Looking at 2014 through sunshine
Queensland’s Gold Coast makes everything looker brighter and that’s even true of chatting about my 2014’s major trends with Nicole Dyer at ABC Gold Coast radio.
In our regular catch up Nicole and I chatted about the year ahead, about the growing phenomena of crowdfunding and crowdsourcing; about new food trends including frekah; peek a boo panels in women’s clothes; new tech ahead; 3D printing; online social media and communication including dispelling fears around snapchat and all things 2014.
Have a listen now and share your thoughts on the year ahead.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What is calibrated optimism and why is it more useful than either pessimism or naive positivity?
Calibrated optimism is grounded in evidence — it acknowledges genuine challenges and risks while also tracking genuine progress and opportunity. It is more useful than pessimism because it maintains the motivational and cognitive resources needed to act effectively in the face of difficulty; more useful than naive positivity because it engages honestly with the problems that require serious attention rather than dismissing them. The foresight practitioner who can hold both genuine challenges and genuine progress simultaneously, without collapsing either into the other, produces the most useful strategic analysis.
Q: What signals in 2014 provided genuine grounds for optimism?
The 2014 optimism signals included: continued decline in extreme global poverty following three decades of consistent improvement; renewable energy costs falling along a curve that was making clean energy economically competitive with fossil fuels without subsidy; childhood mortality rates reaching historic lows through vaccination and healthcare access improvements; digital communication tools demonstrating their capacity to connect and coordinate people across geographies and social distances that would previously have been unbridgeable; and a growing evidence base for effective interventions in education, health, and poverty that suggested the challenges were tractable, not just large.
Q: How should leaders balance genuine optimism with honest risk assessment in their communication?
The leaders whose communication earns sustained trust are those who are honest about risks and challenges without catastrophising, and honest about progress and opportunity without minimising genuine difficulty. The communication pattern that builds credibility over time is: acknowledge the real challenges clearly; identify what the evidence suggests about what is working; be explicit about uncertainty; and connect both the challenges and the evidence for progress to the specific choices available. Audiences respect leaders who treat them as capable of handling complexity.
Q: How can I book Morris Misel for a strategic futures, leadership, or positive change keynote?
Contact the booking team at morrismisel.com/event-organisers.
Queensland’s Gold Coast makes everything looker brighter and that’s even true of chatting about my 2014’s major trends with Nicole Dyer at ABC Gold Coast radio. In our regular catch up Nicole and I chatted about the year ahead, about the growing phenomena of crowdfunding and crow.
When signals like Looking at 2014 through sunshine emerge, organisations that engage early have the advantage of choosing their response rather than reacting to events. That gap between those who prepared and those who did not is where competitive positioning is actually made or lost.
The most important question is not whether Looking at 2014 through sunshine will matter, but how quickly it will matter in your specific context. Leaders benefit most from mapping the ripple effects early — not just the direct impact but the second and third-order consequences that arrive later and hit harder. That is the practical work of foresight.
