WEBVTT 00:00:00.789 --> 00:00:04.182 So I've been futuring, which is a term I made up -- 00:00:04.182 --> 00:00:05.815 (Laughter) 00:00:05.815 --> 00:00:09.468 about three seconds ago. I've been futuring for about 20 years, 00:00:09.468 --> 00:00:13.141 and when I first started, I would sit down with people, 00:00:13.141 --> 00:00:16.090 and say, "Hey, let's talk 10, 20 years out." 00:00:16.090 --> 00:00:17.890 And they'd say, "Great." 00:00:17.890 --> 00:00:24.305 And I've been seeing that time horizon get shorter and shorter 00:00:24.305 --> 00:00:26.561 and shorter, 00:00:26.561 --> 00:00:27.738 so much so that I met with a CEO two months ago 00:00:27.738 --> 00:00:29.707 and I said, look, we started our initial conversation. 00:00:29.707 --> 00:00:34.147 He goes, "I love what you do. I want to talk about the next six months." NOTE Paragraph 00:00:34.147 --> 00:00:35.281 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:00:35.281 --> 00:00:39.730 We have a lot of problems that we are facing. 00:00:39.730 --> 00:00:43.391 These are civilizational-scale problems. 00:00:43.391 --> 00:00:45.856 The issue though is, 00:00:45.856 --> 00:00:47.648 we can't solve them 00:00:47.648 --> 00:00:50.541 using the mental models that we use right now 00:00:50.541 --> 00:00:51.447 to try and solve these problems. 00:00:51.447 --> 00:00:55.340 Yes, a lot of great technical work is being done, but there is a problem 00:00:55.340 --> 00:00:58.614 that we need to solve for a priori, 00:00:58.614 --> 00:01:03.396 before, if we want to really move the needle on those big problems: 00:01:03.396 --> 00:01:05.172 short-termism. 00:01:05.172 --> 00:01:07.685 Right? There's no marches. There's no bracelets. 00:01:07.685 --> 00:01:11.532 There's no petitions that you can sign to be against short-termism. 00:01:11.532 --> 00:01:14.478 I tried to put one up, and no one signed. 00:01:14.478 --> 00:01:16.371 It was weird. (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:01:16.371 --> 00:01:20.569 But it prevents us from doing so much. 00:01:20.569 --> 00:01:23.077 Short-termism, for many reason, 00:01:23.077 --> 00:01:26.129 has pervaded every nook and cranny of our reality. 00:01:26.129 --> 00:01:28.749 I just want you to take a second and just think about an issue 00:01:28.749 --> 00:01:31.640 that you're thinking, working on. 00:01:31.640 --> 00:01:33.699 It could be personal, it could be at work, 00:01:33.699 --> 00:01:35.774 or it could be move-the-needle world stuff, and think about 00:01:35.774 --> 00:01:41.982 how far out you tend to think about the solution set for that. 00:01:41.982 --> 00:01:46.115 Because short-termism prevents the CEO 00:01:46.115 --> 00:01:50.042 from buying really expensive safety equipment. 00:01:50.042 --> 00:01:52.444 It'll hurt the bottom line. 00:01:52.444 --> 00:01:54.680 So we get the Deep Water Horizon. 00:01:54.680 --> 00:01:57.503 Short-termism prevents teachers 00:01:57.503 --> 00:02:01.076 from spending quality one-on-one time with their students. 00:02:01.076 --> 00:02:03.122 So right now in America, 00:02:03.122 --> 00:02:06.916 a high school student drops out every 26 seconds. 00:02:06.916 --> 00:02:10.430 Short-termism prevents Congress -- 00:02:10.430 --> 00:02:12.567 sorry if there's anyone in here from Congress, 00:02:12.567 --> 00:02:16.450 or not really that sorry -- (Laughter) -- 00:02:16.450 --> 00:02:22.444 from putting money into a real infrastructure bill. 00:02:22.444 --> 00:02:26.737 So what we get is the I-35 bridge collapse over the Mississippi a few years ago, 00:02:26.737 --> 00:02:29.254 13 killed. 00:02:29.254 --> 00:02:30.986 It wasn't always like this. 00:02:30.986 --> 00:02:32.882 We did the Panama Canal. 00:02:32.882 --> 00:02:35.246 We pretty much have eradicated global polio. 00:02:35.246 --> 00:02:38.852 We did the trans-continental railroad, the Marshall Plan, 00:02:38.852 --> 00:02:43.198 and it's not just big, physical infrastructure problems and issues. 00:02:43.198 --> 00:02:45.140 Women's suffrage, the right to vote. 00:02:45.140 --> 00:02:47.799 But in our short-termist time, 00:02:47.799 --> 00:02:50.459 where everything seems to happen right now 00:02:50.459 --> 00:02:55.047 and we can only think out past the next tweet or timeline post, 00:02:55.047 --> 00:02:57.056 we get hyper-reactionary. 00:02:57.056 --> 00:02:58.505 So what do we do? 00:02:58.505 --> 00:03:02.437 We take people who are fleeing their war-torn country 00:03:02.437 --> 00:03:03.979 and we go after them. 00:03:03.979 --> 00:03:07.415 We take low-level drug offenders and we put them away for life, 00:03:07.415 --> 00:03:10.079 and then we build McMansions without even thinking about 00:03:10.079 --> 00:03:12.669 how we're going to get between them and their job. 00:03:12.669 --> 00:03:15.025 It's a quick buck. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:15.025 --> 00:03:18.402 Now the reality is, for a lot of these problems, 00:03:18.402 --> 00:03:20.260 there are some technical fixes, 00:03:20.260 --> 00:03:21.322 a lot of them. 00:03:21.322 --> 00:03:25.036 I call these technical fixes sandbag strategies. Right? 00:03:25.036 --> 00:03:26.949 So you know there's a storm coming, 00:03:26.949 --> 00:03:29.368 the levee is broken, no one's put any money into it, 00:03:29.368 --> 00:03:31.813 you surround your home with sandbags, 00:03:31.813 --> 00:03:33.921 and guess what? It works. 00:03:33.921 --> 00:03:36.518 Storm goes away, the water level goes down, 00:03:36.518 --> 00:03:37.780 you get rid of the sandbags, 00:03:37.780 --> 00:03:42.028 and you do this storm after storm after storm. 00:03:42.028 --> 00:03:44.202 And here's the insidious thing. 00:03:44.202 --> 00:03:46.284 A sandbag strategy 00:03:46.284 --> 00:03:48.489 can get you reelected. 00:03:48.489 --> 00:03:51.054 A sandbag strategy 00:03:51.054 --> 00:03:52.966 can help you make your quarterly numbers. 00:03:52.966 --> 00:03:57.598 Now, if we want to move forward 00:03:57.598 --> 00:04:00.475 into a different future than the one we have right now, 00:04:00.475 --> 00:04:01.839 because I don't think we've hit, 00:04:01.839 --> 00:04:04.866 2016 is not peak civilization. 00:04:04.866 --> 00:04:07.880 There's some more we can do, 00:04:07.880 --> 00:04:11.541 but my argument is that unless we shift our mental models 00:04:11.541 --> 00:04:12.656 and our mental maps 00:04:12.656 --> 00:04:14.666 on how we think about the short, 00:04:14.666 --> 00:04:16.374 it's not going to happen. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:16.374 --> 00:04:19.451 So what I've developed is something called longpath, 00:04:19.451 --> 00:04:20.992 and it's a practice, 00:04:20.992 --> 00:04:25.226 and longpath isn't a kind of one-and-done exercise. 00:04:25.226 --> 00:04:28.179 I'm sure everyone here at some point has done an off-site 00:04:28.179 --> 00:04:28.429 with a lot of post-it notes and white boards, 00:04:29.777 --> 00:04:35.170 and you do, no offense to the consultants in here who do that, 00:04:35.170 --> 00:04:38.539 and you do a long-term plan, and then two weeks later, 00:04:38.539 --> 00:04:40.177 everyone forgets about it. 00:04:40.177 --> 00:04:43.435 Right? Or a week later. If you're lucky, three months. 00:04:43.435 --> 00:04:48.786 It's a practice because it's not necessarily a thing that you do. 00:04:48.786 --> 00:04:51.528 It's a process where you have to revisit different ways of thinking 00:04:51.528 --> 00:04:54.984 for every major decision that you're working on. 00:04:54.984 --> 00:05:01.643 So I want to go through those three ways of thinking. 00:05:01.643 --> 00:05:02.152 So the first: transgenerational thinking. 00:05:02.152 --> 00:05:02.402 I love the philosophers: 00:05:02.402 --> 00:05:07.353 Plato, Socrates, Habermas, Heidegger. I was raised on them. 00:05:07.353 --> 00:05:10.307 But they all did one thing 00:05:10.307 --> 00:05:13.024 that didn't actually seem like a big deal 00:05:13.024 --> 00:05:14.413 until I really started kind of looking into this. 00:05:14.413 --> 00:05:16.472 And they all took, 00:05:16.472 --> 00:05:19.913 as a unit of measure for their entire reality 00:05:19.913 --> 00:05:22.145 of what it meant to be virtuous and good, 00:05:22.145 --> 00:05:25.987 the single lifespan, from birth to death. 00:05:25.987 --> 00:05:27.984 But here's a problem with these issues: 00:05:27.984 --> 00:05:31.041 they stack up on top of us, but because the only way we know how to do 00:05:31.041 --> 00:05:34.165 something good in the world is if we do it between our birth and our death. 00:05:34.165 --> 00:05:35.515 That's what we're programmed to do. 00:05:35.515 --> 00:05:38.950 If you go to the self-help section in any bookstore, 00:05:38.950 --> 00:05:41.650 it's all about you. 00:05:41.650 --> 00:05:43.469 Which is great, 00:05:43.469 --> 00:05:48.221 unless you're dealing with some of these major issues. 00:05:48.221 --> 00:05:51.530 And so with transgenerational thinking, 00:05:51.530 --> 00:05:54.325 which is really kind of transgenerational ethics, 00:05:54.325 --> 00:05:58.261 you're able to expand how you think about these problems, 00:05:58.261 --> 00:06:02.114 what is your role in helping to solve them. 00:06:02.114 --> 00:06:06.709 Now, this isn't something that just has to be done at the Security Council chamber. 00:06:06.709 --> 00:06:10.142 It's something that you can do in a very kind of personal way. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:10.142 --> 00:06:13.475 So every once in a while, if I'm lucky, my wife and I like to go out to dinner, 00:06:13.475 --> 00:06:17.734 and we have three children under the age of seven. 00:06:17.734 --> 00:06:21.061 So you can imagine it's a very peaceful, quiet meal. 00:06:21.061 --> 00:06:26.518 So we sit down, and literally all I want to do is just eat and chill, 00:06:26.518 --> 00:06:30.261 and my kids have a completely and totally different idea 00:06:30.261 --> 00:06:31.509 of what we're going to be doing. 00:06:31.509 --> 00:06:33.649 And so my first idea 00:06:33.649 --> 00:06:35.481 is my sandbag strategy, right? 00:06:35.481 --> 00:06:37.707 It's to go into my pocket and take out the iPhone 00:06:37.707 --> 00:06:39.441 and give them "Frozen" 00:06:39.441 --> 00:06:42.140 or some other bestselling game thing. 00:06:42.140 --> 00:06:47.319 And then I stop 00:06:47.319 --> 00:06:52.003 and I have to kind of put this transgenerational thinking cap. 00:06:52.003 --> 00:06:54.393 I don't do this in the restaurant, because it would be bizarre, 00:06:54.393 --> 00:06:55.741 but I have to -- 00:06:55.741 --> 00:06:57.875 I did it once, and that's how I learned it was bizarre. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:57.875 --> 00:06:59.674 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:06:59.674 --> 00:07:04.243 And you have to kind of think, okay, I can do this. 00:07:04.243 --> 00:07:07.727 But what is this teaching them? 00:07:07.727 --> 00:07:10.403 So what does it mean if I actually bring some paper 00:07:10.403 --> 00:07:11.768 or engage with them in conversation? 00:07:11.768 --> 00:07:14.465 It's hard. It's not easy, and I'm making this very personal. 00:07:14.465 --> 00:07:17.443 It's actually more traumatic in some of the big issues that I work on in the world 00:07:17.443 --> 00:07:19.975 is entertaining my kids at dinner. 00:07:19.975 --> 00:07:25.045 But what it does is it connects them here in the present with me, 00:07:25.045 --> 00:07:26.653 but it also, 00:07:26.653 --> 00:07:29.685 and this is the crux of transgenerational thinking ethics, 00:07:29.685 --> 00:07:33.094 it sets them up to how they're going to interact with their kids 00:07:33.094 --> 00:07:36.645 and their kids and their kids. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:36.645 --> 00:07:38.949 Second, futures thinking. 00:07:38.949 --> 00:07:40.868 When we think about the future, 00:07:40.868 --> 00:07:43.952 10, 15 years out, 00:07:43.952 --> 00:07:45.983 give me a vision of what the future is. 00:07:45.983 --> 00:07:48.837 You don't have to give it to me, but think in your head. 00:07:48.837 --> 00:07:51.707 And what you're probably going to see 00:07:51.707 --> 00:07:53.473 is the dominant cultural lens 00:07:53.473 --> 00:07:56.075 that dominates our thinking about the future right now: 00:07:56.075 --> 00:07:58.097 technology. 00:07:58.097 --> 00:07:59.731 So when we think about the problems, 00:07:59.731 --> 00:08:02.673 we always put it through a technological lens, 00:08:02.673 --> 00:08:04.308 a tech-centric, a techno-utopia, and there's nothing wrong with that, 00:08:04.308 --> 00:08:08.282 but it's something that we have to really think deeply about 00:08:08.282 --> 00:08:11.273 if we're going to move on these major issues, 00:08:11.273 --> 00:08:13.307 because it wasn't always like this. Right? 00:08:13.307 --> 00:08:17.160 The ancients had their way of thinking 00:08:17.160 --> 00:08:19.529 about what the future was. 00:08:19.529 --> 00:08:25.169 The Church definitely had their idea of what the future could be, 00:08:25.169 --> 00:08:27.785 and you could actually pay your way into that future. Right? 00:08:27.785 --> 00:08:29.844 And luckily for humanity, 00:08:29.844 --> 00:08:31.952 we got the scientific revolution. 00:08:31.952 --> 00:08:33.901 From there, we got the technology, 00:08:33.901 --> 00:08:35.940 but what has happened -- 00:08:35.940 --> 00:08:38.338 And by the way, this is not a critique. 00:08:38.338 --> 00:08:40.164 I love technology. 00:08:40.164 --> 00:08:43.086 Everything in my house talks back to me, 00:08:43.086 --> 00:08:45.193 from my children to my speakers to everything. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:45.193 --> 00:08:47.029 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:08:47.029 --> 00:08:53.574 But we've abdicated the future from the high priests in Rome 00:08:53.574 --> 00:08:58.169 to the high priests of Silicon Valley. 00:08:58.169 --> 00:09:01.113 So when we think, well, how are we going to deal with climate 00:09:01.113 --> 00:09:03.842 or with poverty or homelessness, our first reaction is to think about it 00:09:03.842 --> 00:09:06.819 through a technology lens. 00:09:06.819 --> 00:09:11.234 And look, I'm not advocating that we go to this guy. 00:09:11.234 --> 00:09:16.466 I love Joel, don't get me wrong, but I'm not saying we go to Joel. 00:09:16.466 --> 00:09:18.733 What I'm saying is we need to rethink 00:09:18.733 --> 00:09:23.081 our base assumption about only looking at the future in one way, 00:09:23.081 --> 00:09:25.623 only looking at it through the dominant lens, 00:09:25.623 --> 00:09:27.418 because our problems are so big and so vast 00:09:27.418 --> 00:09:29.641 that we need to open ourselves up. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:29.641 --> 00:09:34.156 So that's why I do everything in my power not to talk about the future. 00:09:34.156 --> 00:09:36.609 I talk about futures. 00:09:36.609 --> 00:09:39.134 It opens the conversation again. 00:09:39.134 --> 00:09:42.162 So when you're sitting and thinking about 00:09:42.162 --> 00:09:44.669 how do we move forward on this major issue -- 00:09:44.669 --> 00:09:46.162 it could be at home, 00:09:46.162 --> 00:09:48.208 it could be at work, 00:09:48.208 --> 00:09:51.047 it could be again on the global stage -- 00:09:51.047 --> 00:09:55.523 don't cut yourself off from thinking about something beyond technology as a fix 00:09:55.523 --> 00:09:59.051 because we're more concerned about technological evolution right now 00:09:59.051 --> 00:10:01.224 than we are about moral evolution. 00:10:01.224 --> 00:10:03.503 And unless we fix for that, 00:10:03.503 --> 00:10:06.372 we're not going to be able to get out of short-termism and get 00:10:06.372 --> 00:10:07.807 to where we want to be. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:07.807 --> 00:10:10.992 The final, telos thinking. This comes from the Greek root. 00:10:10.992 --> 00:10:13.465 Ultimate aim and ultimate purpose. 00:10:13.465 --> 00:10:16.384 And it's really asking one question: 00:10:16.384 --> 00:10:18.491 to what end? 00:10:18.491 --> 00:10:21.684 When was the last time you asked yourself 00:10:21.684 --> 00:10:24.069 to what end? 00:10:24.069 --> 00:10:26.016 And when you asked yourself that, how far out did you go? 00:10:26.016 --> 00:10:29.866 Because long isn't long enough anymore. 00:10:29.866 --> 00:10:31.743 Three, five years doesn't cut it. 00:10:31.743 --> 00:10:35.158 It's 30, 40, 50, a hundred years. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:35.158 --> 00:10:37.309 In Homer's epic, "The Odyssey," 00:10:37.309 --> 00:10:40.476 Odysseus had the answer to his what end. 00:10:40.476 --> 00:10:42.808 It was Ithaca. 00:10:42.808 --> 00:10:45.716 It was this bold vision of what he wanted to return to to Penelope. 00:10:45.716 --> 00:10:47.497 And I can tell you, because of the work that I'm doing, 00:10:47.497 --> 00:10:51.050 but also you know it intuitively, we have lost our Ithaca. 00:10:51.050 --> 00:10:54.781 We have lost our to what end, so we stay on this hamster wheel. 00:10:54.781 --> 00:10:56.709 And yes we're trying to solve these problems, 00:10:56.709 --> 00:11:00.470 but what comes after we solve the problem? 00:11:00.470 --> 00:11:04.416 And unless you define what comes after, people aren't going to move. 00:11:04.416 --> 00:11:07.633 The businesses -- this isn't just about business -- 00:11:07.633 --> 00:11:10.533 but the businesses that do consistently who break out of short-termism 00:11:10.533 --> 00:11:12.572 not surprisingly are family-run businesses. 00:11:12.572 --> 00:11:16.008 They're transgenerational. They're telos. They think about the futures. 00:11:16.008 --> 00:11:19.813 And this is an ad for ??. They're 175 years old, 00:11:19.813 --> 00:11:24.805 and what's amazing is that they literally embody this kind of longpathian sense 00:11:24.805 --> 00:11:28.806 in their brand, because by the way, you never actually own a ??, 00:11:28.806 --> 00:11:30.834 and I definitely won't, 00:11:30.834 --> 00:11:34.276 unless somebody wants to just throw 25,000 dollars on the stage. 00:11:34.276 --> 00:11:39.139 You merely look after it for the next generation. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:39.139 --> 00:11:41.797 So it's important that we remember, 00:11:41.797 --> 00:11:45.051 the future, we treat it like a noun. 00:11:45.051 --> 00:11:47.087 It's not. It's a verb. 00:11:47.087 --> 00:11:48.207 It requires action. 00:11:48.207 --> 00:11:50.166 It requires us to push into it. 00:11:50.166 --> 00:11:51.809 It's not this thing that washes over us. 00:11:51.809 --> 00:11:53.741 It's something that we actually have total control over, 00:11:53.741 --> 00:11:58.545 but in a short-term society, we end up feeling like we don't. 00:11:58.545 --> 00:11:59.436 We feel like we're trapped. 00:11:59.436 --> 00:12:02.334 We can push through that. 00:12:02.334 --> 00:12:05.508 Now I'm getting more comfortable 00:12:05.508 --> 00:12:08.451 in the fact that at some point 00:12:08.451 --> 00:12:10.947 in the inevitable future, 00:12:10.947 --> 00:12:13.446 I will die, 00:12:13.446 --> 00:12:16.283 but because of these new ways of thinking and doing, 00:12:16.283 --> 00:12:21.514 both in the outside world and also with my family at home, 00:12:21.514 --> 00:12:24.719 and what I'm leaving my kids, I get more comfortable in that fact. 00:12:24.719 --> 00:12:27.205 And it's something that a lot of us are really uncomfortable with, 00:12:27.205 --> 00:12:29.979 but I'm telling you, think it through. 00:12:29.979 --> 00:12:31.823 Apply this type of thinking and you can push yourself past 00:12:31.823 --> 00:12:34.359 what's inevitably very, very uncomfortable. 00:12:34.359 --> 00:12:40.752 And it all begins really with yourself asking this question: 00:12:40.752 --> 00:12:44.090 what is your longpath? 00:12:44.090 --> 00:12:47.161 But I ask you, when you ask yourself that 00:12:47.161 --> 00:12:49.365 now or tonight or behind a steering wheel 00:12:49.365 --> 00:12:53.822 or in the boardroom or the situation room, 00:12:53.822 --> 00:12:57.273 push past the longpath, quick, oh, 00:12:57.273 --> 00:13:00.144 what's my longpath the next three years or five years? 00:13:00.144 --> 00:13:03.991 Try and push past your own life if you can 00:13:03.991 --> 00:13:06.310 because it makes you do things a little bit bigger 00:13:06.310 --> 00:13:08.246 than you thought were possible. 00:13:08.246 --> 00:13:12.963 Yes, we have huge, huge problems out there. 00:13:12.963 --> 00:13:16.933 With this process, with this thinking, 00:13:16.933 --> 00:13:19.055 I think we can make a difference. 00:13:19.055 --> 00:13:21.879 I think you can make a difference, 00:13:21.879 --> 00:13:23.701 and I believe in you guys. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:23.701 --> 00:13:24.952 Thank you. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:24.952 --> 00:13:29.693 (Applause)