John David Mann: Over the past 25 years, he has written many books on business, leadership and the law of success.
What will happen if the future is visible? This book is a book that teaches you how to judge the trend, predict the future, take action and change the future. It will change the way you look at problems, broaden your thinking and help you find new opportunities that you can use in your career and life.
Foresight is a skill that can be developed, perfected and strengthened. Vision has seven triggers, not all of which are used in every visual flash, but most people will use at least a few of them. You can think of it as seven notes similar to music, but if you want to know how to write music, you'd better know these seven notes because you will use them sooner or later.
1. Start with certainty (use hard trends to predict what will happen)
2, insight into opportunities (according to the future you know, determine the strategy)
3. Change (use technology-driven changes to your advantage)
Step 4 jump out of the problem you are facing (this is not the real problem)
5. do the opposite (look in the direction that no one pays attention to and do what no one has done)
6. Redefine and recreate (identify and use your uniqueness in powerful new ways)
7. dominate the future (otherwise others will show you a future)
Using the illusion trigger is like walking. When you break down the walking process, it will be quite complicated: shift the center of gravity to the toes, then shift from left to right and swing your arms. If you have to think about how each muscle should move, you will be at a loss. So it's hard for the baby to start learning to walk. Today, you strode forward without thinking.
So is foresight. At the beginning, you should consciously exercise all seven psychological processes, one at a time, slowly and carefully. As time goes on, it will become more and more natural, and finally it will be used smoothly with almost no effort.
We often set limits for ourselves and focus our hesitation on things we don't know and can't do. At this time, we might as well change our thinking, form the habit of setting out firmly, and list what we already know and can do.
1, periodic change, such as seasonal change; Weather changes; The economy is sometimes prosperous and sometimes depressed; Politics is sometimes radical and sometimes conservative. ...
2. Linear changes, such as human aging; Data, information and knowledge growth; The speed of computer operation has increased. ...
Compared with periodic changes, linear changes are often more intriguing and can create new and unique environments and opportunities.
1, a hard trend is bound to happen, which is the fate of the future.
After World War II, the US military returned home in triumph, and nine months later, millions of family members appeared a 100% predictable phenomenon: baby boom. The population of the United States, born between 1946 and 1964, is about 78 million. The same baby boom also appeared in Japan and Europe after World War II. The hard trend of baby boom lasted for more than 50 years, and then strangely, every time it reached a new stage of life, it still caught the society off guard. Overseas soldiers returned to China on 1945, and the number of hospitals was insufficient after 1 year, and the number of kindergartens was insufficient after 5 years. Seven years later, junior high school (? ) Not enough. This series of phenomena, if we can cultivate the habit of finding hard trends, everyone can see it!
When providing consulting services for a well-known insurance company, the author once asked: How many insurance companies in your company are responsible for global business? How many people whose income exceeds 80% of turnover will retire within three years? When the supervisor learned that the figure was as high as 60%, he was shocked and speechless. The company is about to lose a large number of veterans with professional skills and experience, and then the supervisor is completely unaware of it.
2. Possible soft trends are future variables.
1On August 6th, 977, legendary rock singer Elvis Presley died at the age of 42. Elvis Presley sold more than 654.38 billion records before his death, and there were few music superstars. When Elvis Presley was alive, more than 100 people took pleasure in imitating him. After his death, the number of Elvis Presley heads soared, and even a whole new industry came into being. The author did a trend analysis exercise and carefully studied the data of Elvis Presley imitators, covering 65,438+0,977 to 65,438+0,982. The results show that by the year 2000, one third of Americans will become professional Elvis impersonators.
The above examples seem ridiculous, but the reality is that we often make wrong predictions and believe them, from personal life to corporate and government decisions. We analyze the trend according to the correct and true figures, but the results are not necessarily accurate.
3, the difference between soft trend and hard trend
Example 1: As the baby boomers enter the old age, the demand for medical care will increase, which is a hard trend because the population data is fixed. The expected shortage of medical staff is a soft trend because actions can be taken to change it.
Exodus 2: You will get old in ten years, which is a hard trend, because the phenomenon of getting old cannot be changed. There is no way to be 100% sure whether your physical condition is getting better or worse, or to maintain the status quo. This is a soft trend because you can take action to change it.
In short, if you find a hard trend, you can see the future; Finding soft trends can change the future.
1, check your life and work, and list the periodic and linear changes that affect them.
2. Check industries and list hard trends and soft trends.
Don't be confused by the unknown, ask yourself what you can be sure of and think about how to use it.
4. Question your assumptions, make a list and further confirm the certainty.
5. Take action on the plan based on certainty.
Life is not only about dealing with crises, but also about seizing opportunities. Making changes to cope with the external environment is usually exhausting, while changes initiated from the inside are purposeful and constructive. The latter is preemptive and opportunity management, which is helpful to the growth of individuals and enterprises and enables people to build their own future and control their own destiny. The only way to change from the inside is to gain insight into opportunities.
Stop: Let go of the problem at hand, make up your mind to set aside time for self-training and become an insight into opportunities. If you work in an enterprise, you are determined to run your enterprise into a company with insight into opportunities. Once you stop, understand the importance of preemption, and are determined to develop the ability to foresee the future, you can take the next step: look.
Look: predict the future. Ask yourself, "What problems will I face?" What problems do not exist today, but will emerge in the next three months or six months? What will happen after one year, three years or even ten years? These problems are for you to solve. Don't just solve the current problem. If you want to stay ahead of others, there is no other way but to solve tomorrow's problems today. In other words, this problem will not arise at all. Once you start looking to the future, you can move on to the next step: listening.
Listen: Listen to the future problems and possible solutions your intuition tells you. Clues may be out of your future sight. As you know how to predict the future more and more, and your inspirational foresight becomes stronger and stronger, you can hear more clues. Over time, it will even reach a state of responsive answers.
The best way for business leaders is the present tense, which is out of date when they learn to use it. Plans can never catch up with changes, and in the 2 1 century with intensified changes, it is only futile to strive to catch up. It's no use chasing, but striding forward is king. We should skip the current best practices and look for the best practices in the future with hard trends and future certainty as the pedals. Predict what leading enterprises will do in four to five years, take their best practices in the future as a model, adjust the company's operating strategy, and then jump to the top of the industry, instead of playing the game of catching up with leaders all the time.
With the continuous accumulation of knowledge, the ability of human beings to communicate and cooperate with each other has also improved. Knowledge and communication complement each other and promote the geometric growth of science and technology. In order to clearly outline the blueprint of future life, we might as well look at several ocean currents that converge into huge waves. There are eight hard trends of scientific and technological progress, and each path has its own hard trend.
1, dematerialization (computers/mobile phones are getting smaller and smaller, tapes disappear, electronic payment replaces paper money ...)
2. Virtualization (simulation system, games ...)
3. Liquidity
4, intelligent
5. Build a working network
Step 6 interact
7. Globalization (information dissemination, economic globalization ...)
8. Convergence (coffee shop and bookstore are combined into one, and various applications are gathered on mobile phones ...)
Throttle 1: Arithmetic processing capacity
Moore's Law means that the computing power of a computer will double every eighteen months. But this is not absolute. For example, in the 1970s, it took several years to double the computing power. But then the speed accelerated again, showing a stable trend. Although Moore publicly stated that this speed cannot be maintained forever. However, there is no sign of slowing down in the past decade, and this trend will not change in the next decade.
Throttle 2: Bandwidth
The growth of digital bandwidth is faster than that of digital processing. Unlike Moore's Law, this principle has no popular name (although some people call it Burroughs Bandwidth Law).
Throttle 3: Storage capacity
The storage capacity will double every 12 months, which is faster than the bandwidth and computing power.
The wave of science and technology is coming at us. The computing power, storage capacity and bandwidth have multiplied, and the vertical breakthrough seems to roll up a thousand waves. The future is coming ashore, so can we understand the great changes in science and technology?
Remember, all this is not only possible, but the speed of technological change is bound to accelerate, just as the sun is bound to rise in the east. In the future, the huge wave of science and technology will sweep everything, and it will happen whether people like it or not. Education, medical care, agriculture, energy, manufacturing, every industry and every institution will be impacted and completely changed. This great change will destroy every aspect of every industry and change every aspect of human activities, and only those who have insight into the future will be spared.
1. Ask yourself: What problems will I encounter in my life and work? Don't wait for the problem to happen, but solve it first.
2. Ask yourself: What kind of life do you want in ten years or more? What steps should I take to realize it?
You can recall the changes that have taken place in China since the 1990s. Here I think of 20 10. When I first came to Beijing, the paper map of Beijing issued by Beijing Railway Station, and now the electronic map has completely changed our way of traveling. From the mainstream point of view, it is easy to think that the biggest change has taken place, but the past change is only a preface, and the future change will inevitably come.
We are at the dawn of the era of technology-driven change, and all the changes we have experienced in the past 25 years are dull, moderate and slow. But we have crossed the threshold and entered an era of change. This is the background of the third visionary trigger: the expectation of fundamental change.
In the past, change was very important. Now, it is not enough to change the status quo. In fact, I told my clients that change is doomed to fail and we need change.
web3.0
Web3.0 focuses on immersion and multidimensional experience. Look for information on the internet now, and the language will change in the future. We will talk about learning and communicating on the Internet.
Since 2000, the author began to show early 3D web browsers in his speeches. Using this browser is like stepping into an internal space, shopping in an immersive environment and enjoying customer service.
When you click on this website, it is like walking into a room. Turn right. There are real-time news on the wall, including CNN, The new york Times, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, BBC, any news website you like. On your left, there is the latest project you are working on. Behind you is the itinerary of your next trip, your bank and investment information. ...
web4.0
We will use electronic agents to handle a lot of network-based work for us. You can access your electronic agent anytime, anywhere. Only you can access it. You can use two biometrics to verify your identity, such as voice and face, or voice and fingerprint.
You can choose different types of plug-in agent functions, such as financial agent, travel agent, fitness coach and so on. Every time you use an electronic agent, it will use neural network technology to learn more about you. The appearance and sound of an electronic agent will depend on you, and you can even give it a personality. Most people will rent public images as personal electronic agents.
Questions about the future of intelligence
When it comes to such a development, people will say, "That sounds terrible. Everyone in the world interacts with machines and artificial intelligence. Can people still talk? " Actually, it's just the opposite. The more technology develops, the more we need high-frequency contact. A whole generation of adults are worried that more and more real video games will make their children become antisocial, solitary automatic machines, lose meaningful interpersonal relationships or reduce their sensitivity to society. However, various phenomena show that the children of Generation Y show signs of thinking: they are more socially conscious, more concerned about the environment and other social problems, and more creative than any previous generation.
Principle of tolerance: new technologies may not necessarily replace old technologies, on the contrary, they often get along well. The combination of new technology and old technology can make the cake bigger in an amazing way.
The secret of keeping the original technology and finding the growth point is to let these organizations with old technology embrace the new technology and creatively integrate the old and new technologies. The faster the world changes, the more we live in an inclusive world. For enterprises that want to build a lasting foundation and achieve prosperity, the key enlightenment brought by foresight is to constantly seek various ways to integrate new and old resources and innovate.
Example 1: In the 1980s, many future experts predicted that the office would be paperless by the end of 1990s, but we are still waiting for the arrival of paperless.
In the late 1990s, experts began to predict that shopping centers would disappear in a few years, but the reality is that shopping centers still exist.
Example 3: Experts predict that Amazon's great success indicates that physical bookstores will no longer exist, but these bookstores will still stand, because you can't walk into Amazon Bookstore, sit on the sofa, order a latte and browse magazines.
1, as long as possible, it will be realized.
If you don't do it, others will do it.
1. Review the eight paths of technological progress and three digital savings, and ask yourself: How will these affect your life and work?
2. Thinking: How can we successfully transform our fields and enterprises in the next few years?
3. Based on the principle of inclusiveness, think about how to integrate innovation to produce better results.
4. Think about how to grasp the undiscovered needs of new and old customers.
5. Draft strategies and make changes in sales, marketing, communication, collaboration and innovation.
6. Look at all these questions, find the possibility, and remember: if you don't do it, others will do it.
Exercise: Close your eyes and ask yourself: What is the biggest problem in my work at present? Close your eyes until you find the answer. ?
The typical approach is to grasp the problem and solve it. The consequence of this practice is that in order to solve the problem, you need to spend time studying it. This will often make your forward wheel fall into the quagmire of problems (nao) and fall into crisis mode.
Vision provides different paths. Instead of spending time facing the biggest obstacles, it is better to simply skip them. This is not philosophical denial, avoidance or procrastination. It is a powerful concept jujitsu, a previously invisible crisis, so that we can take decisive actions to solve these problems.
If you take out the problem and look at it from different angles, you may find that it is not a real problem. Don't try to solve it, it may be better to skip it. The key to finding the best solution is to ensure that you are solving the most suitable problem. Only by finding the real problem can we find the real opportunity.
1, onion skin practice (identifying and confirming your biggest problem is the first step, and finding the real problem often starts here, and the process of finding it is like peeling an onion)
Problem: Our problem is that we don't have enough talents to serve global customers, and business opportunities are everywhere, but we don't have enough manpower to implement them.
****
Here are a series of questions and explorations (peeling onions)
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The real problem: if existing employees can communicate and cooperate more effectively, they can not only simplify and consolidate existing employees, but also need not hire new employees, so the real problem is how to strengthen communication and cooperation between employees.
Step 2 focus on only one issue
"Give me a fulcrum, and I can move the earth." When you find the core problem by peeling onions and focus on solving it, you find the fulcrum of your efforts.
3. Don't jump to judgment
It's not easy not to jump to judgment, because it goes against our habits and instincts, but it can bring huge returns. Easy judgment will blind us to new opportunities and hidden problems. When we hear a new technology, understand a radical idea, or look at a problem from another angle, our first reaction is often to judge the value of new information based on past experience. But the past is different from the future. If we can realize this nature of being eager to make judgments, we can take a step back, put away our intuitive reactions that we want to evaluate, take off the blindfold, and see hidden things. It is impossible to challenge.
1. Ask yourself what is the biggest problem at present?
Don't stand still, go ahead bravely.
3. Think like an onion.
4. Focus on one question at a time.
Step 5 ask for help from science and technology
6. Don't jump to judgment.
7. Jump to the finish line
8. Think about any legacy system problems in your field.
9. Check each current strategy and ask yourself: Does it follow the principle of scarcity or abundance?
The strategy of reverse thinking can often reveal the solutions to practical problems at an alarming speed.
1. List what competitors are doing and ask yourself: How to do the opposite to gain an advantage?
2, reverse thinking "industry mainstream thinking" to seek opportunities.
3. Divide the goal into different parts, look at each part and ask yourself: What factors can gain an advantage in the opposite direction?
4. Understand: The future will always be the winner.
5. Understand: Cooperation can create a bigger cake.
In a sense, change is a hard trend, and re-creation is a soft trend. Whether you like it or not, change is bound to happen, right around us. Re-creation will depend on us If you don't do it, others will do it.
You may think that change is like everyone is drawing cards. We can't change the cards in our hands. They are the hard trend of the world and future changes. If this is destiny takes a hand's, of course, there is no meaning, no hope, and it is impossible to change or improve the future, because these are all preset. However, this is not the whole truth, because there is another wild card, and you are that wild card. You can foresee the changes in your field, industry, occupation and life, and take the initiative to adapt to these changes. How come? By redefining and creating. Redefining and re-creating is to seize the opportunity to rewrite your own history before things happen.
Combine grasping the hard trend of the future with self-transformation, and you can create great victories in both the market and life.
1. Ignore competition and redefine everything in the enterprise.
2. Continue commercialization
3. New wine in old bottles is also being created.
4. Find your core strengths
5. Be brave and different
1. The future vision we hold determines our actions and then the results.
2. Learn to fail quickly
Power 1: communication
Advantage 2: Cooperation
Power 3: Trust
Review the future every week 1 hour!
The author said: My biggest worry is that if you learn to foresee, you will put this book away and go back to clean up the mess to get yourself out of the current crisis. After all, the fire burned to the eyebrows, how can we still have time to seriously examine the future? In fact, no one has time. Therefore, we should make special time, put it on the agenda, make an appointment with ourselves and gain insight into the future.
It only takes one hour a week. I often tell my clients this, and they usually retort, "but I can't afford the time!" " Of course, they are in their present position because they didn't take the time to look forward to the future! I advise them to try their best to find time and re-examine the future. "After all," I pointed out, "the rest of your life belongs to the future. Isn't it worthwhile to set aside an hour a week to think about the future? "
I call this time of the week tomorrow's lab.
In this hour, your task is to completely unplug the present and plug in your future. This means cutting off your cell phone, laptop, everything at hand. This means not only turning off the equipment, but also making a commitment to stop thinking about the current problems and anything that can't keep your attention for at least an hour.
Once you put your real worries behind you, you can start exploring the future.