0:00:00.789,0:00:04.182
So I've been futuring,[br]which is a term I made up --

0:00:04.182,0:00:05.815
(Laughter)

0:00:05.815,0:00:09.468
about three seconds ago.[br]I've been futuring for about 20 years,

0:00:09.468,0:00:13.141
and when I first started,[br]I would sit down with people,

0:00:13.141,0:00:16.090
and say, "Hey, let's talk[br]10, 20 years out."

0:00:16.090,0:00:17.890
And they'd say, "Great."

0:00:17.890,0:00:24.305
And I've been seeing that time[br]horizon get shorter and shorter

0:00:24.305,0:00:26.561
and shorter,

0:00:26.561,0:00:27.738
so much so that I met[br]with a CEO two months ago

0:00:27.738,0:00:29.707
and I said, look, we started[br]our initial conversation.

0:00:29.707,0:00:34.147
He goes, "I love what you do.[br]I want to talk about the next six months."

0:00:34.147,0:00:35.281
(Laughter)

0:00:35.281,0:00:39.730
We have a lot of problems[br]that we are facing.

0:00:39.730,0:00:43.391
These are civilizational-scale problems.

0:00:43.391,0:00:45.856
The issue though is,

0:00:45.856,0:00:47.648
we can't solve them

0:00:47.648,0:00:50.541
using the mental models[br]that we use right now

0:00:50.541,0:00:51.447
to try and solve these problems.

0:00:51.447,0:00:55.340
Yes, a lot of great technical work[br]is being done, but there is a problem

0:00:55.340,0:00:58.614
that we need to solve for a priori,

0:00:58.614,0:01:03.396
before, if we want to really[br]move the needle on those big problems:

0:01:03.396,0:01:05.172
short-termism.

0:01:05.172,0:01:07.685
Right? There's no marches.[br]There's no bracelets.

0:01:07.685,0:01:11.532
There's no petitions that you can sign[br]to be against short-termism.

0:01:11.532,0:01:14.478
I tried to put one up,[br]and no one signed.

0:01:14.478,0:01:16.371
It was weird.[br](Laughter)

0:01:16.371,0:01:20.569
But it prevents us from doing so much.

0:01:20.569,0:01:23.077
Short-termism, for many reason,

0:01:23.077,0:01:26.129
has pervaded every nook[br]and cranny of our reality.

0:01:26.129,0:01:28.749
I just want you to take a second[br]and just think about an issue

0:01:28.749,0:01:31.640
that you're thinking, working on.

0:01:31.640,0:01:33.699
It could be personal,[br]it could be at work,

0:01:33.699,0:01:35.774
or it could be move-the-needle[br]world stuff, and think about

0:01:35.774,0:01:41.982
how far out you tend to think[br]about the solution set for that.

0:01:41.982,0:01:46.115
Because short-termism prevents the CEO

0:01:46.115,0:01:50.042
from buying really[br]expensive safety equipment.

0:01:50.042,0:01:52.444
It'll hurt the bottom line.

0:01:52.444,0:01:54.680
So we get the Deep Water Horizon.

0:01:54.680,0:01:57.503
Short-termism prevents teachers

0:01:57.503,0:02:01.076
from spending quality[br]one-on-one time with their students.

0:02:01.076,0:02:03.122
So right now in America,

0:02:03.122,0:02:06.916
a high school student drops out[br]every 26 seconds.

0:02:06.916,0:02:10.430
Short-termism prevents Congress --

0:02:10.430,0:02:12.567
sorry if there's anyone[br]in here from Congress,

0:02:12.567,0:02:16.450
or not really that sorry --[br](Laughter) --

0:02:16.450,0:02:22.444
from putting money into a real[br]infrastructure bill.

0:02:22.444,0:02:26.737
So what we get is the I-35 bridge collapse[br]over the Mississippi a few years ago,

0:02:26.737,0:02:29.254
13 killed.

0:02:29.254,0:02:30.986
It wasn't always like this.

0:02:30.986,0:02:32.882
We did the Panama Canal.

0:02:32.882,0:02:35.246
We pretty much have eradicated[br]global polio.

0:02:35.246,0:02:38.852
We did the trans-continental railroad,[br]the Marshall Plan,

0:02:38.852,0:02:43.198
and it's not just big, physical[br]infrastructure problems and issues.

0:02:43.198,0:02:45.140
Women's suffrage, the right to vote.

0:02:45.140,0:02:47.799
But in our short-termist time,

0:02:47.799,0:02:50.459
where everything seems to happen right now

0:02:50.459,0:02:55.047
and we can only think out[br]past the next tweet or timeline post,

0:02:55.047,0:02:57.056
we get hyper-reactionary.

0:02:57.056,0:02:58.505
So what do we do?

0:02:58.505,0:03:02.437
We take people who are fleeing[br]their war-torn country

0:03:02.437,0:03:03.979
and we go after them.

0:03:03.979,0:03:07.415
We take low-level drug offenders[br]and we put them away for life,

0:03:07.415,0:03:10.079
and then we build McMansions[br]without even thinking about

0:03:10.079,0:03:12.669
how we're going to get between[br]them and their job.

0:03:12.669,0:03:15.025
It's a quick buck.

0:03:15.025,0:03:18.402
Now the reality is,[br]for a lot of these problems,

0:03:18.402,0:03:20.260
there are some technical fixes,

0:03:20.260,0:03:21.322
a lot of them.

0:03:21.322,0:03:25.036
I call these technical fixes[br]sandbag strategies. Right?

0:03:25.036,0:03:26.949
So you know there's a storm coming,

0:03:26.949,0:03:29.368
the levee is broken,[br]no one's put any money into it,

0:03:29.368,0:03:31.813
you surround your home with sandbags,

0:03:31.813,0:03:33.921
and guess what? It works.

0:03:33.921,0:03:36.518
Storm goes away,[br]the water level goes down,

0:03:36.518,0:03:37.780
you get rid of the sandbags,

0:03:37.780,0:03:42.028
and you do this storm[br]after storm after storm.

0:03:42.028,0:03:44.202
And here's the insidious thing.

0:03:44.202,0:03:46.284
A sandbag strategy

0:03:46.284,0:03:48.489
can get you reelected.

0:03:48.489,0:03:51.054
A sandbag strategy

0:03:51.054,0:03:52.966
can help you make your quarterly numbers.

0:03:52.966,0:03:57.598
Now, if we want to move forward

0:03:57.598,0:04:00.475
into a different future[br]than the one we have right now,

0:04:00.475,0:04:01.839
because I don't think we've hit,

0:04:01.839,0:04:04.866
2016 is not peak civilization.

0:04:04.866,0:04:07.880
There's some more we can do,

0:04:07.880,0:04:11.541
but my argument is that unless[br]we shift our mental models

0:04:11.541,0:04:12.656
and our mental maps

0:04:12.656,0:04:14.666
on how we think about the short,

0:04:14.666,0:04:16.374
it's not going to happen.

0:04:16.374,0:04:19.451
So what I've developed[br]is something called longpath,

0:04:19.451,0:04:20.992
and it's a practice,

0:04:20.992,0:04:25.226
and longpath isn't a kind[br]of one-and-done exercise.

0:04:25.226,0:04:28.179
I'm sure everyone here at some point[br]has done an off-site

0:04:28.179,0:04:28.429
with a lot of post-it notes[br]and white boards,

0:04:29.777,0:04:35.170
and you do, no offense to the consultants[br]in here who do that,

0:04:35.170,0:04:38.539
and you do a long-term plan,[br]and then two weeks later,

0:04:38.539,0:04:40.177
everyone forgets about it.

0:04:40.177,0:04:43.435
Right? Or a week later.[br]If you're lucky, three months.

0:04:43.435,0:04:48.786
It's a practice because[br]it's not necessarily a thing that you do.

0:04:48.786,0:04:51.528
It's a process where you have[br]to revisit different ways of thinking

0:04:51.528,0:04:54.984
for every major decision[br]that you're working on.

0:04:54.984,0:05:01.643
So I want to go through[br]those three ways of thinking.

0:05:01.643,0:05:02.152
So the first: transgenerational thinking.

0:05:02.152,0:05:02.402
I love the philosophers:

0:05:02.402,0:05:07.353
Plato, Socrates, Habermas, Heidegger.[br]I was raised on them.

0:05:07.353,0:05:10.307
But they all did one thing

0:05:10.307,0:05:13.024
that didn't actually seem like a big deal

0:05:13.024,0:05:14.413
until I really started kind of[br]looking into this.

0:05:14.413,0:05:16.472
And they all took,

0:05:16.472,0:05:19.913
as a unit of measure[br]for their entire reality

0:05:19.913,0:05:22.145
of what it meant to be virtuous and good,

0:05:22.145,0:05:25.987
the single lifespan, from birth to death.

0:05:25.987,0:05:27.984
But here's a problem with these issues:

0:05:27.984,0:05:31.041
they stack up on top of us, but because[br]the only way we know how to do

0:05:31.041,0:05:34.165
something good in the world is if[br]we do it between our birth and our death.

0:05:34.165,0:05:35.515
That's what we're programmed to do.

0:05:35.515,0:05:38.950
If you go to the self-help section[br]in any bookstore,

0:05:38.950,0:05:41.650
it's all about you.

0:05:41.650,0:05:43.469
Which is great,

0:05:43.469,0:05:48.221
unless you're dealing[br]with some of these major issues.

0:05:48.221,0:05:51.530
And so with transgenerational thinking,

0:05:51.530,0:05:54.325
which is really kind of[br]transgenerational ethics,

0:05:54.325,0:05:58.261
you're able to expand how you think[br]about these problems,

0:05:58.261,0:06:02.114
what is your role[br]in helping to solve them.

0:06:02.114,0:06:06.709
Now, this isn't something that just has to[br]be done at the Security Council chamber.

0:06:06.709,0:06:10.142
It's something that you can do[br]in a very kind of personal way.

0:06:10.142,0:06:13.475
So every once in a while, if I'm lucky,[br]my wife and I like to go out to dinner,

0:06:13.475,0:06:17.734
and we have three children[br]under the age of seven.

0:06:17.734,0:06:21.061
So you can imagine it's a very[br]peaceful, quiet meal.

0:06:21.061,0:06:26.518
So we sit down, and literally[br]all I want to do is just eat and chill,

0:06:26.518,0:06:30.261
and my kids have a completely[br]and totally different idea

0:06:30.261,0:06:31.509
of what we're going to be doing.

0:06:31.509,0:06:33.649
And so my first idea

0:06:33.649,0:06:35.481
is my sandbag strategy, right?

0:06:35.481,0:06:37.707
It's to go into my pocket[br]and take out the iPhone

0:06:37.707,0:06:39.441
and give them "Frozen"

0:06:39.441,0:06:42.140
or some other bestselling game thing.

0:06:42.140,0:06:47.319
And then I stop

0:06:47.319,0:06:52.003
and I have to kind of put this[br]transgenerational thinking cap.

0:06:52.003,0:06:54.393
I don't do this in the restaurant,[br]because it would be bizarre,

0:06:54.393,0:06:55.741
but I have to --

0:06:55.741,0:06:57.875
I did it once, and that's how[br]I learned it was bizarre.

0:06:57.875,0:06:59.674
(Laughter)

0:06:59.674,0:07:04.243
And you have to kind of think,[br]okay, I can do this.

0:07:04.243,0:07:07.727
But what is this teaching them?

0:07:07.727,0:07:10.403
So what does it mean if I actually[br]bring some paper

0:07:10.403,0:07:11.768
or engage with them in conversation?

0:07:11.768,0:07:14.465
It's hard. It's not easy, and I'm[br]making this very personal.

0:07:14.465,0:07:17.443
It's actually more traumatic in some of[br]the big issues that I work on in the world

0:07:17.443,0:07:19.975
is entertaining my kids at dinner.

0:07:19.975,0:07:25.045
But what it does is it connects them[br]here in the present with me,

0:07:25.045,0:07:26.653
but it also,

0:07:26.653,0:07:29.685
and this is the crux of[br]transgenerational thinking ethics,

0:07:29.685,0:07:33.094
it sets them up to how they're[br]going to interact with their kids

0:07:33.094,0:07:36.645
and their kids and their kids.

0:07:36.645,0:07:38.949
Second, futures thinking.

0:07:38.949,0:07:40.868
When we think about the future,

0:07:40.868,0:07:43.952
10, 15 years out,

0:07:43.952,0:07:45.983
give me a vision of what the future is.

0:07:45.983,0:07:48.837
You don't have to give it to me,[br]but think in your head.

0:07:48.837,0:07:51.707
And what you're probably going to see

0:07:51.707,0:07:53.473
is the dominant cultural lens

0:07:53.473,0:07:56.075
that dominates our thinking[br]about the future right now:

0:07:56.075,0:07:58.097
technology.

0:07:58.097,0:07:59.731
So when we think about the problems,

0:07:59.731,0:08:02.673
we always put it through[br]a technological lens,

0:08:02.673,0:08:04.308
a tech-centric, a techno-utopia,[br]and there's nothing wrong with that,

0:08:04.308,0:08:08.282
but it's something that we have to[br]really think deeply about

0:08:08.282,0:08:11.273
if we're going to move[br]on these major issues,

0:08:11.273,0:08:13.307
because it wasn't always like this. Right?

0:08:13.307,0:08:17.160
The ancients had their way of thinking

0:08:17.160,0:08:19.529
about what the future was.

0:08:19.529,0:08:25.169
The Church definitely had their idea[br]of what the future could be,

0:08:25.169,0:08:27.785
and you could actually pay your way[br]into that future. Right?

0:08:27.785,0:08:29.844
And luckily for humanity,

0:08:29.844,0:08:31.952
we got the scientific revolution.

0:08:31.952,0:08:33.901
From there, we got the technology,

0:08:33.901,0:08:35.940
but what has happened --

0:08:35.940,0:08:38.338
And by the way, this is not a critique.

0:08:38.338,0:08:40.164
I love technology.

0:08:40.164,0:08:43.086
Everything in my house talks back to me,

0:08:43.086,0:08:45.193
from my children to my speakers[br]to everything.

0:08:45.193,0:08:47.029
(Laughter)

0:08:47.029,0:08:53.574
But we've abdicated the future[br]from the high priests in Rome

0:08:53.574,0:08:58.169
to the high priests of Silicon Valley.

0:08:58.169,0:09:01.113
So when we think, well, how are we[br]going to deal with climate

0:09:01.113,0:09:03.842
or with poverty or homelessness,[br]our first reaction is to think about it

0:09:03.842,0:09:06.819
through a technology lens.

0:09:06.819,0:09:11.234
And look, I'm not advocating[br]that we go to this guy.

0:09:11.234,0:09:16.466
I love Joel, don't get me wrong,[br]but I'm not saying we go to Joel.

0:09:16.466,0:09:18.733
What I'm saying is we need to rethink

0:09:18.733,0:09:23.081
our base assumption about only[br]looking at the future in one way,

0:09:23.081,0:09:25.623
only looking at it through[br]the dominant lens,

0:09:25.623,0:09:27.418
because our problems[br]are so big and so vast

0:09:27.418,0:09:29.641
that we need to open ourselves up.

0:09:29.641,0:09:34.156
So that's why I do everything in my power[br]not to talk about the future.

0:09:34.156,0:09:36.609
I talk about futures.

0:09:36.609,0:09:39.134
It opens the conversation again.

0:09:39.134,0:09:42.162
So when you're sitting and thinking about

0:09:42.162,0:09:44.669
how do we move forward[br]on this major issue --

0:09:44.669,0:09:46.162
it could be at home,

0:09:46.162,0:09:48.208
it could be at work,

0:09:48.208,0:09:51.047
it could be again on the global stage --

0:09:51.047,0:09:55.523
don't cut yourself off from thinking[br]about something beyond technology as a fix

0:09:55.523,0:09:59.051
because we're more concerned[br]about technological evolution right now

0:09:59.051,0:10:01.224
than we are about moral evolution.

0:10:01.224,0:10:03.503
And unless we fix for that,

0:10:03.503,0:10:06.372
we're not going to be able to get[br]out of short-termism and get

0:10:06.372,0:10:07.807
to where we want to be.

0:10:07.807,0:10:10.992
The final, telos thinking.[br]This comes from the Greek root.

0:10:10.992,0:10:13.465
Ultimate aim and ultimate purpose.

0:10:13.465,0:10:16.384
And it's really asking one question:

0:10:16.384,0:10:18.491
to what end?

0:10:18.491,0:10:21.684
When was the last time you asked yourself

0:10:21.684,0:10:24.069
to what end?

0:10:24.069,0:10:26.016
And when you asked yourself that,[br]how far out did you go?

0:10:26.016,0:10:29.866
Because long isn't long enough anymore.

0:10:29.866,0:10:31.743
Three, five years doesn't cut it.

0:10:31.743,0:10:35.158
It's 30, 40, 50, a hundred years.

0:10:35.158,0:10:37.309
In Homer's epic, "The Odyssey,"

0:10:37.309,0:10:40.476
Odysseus had the answer to his what end.

0:10:40.476,0:10:42.808
It was Ithaca.

0:10:42.808,0:10:45.716
It was this bold vision of what[br]he wanted to return to to Penelope.

0:10:45.716,0:10:47.497
And I can tell you, because[br]of the work that I'm doing,

0:10:47.497,0:10:51.050
but also you know it intuitively,[br]we have lost our Ithaca.

0:10:51.050,0:10:54.781
We have lost our to what end,[br]so we stay on this hamster wheel.

0:10:54.781,0:10:56.709
And yes we're trying[br]to solve these problems,

0:10:56.709,0:11:00.470
but what comes after we solve the problem?

0:11:00.470,0:11:04.416
And unless you define what comes after,[br]people aren't going to move.

0:11:04.416,0:11:07.633
The businesses --[br]this isn't just about business --

0:11:07.633,0:11:10.533
but the businesses that do consistently[br]who break out of short-termism

0:11:10.533,0:11:12.572
not surprisingly[br]are family-run businesses.

0:11:12.572,0:11:16.008
They're transgenerational. They're telos.[br]They think about the futures.

0:11:16.008,0:11:19.813
And this is an ad for ??.[br]They're 175 years old,

0:11:19.813,0:11:24.805
and what's amazing is that they literally[br]embody this kind of longpathian sense

0:11:24.805,0:11:28.806
in their brand, because by the way,[br]you never actually own a ??,

0:11:28.806,0:11:30.834
and I definitely won't,

0:11:30.834,0:11:34.276
unless somebody wants to just[br]throw 25,000 dollars on the stage.

0:11:34.276,0:11:39.139
You merely look after it[br]for the next generation.

0:11:39.139,0:11:41.797
So it's important that we remember,

0:11:41.797,0:11:45.051
the future, we treat it like a noun.

0:11:45.051,0:11:47.087
It's not. It's a verb.

0:11:47.087,0:11:48.207
It requires action.

0:11:48.207,0:11:50.166
It requires us to push into it.

0:11:50.166,0:11:51.809
It's not this thing that washes over us.

0:11:51.809,0:11:53.741
It's something that we actually[br]have total control over,

0:11:53.741,0:11:58.545
but in a short-term society, we end up[br]feeling like we don't.

0:11:58.545,0:11:59.436
We feel like we're trapped.

0:11:59.436,0:12:02.334
We can push through that.

0:12:02.334,0:12:05.508
Now I'm getting more comfortable

0:12:05.508,0:12:08.451
in the fact that at some point

0:12:08.451,0:12:10.947
in the inevitable future,

0:12:10.947,0:12:13.446
I will die,

0:12:13.446,0:12:16.283
but because of these new ways[br]of thinking and doing,

0:12:16.283,0:12:21.514
both in the outside world[br]and also with my family at home,

0:12:21.514,0:12:24.719
and what I'm leaving my kids,[br]I get more comfortable in that fact.

0:12:24.719,0:12:27.205
And it's something that a lot of us[br]are really uncomfortable with,

0:12:27.205,0:12:29.979
but I'm telling you, think it through.

0:12:29.979,0:12:31.823
Apply this type of thinking and you can[br]push yourself past

0:12:31.823,0:12:34.359
what's inevitably very,[br]very uncomfortable.

0:12:34.359,0:12:40.752
And it all begins really with[br]yourself asking this question:

0:12:40.752,0:12:44.090
what is your longpath?

0:12:44.090,0:12:47.161
But I ask you, when you ask yourself that

0:12:47.161,0:12:49.365
now or tonight or behind a steering wheel

0:12:49.365,0:12:53.822
or in the boardroom or the situation room,

0:12:53.822,0:12:57.273
push past the longpath, quick, oh,

0:12:57.273,0:13:00.144
what's my longpath the next[br]three years or five years?

0:13:00.144,0:13:03.991
Try and push past your own life if you can

0:13:03.991,0:13:06.310
because it makes you do things[br]a little bit bigger

0:13:06.310,0:13:08.246
than you thought were possible.

0:13:08.246,0:13:12.963
Yes, we have huge,[br]huge problems out there.

0:13:12.963,0:13:16.933
With this process, with this thinking,

0:13:16.933,0:13:19.055
I think we can make a difference.

0:13:19.055,0:13:21.879
I think you can make a difference,

0:13:21.879,0:13:23.701
and I believe in you guys.

0:13:23.701,0:13:24.952
Thank you.

0:13:24.952,0:13:29.693
(Applause)