Conversation

Daily Inspiration: "At what point will you realize your budget and your expectations are greatly misaligned?" - Futurist Jim Carroll

Most people want a BMW on a Ford Focus budget.

They are underfunded and over-expectated.

Think about it.

Most companies want a vastly different future and have a desire to chase new opportunities, but aren't prepared to invest in it.

Leadership teams want to accelerate the capabilities and skill set of their teams but aren't prepared to fund the steps necessary to do this.
Innovation-oriented groups want to accelerate the R&D that is necessary to discover the ideas of tomorrow but are always limited by the spending blocks put in place by the number-crunching bosses.

Associations and membership-oriented groups want to do more to prepare their members for tomorrow but are never prepared to do what is necessary to get there.

The mindset of penny-pinching blocks everyone from moving forward, meaning that they end up moving backward as time moves relentlessly on.

This is one of the biggest challenges I see in what I do day to day. I regularly get inquiries from leadership groups who believe it's necessary that they take big, bold leaps into a new and different future. They plan a meeting somewhere to discuss and debate these issues and believe it's necessary to find someone to give them unique insight, to give an in-depth trends insight into their meeting. But they aren't prepared to spend money to do this.

I often feel like cheekily responding with this line: "I'm sorry I cannot donate my services for free to you at this time in your pursuit of making more money." But I don't - because I know that someone else will come along who is prepared to invest in tomorrow in order to get to tomorrow. I'll still get to the number of planned events I am willing to take on - they'll end up with some pretty marginal insight and will end up wasting a lot of their time.

Original post: https://jimcarroll.com/2023/10/daily-inspiration-trends-opportunity-beyond-every-problem-is-an-idea-that-fixes-it/