Take a gander @ 2020
Business Futurist | Foresight Strategist
If you’ve read this far, something probably connected.
Maybe it put words to something you’d been sensing but couldn’t quite land. Maybe it made something complicated feel clearer. Maybe it unsettled a position you thought you’d settled.
Good. That’s where this work lives.
Not forecasting. Not scenarios at 2050. Not more noise. What’s already moving. The shifts most organisations can’t yet see, name, or understand the full weight of. What it means. What to do about it while it’s still a possibility, not a problem. Short term and long.
Morris Misel has been doing this for 30 years across 160 industries, with boards, executive teams, and leadership groups in Australia and internationally. More than 2,800 engagements. Over a million people a year through conferences, boardrooms, and media.
If you want more of this thinking while it’s still a signal, not a headline, subscribe to Immediate Futures.
If you want ongoing access to everything I do for clients, packaged for you, with direct access to me, join the Signal Room.
If you’re considering bringing this work into your conference, boardroom, or organisation, enquire here.
Choose Forward.
2020 exposed the gap between what leaders thought they were prepared for and what actually arrived. The lesson isn’t about prediction. It’s about building capability to sense, respond, and adapt. Organisations that shifted from annual planning to scenario-building survived better. This readiness for multiple futures matters now.
Leaders learned that command-and-control fails when the ground moves. Organisations that thrived gave teams clarity on direction but autonomy on execution. They prioritised scanning for signals, moved fast on decisions that could be reversed, and built psychological safety to speak difficult truths. This is the real leadership shift.
Many treat 2020 as a temporary crisis to recover from, then try to get back to ‘normal.’ The actual insight is that the operating environment has permanently shifted. Digital acceleration, remote work, supply chain fragility, and trust erosion aren’t reverting. Organisations that act on that belief are already ahead.
2020 compressed 10 years of technological and cultural change into months. Remote work normalisation, e-commerce acceleration, automation urgency, and questions of purpose all arrived at once. This wasn’t new; it was latent. 2020 just made the arrival impossible to ignore. Acceleration of existing trajectories is the real story.
Watch how organisations manage the gap between permanent change and people seeking stability. Trust erosion after uncertainty runs deep. Skills gaps from accelerated automation. Supply chain rethinking. And the tension between people demanding meaning from work and efficiency demands rising. These ripple effects will unfold for years.