Season 2 | Episode 8

Flourishing (Not Just Surviving) in the Future

Anton Musgrave

When you think of the word futurist you might get an image of someone who has seen the future and asks you to be extremely cautious about your decisions, but Anton Musgrave, Partner in Futureworld International tells us how the future has less to do with meticulous planning and more to do with turning its unpredictable nature into opportunities

Episode Transcript
  • INTRO (Poornima Pandey): (00:00:10)

    Is it just me, or do all of you also feel that all our conversations over the last six months or so have been completely layered by the COVID-19 pandemic? It's almost as if everything we see is tinted by a pandemic lens. Legitimately so, but isn't there also a teeny-weeny part of us that is seeking to not be entirely gripped by the current narrative, which wants to break free and look far beyond. Beyond into that horizon where everything is anyway uncertain. A future where there are as many possibilities as there are difficulties, and at least as many solutions as there are problems. It is into that future that Anton Musgrave helps organizations leapfrog to. As a world renowned futurist, Partner in FutureWorld International, business strategist, public speaker, businessman and entrepreneur, Anton engages with clients across industries, families and institutions, and around the world including the Tata Group. Anton is an inspiring, spirited communicator, and an acclaimed teacher and facilitator at corporate events and strategic initiatives. His personal interests include scuba diving and underwater photography, wildlife, yachting, golf, and international travel. An adventure-seeker in every respect. I'm your host, Poornima Pandey, and you're listening in to Season 2 of LeaderCraft. Join me on this wild ride where Anton, who's based in South Africa, ignites our collective imagination, and exhorts us to flourish, and not just survive, in the future.

  • Poornima Pandey: (00:01:46)

    Thanks, Anton, for joining us for this episode. And for being, well, you.

  • Anton Musgrave: (00:01:53)

    Poornima, it's a great pleasure. Wonderful to be with you, and to share thoughts and ideas with our listeners.

  • Poornima Pandey: (00:01:59)

    When working with leadership teams of companies, you ask them to consider a time at least 7 to 10 years in the future, if not more. Why is that a good time period to work with? And in some ways, does this long horizon approach liberate us from the grip and, sometimes, paralysis of the pandemic?

  • Anton Musgrave: (00:02:17)

    Poornima, that's a really great question. I guess if you look at the world of business today, we really have become extremely focused on short term performance horizons. Indeed, even Wall Street, the reporting requirements of Wall Street, the incessant availability of information, etc., focuses executive teams on the next quarter, the next few quarters, if you like. And so there's this intensity of short term focus led by shareholders, the capital markets, customers, even to some extent. In addition to that, of course, executives are really, really smart people. They are extremely well-qualified, for the most part, they read extensively, they get access today to so much information all the time coming at them through multiple channels. But all of that information reinforces the focus on the now, and the short term. Of course, you know, events in the world like COVID absolutely don't help, because it really sucks all of our energy and our mental capacity into the present moment and its challenges, obviously, also its opportunities. So if you then try and have a conversation with an executive team about possibility in the future, whatever you share with them, or however you challenge them; all of that response is filtered through the biases and the filters that are deeply embedded in the way we think, and process information. So in my experience, now over the past 30 years, it's crucial to take the debate out of the now, take it into a time zone that's far enough into the future, so that even the most talented, skilled, educated executive will begin to raise doubts. Now I sometimes call executives "talented self believers", where they really have a high level of confidence that they know what the future will bring. And, of course, that's true, hopefully at least, in the short term or the medium term. But once you take them into the 7 to 10 year timeframe, even the most talented self believer will start questioning their own ability to predict or extrapolate with a high level of confidence. And it's in that zone of self doubt, or uncertainty, that the possibilities open up exponentially. So it's crucial to take the debate into that time zone. There's another set of very important reasons, of course, for shifting the debate away from the now. And that is the fundamental human, I guess, default of thinking, because when someone says "Why don't we do X, Y or Z in the company?," some of the subliminal, but nonetheless very powerful, thoughts that leaders have by default is "What's in it for me? What does that do to my retirement, or my pension fund, or my share allocation, or my power base?," you know, "What if this new idea actually decimates something that I'm responsible for today? Will that make me less important and less relevant in the organization?" Of course, also, in today's world, in most companies, I'm tempted to say every company, there's a degree of politics, right? So, you know, if the debate is pegged, in today's world, every word you say can and will be held against you in the corporate world at some point or another. So it's important to take the debate out of the present to de-link all of the present issues, you know, who's the Chairman of the company? What will the Board approve? What does our balance sheet enable us to think about? And so on, and so forth. And to take the conversation into this uncertain, very exciting future, but unconstrained from all of these short term realities. And they're very real, and they're very powerful, whether we acknowledge that or not. And so you enter this intellectual mental playing field of the future where everyone in the room says, "I'm not sure I know all the answers." And it's in that space, that real freedom of thought and aspiration can flourish.

  • Poornima Pandey: (00:06:15)

    So you have also deeply advocated for the fact that we are shifting from a linear world with predictable growth patterns to an exponential world which will impact the scale and speed of operations in the COVID and the post-COVID times. What is the kind of world that leaders should prepare themselves for?

  • Anton Musgrave: (00:06:33)

    Well, I think the fundamental principle that I advocate is that when you look at what I call the "unstoppable business tsunamis" that are shaping the context in which business takes place in the future, and the intersection of these tsunamis, and the combinatorial effect of these unstoppable business tsunamis. I think the word I would use to describe the future context or landscape for business, across all industries, is chaos. Chaos in the sense that the way we use to work with a linear future and linear consequences to decisions; the level of volatility is increasing, and the speed of changes is increasing. And I think we've all experienced that in multiple dimensions in our everyday life. And so, leaders need to be prepared to respond to uncertainty, short term impacts, and longer term opportunities very, very differently. So it brings back, I guess, a very fundamental element of leadership, and that is your gut feel. It removes, of course, some of the reliance of, you know, Excel-based, spreadsheet-based analysis, you know. "Prove to me the return on this investment in the next three years to the second decimal place." Well, those days are over. Either it's going to fail dismally, and fairly quickly, or it's going to deliver you returns that are so unimaginably large and exponential. So, how do you develop that intuition? How do you synthesize the complex forces into your view of the future and what it means for you and your team and your business? And I think the future, because of the levels of uncertainty, but also the range of possibility, suggests that there's often many more than just one right answer to a particular question. And so how does the leader embrace the range of opportunity, and make a choice that they then go and create? And I think you experience in your own life, sometimes, when you make a choice about something. It's amazing how it seems that the forces out there align to deliver your choice. And so, visualizing a future, making a choice, tends to create its own set of opportunities and realities, if you like. So by observing the future, and by imagining your ideal outcome, you kind of attract the people and the connections, and the opportunities that will combine to help make that real. But that's a very difficult skill for some leaders, you know, they rely on analysis, they rely on single-dimension answers to massively complex problems, and so forth. And so that then introduces the imperative to accept vulnerability. Are you prepared as a leader to say to your team, "I simply don't know, because I don't understand. Let's have a conversation. Let's explore. Let's debate. Let's weigh up all of these variables, and weight them, and see where we come out, and what is our gut feel collectively telling us? And then let's take a bold decision. Let's execute it, and accept that we may be wrong, and be willing to own that." And then share the lessons with that failure, with the team and move on from there. Of course, wash, rinse, and repeat the cycle.

  • Poornima Pandey: (00:09:54)

    Can you spend just, you know, a little bit of time telling us about how does one, you know, work with these possible and preferred futures?

  • Anton Musgrave: (00:10:03)

    Well, I think, you know, again, if I go back to the way many leaders operate, they want to know with as much certainty as possible. And so they rely on the obvious, if you like. But the truth is, if it's obvious, everyone sees it, and everyone in some shape or form is going to try and capitalize on what that obvious future holds, and what it offers. But the real growth, the real excitement comes when leadership teams are able to explore a wider range of possibilities. And they do that by extending the timeframe as we've spoken of already, but also extending the width and the range of things they look at. So we talk about the known knowns, and many leaders rely on the known knowns to develop a strategy and a plan, and to some extent I'm sure that is successful, certainly in the short term, and maybe even the medium term. But when you start exploring the unknown knowns and the known unknowns, you broaden the horizon and perspective. And then when you really start exploring the unknown unknowns. Finding out those things that you didn't know that you didn't know, wow. Then the world really just, sort of goes, you know, it becomes so wide and so exciting, so full of opportunities. And it's in that breadth and depth of new opportunities that we can then make strategic choices. And once you've made that strategic choice, of course, you know, there are certain, what I call "strategic enablers"; basic decisions and processes and steps and structures you need to put in place to start building towards that. Once you've designed that desired future state or outcome, pretend that it's real, pretend that you have arrived there, pretend that you celebrate this incredible exponential success. And take a moment to make it really, very personal and emotionally real. Pop the champagne cork if you like! And then ask yourself the question, "How did I get here? I've just won this incredible accolade. How did I get here? Then take your mind back from that state and that moment of celebration. Take it back to reality and say, "What were the milestones that I achieved en-route, to arriving at this incredibly exciting destination?" And articulate those, write them down, and then expand on them in a bit more detail. And so you start developing your actions or your strategy from the future backwards. And, in my experience, when leadership teams do this at any level of an organization; a) they come up with much more ambitious, exciting, desired outcomes, and b) they find very creative ways to overcome the reality of today's constraints.

  • Poornima Pandey: (00:12:46)

    The term I've picked up from you is all about goosebump leadership. So how do you see this as a powerful way of galvanizing action?

  • Anton Musgrave: (00:12:55)

    Everybody in the world across, all industries right now, is focusing on something which we call the fourth Industrial Revolution, right? And it's all about the technology, and so forth. And to me, if humans as a species are going to stay relevant in the future, as a species – and let's get as broad and philosophical as that for a moment, and then I'll bring it back to practical levels – we're going to have to reinvent what we do and how we do it, and why we do it. Because the technology is, you know, already just so powerful and so capable. And so for me, the next industrial revolution is actually going to be the fifth Industrial Revolution will be about re-humanizing people. It's rethinking, redesigning, and re-elevating the role of a human in the entire process, of business, of life, and of industries, and work, and so forth. But when you look at it, with technology being so amazing, the technology limitations, you know, into the zone where humans are generally brilliant, or potentially brilliant; so the tough crunching and analyzing and all of that is automated, and is intelligent, etc. But the ability to have ideas, the ability to question, to challenge, to be curious, to be romantic, to be innovative; that must be done by a human being. If you think about Jack Ma and Alibaba, you know, he came up with a very simple idea called Singles Day, where he said to all the lonely people in the world, "Buy yourself a gift on Singles Day, don't worry about Valentine's Day, because you have to have a romantic attachment for Valentine's Day to mean anything." But even in this world of social media, more and more people are lonely. And his epiphany, his aha! was "Wow, you know, go and do something for lonely people." And he created something which the technology didn't invent. He had the idea. The technology made it possible for him to build a business that delivered $40 billion of turnover in 24 hours, unthinkable retail success. But it came from the power of human insight, and that's what humans need to do. And so, how do you unleash humans to be their best self? Well, you've got to paint them a picture of a future or a destination or an aspiration, a dream, or a strategic outcome, if you want to use boring words, that really excites them. And if I listened to most corporate strategies, for example, if I read most corporate, most business Chairman statements; they are very logical, they're very analytical, they, you know, they maybe have a stretch goal in them, etc, etc. But so many of them sound the same. You can't differentiate them, you can't be inspired by them to be your best self. And so for me, I developed this concept of the Goosebump Test. If a leader stands in front of a team and explains the ambition for the team, whether it's a small team in the middle of the organization somewhere, or whether it's the Chief Executive talking about the next 5 or 10 years strategy; if people listening to you, or people reading your strategic intent, don't get physical goosebumps, when the hairs on your arm stand up, and you get these little bumps on your arm, if that doesn't happen, then the strategy hasn't spoken to the person at an emotional, aspirational level. And for companies, it requires, therefore, a shift away from this crazy focus just on shareholder value. And we're seeing it in the world now. If you look at, again, so many of the polarizing forces in the world today, you know, ranging from the incredible wealth that very few executives make in companies, compared to the rest of the employees. If you look at the disparity of wealth across the world, which is growing all the time; we really do need to rethink how we measure success in the future. And yes, profitability, certain financial-performance ratios, those are all important to me, have to, kind of, tick those off. But I think we have to move beyond that, and we have to build businesses that give everyone in the entire ecosystem – the broader ecosystem, including society – we have to give them all the hope that tomorrow will be better than today.

  • Poornima Pandey: (00:17:03)

    There's one thing that's on all our minds today, that what do you think is the future of the future?

  • Anton Musgrave: (00:17:08)

    That's a lovely question. So, I mean, I think, let me give you the answer first, upfront, if you like, to dispel any concern. I truly believe the future of the future is enormously exciting, and full of incredible opportunity for every one of the, currently almost 8 billion people, and I guess in the next 10 or 20 years, we will grow to 9 or 9.5 billion people. So the potential for that future is just unimaginably exciting, however, so that's the outcome. But there is a however or a but, and I hate adding buts into answers, but it's important this time around. I truly believe the world, for many reasons, is at a moment which you might call a tipping point, or a fork in the road. And I think if you just press pause, and kind of imagine as it's easy to do when you're flying – that's one thing I really miss about not flying around the world, I used to love sitting in the aircraft, staring out the window at the clouds and sometimes looking through the break in the clouds to Earth below me, and really getting perspective to disengage from the pressures of the day, and just to get a bit of perspective about, you know, the world and the state it's in – if you do that right now, whether we're talking about capitalism and the possibility that we're approaching what I would call the "peak capitalism period" where capitalism, as we know it, is reaching its sell-by date, and that we realize we need a new economic model to inspire and stimulate and care for, you know, 8 or 9 billion people differently. Perhaps, I think we all know we're reaching Peak Oil, where the energy world is changing fundamentally from, you know, carbon energy to different forms of renewable energy, where we are reaching peak democracy, potentially. I mean, the world is not binary, and the challenges the world face are not binary, they're multi dimensionally complex, interdependent issues. So I think we're approaching a fork in the road where world leaders really do, ideally, need to sit down together, and reimagine the future of Planet Earth and humanity 30-40-50 years from now, and work back from that. And I think that will lead us to take some different decisions in, you know, policies, governments, in how our countries collaborate, our countries engage, and how we really, together, build a better future for the human species. If we take the wrong fork in the road, you know, there will still be opportunity for those that can stay ahead of where things are and the challenges in the world, but I think we will miss building a better future for 8 billion people. So I'm confident, quietly hopeful, that with powerful business leaders and – indeed, the Tata Group has, you know, for more than a century now has had an ambition and a purpose that transcends the short term Wall Street financial performance metrics – if we can encapsulate that kind of ambition in the geopolitical debate, in the debate around business, society, politics and so forth, I'm very excited about the future of the future.

  • Poornima Pandey: (00:20:16)

    I just want to say that, you know, this is actually going to be our tail end, and the episode wrap-up for our Season 2 of LeaderCraft and what a wrap-up it's been, Anton, you know, you leave us on an optimistic note. On one that, you know, will leave us looking at the future with, you know, bright sparks and eyes and goosebumps too. So thank you so much for being with us on this episode.

  • Anton Musgrave: (00:20:39)

    Poornima, it's been a really, really great pleasure. I've thoroughly enjoyed, your questions were phenomenal. I even got goosebumps with some of the myself! I hope I inspired the audience and got them to think a bit differently about themselves as leaders, and about their businesses, and even about their families. So, good luck to everyone, and let's go and make this future really great.

  • Poornima Pandey: (00:20:59)

    Thank you!

  • OUTRO (Poornima Pandey): (00:21:05)

    When you think of the word "futurist", you might get an image of someone who has seen the future and asks you to be extremely cautious about the decisions you make. But my conversation with Anton proved to be quite the opposite. Thinking of the future has less to do with meticulous planning, and more to do with facing its unpredictable nature by treating it as full of possibilities and opportunities. Even in uncertain times, like the one we have witnessed this year, Anton's outlook makes us realize that we should be less obsessed with whether the future is bright or bleak, and instead be grateful that we have a future to look forward to. So that's a wrap on Season 2 of LeaderCraft. We shall return very soon with a new season of inspiring conversations, with me Poornima Pandey. and till then, it's a goodbye!

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