CHAPTER 3
How To Think about the Future

Too often, pundits and strategists assume that the world will return to the point of known stasis from which it began. As a case in point, witness the seemingly endless stream of predictions from trusted sources who speculated during the COVID-19 pandemic about when the world would return to “normal.” To assume that there is a fixed baseline to which the world and its institutions will return is an oversimplification—and likely a heuristic that allows for many people to feel more secure about a “predictable” future for themselves.

The world doesn't operate according to the principles of a pendulum. The mental image we have for cycles is that whatever the object of attention, activity will go in one direction for just so long—perhaps too long—and then swing back, past center, to its original point, and then the process will begin all over again. When we see emotions of a society swing too far out to an extreme, we anticipate a course correction and a swing back to center and then to the opposite extreme and then back again. When we see stock prices rise dramatically and then fall dramatically and then rise and fall, over time we expect the same conditions to prevail, causing the pendulum to continue swinging back and forth around some central point.

Things cannot possibly retrace their path back to where they have been. The context has changed. Places are not the same; people are not the same; nothing is exactly the same as it was before. Everything from global employment and unemployment, economic transition, workforce migration, and technological innovation can best be understood within this context. Clearly, where we end up will not be where we started.

The Drunkard's Search Principle

The streetlight effect, or the drunkard's search principle, is a type of observational bias that occurs when someone's expectations, opinions, or prejudices influence what they perceive.1 This principle refers to a well-known joke: A policeman sees a drunk man searching for something under a streetlight and asks what the drunk has lost. He says he lost his keys, and they both look under the streetlight together. After a few minutes, the policeman asks if he is sure he lost them here, and the drunk replies, no, and that he lost them in the park. The policeman asks why he is searching here, and the drunk replies, ‘This is where the light is.’2

The point of the story? People only search for something where it is easiest to look. It is harder to find something on the part of the floor that is not well lit. In a world where information is abundant and attention spans are short, people tend to search for things in the easiest and most accessible places. It's a natural tendency to look where it's convenient and familiar, just like in the joke. This concept applies not only to physical objects but also to our thinking patterns. We often rely on what is readily available or easily observable, leading to biased perspectives or overreliance on our own value judgments. We may overlook alternative viewpoints or dismiss unconventional ideas simply because they require more effort.

The drunkard's search principle challenges us to think differently when it comes to observation and personal bias. That's because our observations are not always objective. Our perception filters and selects information based on various factors such as attention, memory, and personal experiences. Human perception can be subjective and influenced by our individual interpretations.

This conjures up a similar story: that of the “invisible gorilla.” There is a famous psychological experiment in which subjects were shown a one-minute video and told to focus on how many passes a basketball team made. About halfway through the video, a gorilla emerged and walked across the basketball court. Half the participants in the experiment did not see the gorilla. Why is that? I participated in this experiment in college and admittedly never saw the gorilla. Psychologists call this inattentional blindness—in other words, the phenomenon of not being able to perceive things that are in plain sight. How our minds see and process information is at the heart of this. The more you focus on something, the less able you become to see unexpected or unanticipated occurrences elsewhere. In this case, subjects were concentrating on the ball and unable to see the gorilla. The lesson is this: depending on your focus, your entire perspective can shift.

No matter who we are, we all carry around a load of mental baggage that we've accumulated over time. While this “knowledge” helps to shape our views of the world, it can also cloud our vision and make it near impossible to spot things that are unforeseen and new. For many unknowns, we rely on inferences made from what we do know. But are our extrapolations correct? Are the heuristics we use sufficient? How many times do we do this in our own lives, in our businesses, or when looking for a job? Just like we would never drive using only the rearview mirror, we shouldn't navigate through the future this way either.

As the early 20th-century French novelist Marcel Proust once said: “The true voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” Truly meaningful discovery doesn't come just from learning new things, but from discovering new aspects of things that are already familiar to us.

So, how do we shed the “invisible gorilla” that we all carry around with us? For starters, we need to question the ways we look at the future and begin seeing it through a new lens. We must recognize and revel in what we don't know as a pathway to discovering new things, new possibilities, new realities, and new futures.

The Interconnectedness of the Future

Math. A four-letter word that still haunts me. It was a subject in school I tried to pretend did not exist, and a grade I tried to pretend did not count. Trying to comprehend it was like learning a foreign language in a foreign language. I could not wrap my brain logically around it.

After years in school of feeling mathematically inadequate, I came to the realization in my adult years that perhaps my brain is just not wired to think that way. Comprehension, for me, comes in more abstract forms. Teachers were never able to recognize this, but I knew that my thinking and cognition did not follow a linear path. I have always been a visual learner. I like to see what I am learning. Many people are wired this same way.

The pop psychology theory is that people are either left-brained or right-brained, meaning that one side of their brain is dominant. If you are mostly analytical and systematic in your thinking, you are said to be left-brained. If you tend to be more creative or artistic, you are thought to be right-brained. The two brain hemispheres are unique, yet brain imaging technologies like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) suggest that, on average, we use both sides of our brain equally.

We need to stop dividing ourselves as “right brainers” or “left brainers” and instead begin embracing the notion that we are all “brain-ambidextrous.” Or, at the very least, start training our brains to be. The better the different parts of your brain communicate with each other, the more integrated your brain. A vast network of interconnected neurons is constantly firing in a way to inform all parts of the brain of what is happening so we can respond from a whole-view perspective.

That, ultimately, is what the future will require. A whole-view perspective. A fully integrated approach to understanding how all the individual puzzle pieces fit together to build one larger, unified view of where the needle is moving. Rarely do things operate in silos. And trends never operate this way. A technological trend never stands on its own. Nor does an economic trend. Or a sociocultural trend. Or a geopolitical trend. Or a demographic trend. They are all interconnected. They inform and influence each other. Often the connections between the trends tell us more about where things are moving versus simply looking at a trend in isolation. Everything is overlapping.

The interconnectedness of our external environments creates a dynamic landscape where each trend influences and shapes others. For instance, technological advancements have accelerated the pace of change across multiple domains. The rise of AI has not only revolutionized industries like health care, finance, and transportation but has also altered the way we interact with technology itself. The intersection of AI with other trends such as automation, data analytics, and machine learning paints a more comprehensive picture of how our world is evolving. Similarly, societal changes are intertwined with technological progress. The increasing focus on sustainability has spurred innovations in renewable energy sources, eco-friendly products, and circular economies. Trends are about their collective—not singular—impacts.

Looking at trends solely in isolation only scratches the surface of understanding. That is when, early in my career, I came to the realization that math did, in fact, play a role in my thinking about the future. It might be the most simplistic type of math, but it informs all that I do. It comes down to one thing: logic. Logical relations between things, sets of ideas, and concepts. Logical relations as best illustrated by my all-time MVP … the Venn diagram. Anyone...