down in their expensive lakefront home ‘in isolation’ saying what they think will guarantee their spot on the big stage when this is all done. Nothing.
As you can imagine, it made me fairly mad.
Seriously, do the work friends.
I felt that so many people I knew in the foresight world were at the opposite end of the scale to them. They were working hard to make sense of the turmoil we were in.
The foresight community had to look the pandemic in the face, see the inequities in the world, and work out what dimensions of change would be important.
It turns out there were more areas than I could’ve imagined that I had to go deep into for my clients. This list reads like
- The risk of new zoonotic diseases entering society
- New health protocols and biomedical preparedness
- Climate change (it is not healing and will likely get worse)
- Drought, famine and locust plagues
- The end of oil and funding if fossil fuels
- Technology infrastructure impact
- Virtual engagement and tactical user experience
- The acceleration of the housing market in Canada (that has been a huge surprise)
- Wearables
- Addiction and mental health
- The future of collaborative and nomadic work
- Urbanization, city and office design
- Construction
- Food systems and supply chain
- Civil unrest, organized crime and cybercrime
- The impact of ‘defunding the police’
- And, a number of topics that I can’t share
I am now officially the worst person to chat about the pandemic with in the bar (when we are allowed back). In a business context less so. The future has never been convenient and now more people are understanding that in a very real and visceral way.
The complexity of the COVID-19 pandemic has been impressive and terrible. Documentaries will be made about this time.
Today, it seems that chaos has calmed into a new reality flow as I look at the world in July. I feel like I had a 4 month bootcamp for futurism and new foresight practices.
Essential conversations
A ray of light in my life, besides my partner and family, was the community near and far. I rebooted the Exponential Minds Podcast (Spotify, Apple). I got to chat with Glen Hiemstra, Rafeeq Bosch, Sasko Despotovsky, Anne Boysen, Monika Bielskyte, Rocky Ozaki, Cathy Hackl, Ben Feist, Marianne Lefever, Bronywn Williams and others.
It was a balance. A breath of fresh air. An escape.
I urge you to seek out all of these amazing people.
Research, workshops, keynotes, and new perspectives
Overall, the trajectory of my work has changed, and for the better. It’s more holistic. More holistic. More empathetic and more humans. I’ve not cried so often about the terrible state of our failed industrial complex as I have in the past 4 months.
Central to my job is still to listen to the signals that show we can be better and create a more equitable world. To shape a future narrative that impacts our approaches today — whether they be set in big tech, traditional businesses, or in any level of government.
I’ve done a couple of virtual keynotes. I’ll likely do more. It’s nowhere near as rewarding as hitting the stage and meeting people that want to challenge me. But, I’ll take the opportunity to have important conversations.
Reach out. I want to hear from you. Help you see a new path forward. And, create an equitable future for us all.
In the meantime, I’m taking the rest of July and August off. That’s because I’m about to be a new father. But, that’s another story.
Here’s some of the other writing I’ve been doing recently:
Nikolas Badminton is the CEO of EXPONENTIAL MINDS and an award-winning Futurist Speaker, researcher and author. His expertise and thought leadership will guide you from complacency to thinking exponentially, planning for longevity, and encouraging a culture of innovation. You will then establish resiliency and abundance in your organization. Please reach out to discuss how he can help you, and read on to see what is happening in the world this week.
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