"I really hope to make an impact," a new friend said to me last week on our intro call.

Then he caught himself in his excitement, took a breath in, hesitated. You could see all the air go out of his tires. 

"Oh, that probably sounds arrogant."

That conversation about making an impact, which...

It is tempting in turbulent times to double down on our demand for excellence; also more likely for things to go wrong. We need more opportunities, not fewer, to engage in intelligent failures.
-- Amy Edmondson, paraphrased from her recent talk at Thinkers50

Walking into the light filled...

I was speaking to my coach this week about scaling our Future Proof Lab business in order to help more people find their place in the future and solve wicked problems. 

“Oh,” she said, “you need to have an upgrade conversation”.  

A conversation about what...

Our favorite gelato place always has some crazy flavors of the month. 

It’s fun to see what the new ones are, even though I often default to the same flavor once I find what fits.

My current favorite is Nicky Glasses - coffee & salted caramel gelato with whipped cream. It’s...

“This idea about how things are changing is not new. Things have always been changing.”

So I heard in a Thinkers50 gathering with Howard Yu and Mark Greeven of IMD business school sharing their research on “future-fit” companies.

The difference now is the speed of change....

Wow - already October and after a weekend in China without access to email and social media I feel both behind and sadly aware of my addiction to my email and social media! 

I have a bone to pick about how we let our disdain for people not like us get in the way of better ways to work,...

This thought letter about future proofing life and work is now 100 letters old. Launched as a gift of ideas and conversation that was 100% opt-in, completely free and covering a range of topics and mindsets around creating better futures for yourself, your organizations and the planet. 

...

The first summer I worked for a European company, my little American psyche was blown away.

“We’ll follow the Karakoram highway into Pakistan. It’s hot that time of year but you really need a month to do it properly so we’re going in August since everyone is on holiday...

Last week I shared a post on LinkedIn about the Zoom “back to work” announcement which generated a landslide of passionate comments. 

Having seen Zoom’s agility at the beginning of the pandemic when others were slow, there's for sure the possibility of schadenfreude, a...

The slower days of August are a perfect time to catch up with the big, juicy peach-like ideas in life.

While the fiber-filling red apples of Fall are just around the corner, right now there is a bit of space to read and listen and dream and make the weird connections that deliver insights and...