You are the light.
Hi, it’s Brian.
There’s this myth going around that AI is going to transform everything and we need to prepare ourselves for the future.
Today’s piece is about your ability to transform everything. If you need a reminder just how much of an impact you can and should have on your customers, your team, your organization, or even the world, this is for you.
📅 Upcoming Events
Aug 12 | 🍽️ Future Solving Club Work of Tomorrow Dinner Salon (Seattle) – an application-only evening for VP+ execs in HR, Strategy, or Operations.
Sep 29 | 🍽️ Future Solving Club Future of Work Dinner Salon (NYC) – an application-only evening for Chief People Officers and senior people leaders.
October 13 | 🍽️ Future Solving Club Dinner Salon (Denver) – an application-only evening for CEOs of $1B+ contingent workforce firms.
If you’d like to apply to join our community and our events, let us know here.
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💻Future Solving for Leaders Course (4.9/5 stars)
The most comprehensive course on Future Solving that empowers leaders to take the future into their own hands and create value with it. Join the community of Fortune 500 leaders who are leveraging Future Solving to create the future of their team, department, organization, and market.
This course is packed with new frameworks and methodologies I’m willing to guarantee you haven’t seen before. If you join the first session and don’t agree, we will issue you a full refund.
Here’s what one of the recent students (a VP at Visa) shared about their experience:
“At a moment when organizations are under enormous pressure to respond to AI without a clear sense of direction, Brian’s Future Solving methodology offers exactly what’s missing: a rigorous, human-centered way to start with vision and work backwards — solving for the future rather than just reacting to it as it arrives. This course changes how you think — about strategy, about how to communicate ideas, and about the systems you’re trying to change. For any leader trying to create the future rather than just react to the moment, this course is essential.”
Everyone wants to know what’s going to happen in the future.
And for the first time in most of our lifetimes, no one seems to know whom to look to for answers. At least with the Internet, there was a directional consensus amongst technologists about what would happen. Today, should we look to AI experts? They have wildly different answers about what the future is going to look like. Is it anyone else? Do they know enough about AI and where it’s headed to fully speak to what will happen?
As humans, we are standing at a precipice, and the future is yet to be decided.
The truth is, absolutely no one has the credibility to tell you what the future will look like, and here’s why that’s a good thing:
Certainty about the future means powerlessness today.
If humans won’t be working in the future, there’s no point in doing anything today other than staying the course and hoping whoever does create the future will work out something livable for us humans.
If all marketing is going to be fully autonomous, why learn and master any principles of marketing?
If medicine will be administered by robots, who would make the mistake of going into medicine?
In other words, if someone else is in the drivers seat, you just need to keep yourself busy until we get there.
As we mutually face an uncertain future, shrouded on all sides, I want to remind you that you are the light.
The future is a tapestry woven from the ideas we dare to envision, share with others, and bring to life.
Look around you. If you’re not in nature, everything around you started as an idea from someone else. It’s an exercise in humility to walk through a home and imagine how many men and women throughout history had ideas that were brought to life that fill our homes and make up our lives today.
Back to you.
Yes, you.
As Eugène Delacroix would say: “Mortal, drawn from eternal life for a short time, think how precious these moments are.”
I want you to imagine you have a candle in your hand.
Will you light it with the spark that is inside you?
And share it with others?
What idea will you come up with that will benefit even one person, if not a whole market or industry?
Perhaps you’ve already had the idea and you needed someone like me to come along and remind you that it’s time to dust it off and summon the courage to do something with it.
You are the light. And each idea you come up with and share with someone else is a spark that can be fanned into a flame.
We owe it to ourselves, to the generations before us who worked tirelessly to get us to this point, and to the generations to come to bring our best ideas, our audacity, and our courage to this moment and create the best version of the future we can imagine.
Thanks for reading,
Brian
When you’re ready, here are 5 ways I can help you:
1. Future Solving for Leaders Course: The most comprehensive course on Future Solving that empowers leaders to take the future into their own hands and create value with it. Join the community of Fortune 500 leaders who are leveraging Future Solving to create the future of their team, department, organization, and market.
2. Keynote Speaking: I’ve lectured everywhere from The Wharton School to Mastercard to Microsoft HQ on AI, AI agents, strategy, the future of work, leadership, and skills of the future. Learn more about booking me as a speaker.
3. Sponsor & Cohost a Future Solving Club Breakfast, Dinner, or Virtual Event: The Club hosts breakfasts and dinners (VP+ from over 200 of the Fortune 500) in dozens of cities and virtually, in partnership with top enterprise companies, startups, and consulting firms. Here are a few examples: London, Seattle, New York. Reach out and we’ll share our unique approach to creating experiences that spark magic and connection.
4. Future Solving Podcast: My new show (in partnership with Thinkers50) that explores how top thinkers, business leaders, and technologists solve for the future. Previous guests include Rita McGrath, Whitney Johnson, Alexander Osterwalder, Kim Scott, Nancy Duarte, and more.
5. The Future Solving Program: Join 50+ of the FORTUNE 500 and NASA, who have positioned themselves for the future in the era of AI by adopting Future Solving to take the future into their own hands and create value with it.