Get Unstuck - Futurecast

Any time you want to take an interesting, worthwhile, non-cookie-cutter approach to your career, hopping off the treadmill and finding the path that lights your fire, getting stuck is bound to be part of the bargain. There's just no way around it.

A while ago I posted some ideas for getting unstuck. Shortly after that, Heath Row at Fast Company was kind enough to slip me an advance copy of a great new book, "Unstuck: A tool for yourself, your team, and your world." Its funky, simple, nonlinear approach is packed with easily digestable, bite sized doses of un-sticky ideas (Yeesh! Every once in a while I write something and it feels like the ghost of my marketing past has commandeered my brain - did I really just write that?! Ah well, cheese factor aside, it's all true.)

Much of the book addresses getting unstuck in a company environment, but a lot of it can apply to individuals as well. Here's one idea I especially liked:

Futurecast

Sometimes teams get stuck because they don't see their next action as an incremental step on a journey to somewhere meaningful. One way to define what is meaningful is to "futurecast" (forecasting + imagination). Project out a few months, years, even decades to see a different view of the challenges ahead. Create competitors to test your battle worthiness. examine how your industry intersects others. Witness how customers will change. Visualize it. Write it down. Then venture back to the present day. What will you now do differently based on the future you saw?

I love the idea of futurecasting. As we pursue our dreams, it's so easy to get caught in the muck and the mire of the present tense. Stop for a minute and ask yourself, what could be? What might be? What would happen if? It's a great way to take off the blinders, look at things from a different perspecitive, and get the juices flowing again.

Comments

[Paul Goodison]

The future casting or scenario building is an excellent tool in a variety of situations not just about getting unstuck. It can also be used to prepare contingency plans or effect changes to organisational / individual behaviour to cope with dramatic or incremental change. So consider what would you do if your firm went bankrupt, made you redundant, offered you promotion, exapnded in Europe/Asia but make those scenrios 'real' and reflect upon what they tell you otherwise you'll end up doing what so many people do and carry out a thought experiment and then leave it gathering dust on the proverbial shelf.

[Paul Goodison]

The future casting or scenario building is an excellent tool in a variety of situations not just about getting unstuck. It can also be used to prepare contingency plans or effect changes to organisational / individual behaviour to cope with dramatic or incremental change. So consider what would you do if your firm went bankrupt, made you redundant, offered you promotion, exapnded in Europe/Asia but make those scenrios 'real' and reflect upon what they tell you otherwise you'll end up doing what so many people do and carry out a thought experiment and then leave it gathering dust on the proverbial shelf.