ELITE PERFORMANCE SERIES
Imagining the Future is a Pursuit of Magic
Think Different — this was a popular marketing slogan that Apple used in the late 90s (and perhaps even today) to position themselves as visionary leaders of innovative products. This branding has likely contributed to their product design ecosystem which appears, at-least from an external perspective, to naturally facilitate the creation of innovative solutions for life’s opportunities. This resonates with my own life experiences. From my youngest years, I’ve had the natural affinity for thinking differently. I’ve enjoyed pushing the boundaries of my human imagination and venturing into the realms of the unexplored. I never felt the need to wear any thinking hat — divergence was a feeling that always felt like home. And I have leveraged the same to help organizations imagine and craft north-star product experiences.
Over time, I’ve realized that I enjoy dreaming-up these north-star experiences because it feels like magic! There are no boundaries, limits or constraints here— except for your own imagination. It is a blank canvas that allows for endless possibilities. It feels magical because this is an emotional experience where stakeholders and customers are mesmerized into a state of wow when this canvas is filled with a vivid imagination of a transformative future. It’s like watching a Disney or Harry Potter movie where there are magical worlds filled with unpredictable excitement at every turn. Likewise, stakeholders and customers respond to the magical north-star experience with surreal excitement, elevated emotions and awe-inspired enthusiasm. You can sense from the energy in the room that you are on to something. It is unmistakable. It feels like the organization is at time’s great precipice — when history is quietly turning a page to the chapter of transformation. Having experienced this repeatedly with multiple organizations, I’ve seen a pattern emerge and finally had my eureka moment for what a vision for the future really is. It is a pursuit of magic — which elevates the human experience by transforming work, life and destiny.
The Playbook
As with all things in life, the truth is essentially simple. I recognized that these magical experiences were ultimately driven by simple fundamentals — a personal assortment of core values and personal beliefs. These now make up my playbook for crafting wow north-star experiences. If you are to embrace this playbook, know that the results are by its very nature inevitable — but this will be a journey of a decade where you must industriously integrate these values and beliefs into the very DNA of your being. This will make it a part of who you are and how you operate naturally. You really have to be this person for results to manifest naturally and can’t play pretend on this one. This is because you must already be ready to execute when that time, opportunity and blank canvas shows up in your life.
1. You eat creativity and inspiration for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Creativity is your core fuel. This must drive the heart and soul of everything you do. Seek inspiration from everywhere. Spend time with voices that inspire you. Eat breakfast with Steve Jobs, lunch with Massimo Vignelli and dinner with the Marcus Aurelius. Build that library — this will feed your inspiration over time. Observe life to see creative forces in action. You’ll find it expressed everywhere — from the budding leaf in nature to all human experiences. Embrace. Assimilate. Cross-pollinate. Create something new, everyday. Be a creator of ideas who can fill the blank canvas, over and over again.
2. Divergence feels like home. You are calm when blazing the trail of the unexplored.
After all, you will be taking the initiative to craft and create things that nobody even asked for. This requires you to embrace divergence and dare to go where you’ve never gone before. Most people confuse divergence with trying multiple approaches and learning what works best. But that is just variation and iteration. Instead, divergence is about traveling the road less traveled and trying entirely new approaches without knowing if you will succeed. This is not about having an inappropriate superficial need to stand out — but simply a focus on exploring, growing and being of service to all. You must be comfortable exploring new frontiers to see where it might lead even when you are in a race against time. You can stumble, fall and rollover. You might break into a hundred pieces but that will only make you a hundred times stronger. You must have the resilience to pick yourself up and carry on. You must be willing to accept failure as a natural consequence of pushing the limits. Understand that this can be a lonely journey in some stretches. Take inspiration from completely unrelated fields and cross-pollinate them in your product and experience context. Be comfortable being the thought leader that introduces and drives new ideas towards a better future for all. Don’t confuse making the world better with changing the world. Your goal is not to change the world, but to make it better.
3. Courage as a value is not simply a buzz word for you. It is your first, middle and last name.
You will create concepts that will challenge the status quo not just at your organization but perhaps the entire industry. These concepts might also displease some of your less-inspired stakeholders. When you are doing this correctly, then “You are making us look bad!” is a comment you will hear in some cultures. Dealing with pushback on the spectrum of disagreement to opposition will require nerves of steel. Know that gaining acceptance and support for unpopular ideas is a function of time. Show the courage to do time. And this does not mean that there must be an absence of fear within you. Simply develop a faith in success that is far greater than your fear of failure. As Robin Sharma would say, what would you do today if you knew it was impossible to fail?
4. Feedback is a gift. Run with it, now!
You cannot know everything and foresee everything — no matter how talented you are. Feedback is a gift. You’ll get it only if people respect you, trust you and care for you. You must embrace it and act on it immediately. This should not be a challenge for you as long as the foundation of your ideas are rooted not in your own ego but on creating value and being of service to the organization and customers. Sometimes, you will get feedback that really doesn’t resonate with you. You might feel like that doesn’t make any sense. But you must try it out anyway. In my experience, this has in almost every case resulted in a wonderful improvement in the experience that I did not consider before.
5. Agility, quality and quantity can co-exist as soon as you let go of self-imposed limitations.
Most teams are confronted with the classic dilemma of choosing between quality, quantity and agility — typically, you can only pick any two of these three attributes. But this is simply a self-limiting belief. Let go of that little voice in your head that’s holding on to the false idea that you can only get two when you can actually get all three. Rewire your mind so that you are no longer clinging to the ideas that limit you from expressing life fully. Sounds unbelievable? You can read more here: Crafting Delightful Experiences.
6. Relentless is the name of the game. The best is always yet to come.
One great micro-experience is the start. Never stop innovating. You cannot check-out after one day of wow at the job. One great performance and you are done for the quarter or the year? Nope. The show must go on, forever — relentlessly building on the wins from each day. The best is always yet to come.
7. Going beyond the call of duty is an entry-level requirement on the job.
Extraordinary experiences call for extraordinary efforts from ordinary people. There really is no job description for this role except that you will go beyond the call of duty to get things done. Think of this as being part of an elite Delta Force team. Each time, it’s a new mission that’s characterized by new challenges, dynamic changes, unknowns and uncertainties — which are nothing like the training or regular missions. You must think on your feet and take action on the ground as events unfold in the dynamic environment. You must get the job done. When you have this mindset in life, the results will be just as extraordinary. I remember a weekend when executives changed a product name five times (with each name declared as the final candidate) before a Monday morning product announcement. To accommodate this dynamic change, the team repeatedly updated, rendered and replaced tens of compositions in the product demo video. It wasn’t easy or simple — but we got the job done without excuses.
8. You are here to be of service, period.
Make a difference. Do not invest your ego or get attached to your thoughts and ideas. Know that everyone is a part of who you are — there are no others. What is in you is in them as well. You are only here to create value for your stakeholders, organization, customers and humanity. None of this is about you — instead its about your service to others. Keep focus on what really matters in life. No sustained happiness comes from a bigger salary, a nicer house or that exclusive design award. It comes only from one thing . It comes from a feeling that you are making a difference — that you are making the world better in your own little way. Be of service. This is the only thing that will matter in the twilight of your life. And this is a journey which must start early in life. You really can’t tag it on at the end.
9. Intuition, intuition, intuition. Embrace it even though it’s completely disregarded by the industrial data-driven complex that is design today.
Intuition has almost vanished from the designer’s toolkit today. Design in high-tech has become an industrial complex that prioritizes data and customer research above all. We even have a new technical name for intuition now — it’s mockingly called guessing. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Intuition can’t be explained rationally but you can sense it. This is what makes us human and separates us from artificial intelligence. If design is just data and process, then robots will do this better than all of humanity put together. Intuition is more than just the sum of our myriad subconscious impressions emerging from past experiences. It is our personal connection with the Creator — who is in me, you and everyone else.
So you must trust your gut and nurture your intuition. With time, it will be very reliable. You can’t keep running to your customers for every little thing. There are some customer-obsessed organizations today who’ll vehemently disagree with this statement. This is quite natural — after all, it is this customer obsession which has given them all the success they experience today. But customer obsession does not entail asking customers what they want and having them co-design it with you. Instead, it’s about creating experiences that they want. Who’s to say if these organizations might have experienced even more success had they tried things differently?
As the legend goes, Henry Ford reportedly said (or never said, depending on who you speak to) that asking his customers what they wanted would have only resulted in a faster horse. This is of-course unverified but that’s besides the powerful point this potentially made-up quote seeks to make. Your customers know their challenges better than you but they cannot imagine a future that transforms their experience. As a designer, your intuition means something and it is very valuable. Learn to rely on it well. And remember that you are not here to build that car but to imagine and craft teleportation in the age of horse carriages.
10. Most things in life have an expiry period. But some things require a maturity period. Experience is key. You can’t wing it on this one.
When Rex Tillerson, Chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil, was appointed as the 69th Secretary of State, President Trump referred to the importance of the role by stating that Rex was 30+ years in waiting for this role. That is the importance of real world experience. This appointment however ended prematurely with controversy but the point remains — some things in life just take time. You need to be mature enough before you are ready for a role. Likewise, having the desire to craft a vision for the future and your ability to execute on it are two different things altogether. Experience matters. There is no replacement. Good things in life take time. I see a concerning trend these days in some design cultures where experience is trivialized. In the name of inclusivity, design process and a desire to contribute are seen as the sole enablers for success. I understand that imagining the future is exciting and everyone would like to be involved. Big ideas can certainly come from anyone including an intern — but not a vision for the future. As they say, there are some exceptions to the general rule. But you cannot simply replace experience with a desire to contribute and hope to imagine the future. You must however nurture and mentor this desire with real world experience until you are ready for prime-time. This is a function of time which requires patience. Build that experience, every single day. You’ll know you are ready when life brings that first opportunity to your doorstep.
11. Be Maverick. It’s a wild ride and you only got one life.
Only 24 hours in a day. Only one life. And as you read this, you just expended a few seconds more. Think different. Cross-pollinate. Be unpredictable. As Dylan Thomas penned in his poem, do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage into the dying of the light. There’s no time to hold back. A popular regret that people have in the twilight of their lives is that they did not even live it! They say that the benevolent universe conspires to fulfill anything that you most intensely desire. The more you push by giving to life, the sooner ideas will find expression in you. Life is bustling with creation in all forms and will choose you… if you are ready.
12. Be maniacal about managing your energy. You don’t have an endless tank. Use it wisely.
Anybody who talks about smart work over hard work just doesn’t get it. This requires both smart work and hard work. The execution of great ideas is a function of time. You must do the time for these to manifest. This will require you to manage your energy like a pro-athlete, where you are extremely careful about how you invest your life force energies. You need a routine that nurtures your body, mind and soul so that you have the bursts of energy when you need them most. Be maniacal about investing your energy in things that really matter. It will make all the difference.
13. Vision without execution is mere delusion. We are not in the business of paper-ware.
Great ideas lead to great businesses. However, this can be realized only if you have the energy, discipline and passion for flawless and timely execution. Otherwise, it’s just meaningless paper-ware that can only serve to reinforce a false perception of achievement. You can’t sell a beautiful future for a million dollars. Revenue is recognized when this promised value is consumed by the customer. Imagining the future is that first step — but you must finish the job.
14. Rainbow Teleporting Shape-Shifting Unicorns can exist if you can believe, imagine and show it.
Imagining a unicorn is in itself pushing it. Now making that shape-shift and teleport is next-level divergence. But it’s one thing to imagine it and completely another to bring it to life. And to make things more fun, you won’t even be given the time to imagine it, let alone do something about it. After all, you are creating things that nobody even asked for. In order to bring your ideas to life, you must be a master of your craft. You must have deep skills across the spectrum of product design so you can perform all of them quickly yourself — from information architecture to interaction design, visual design, graphic design, motion design, content design and brand design. When all of these skills inhabit the same mind, you can effortlessly make the best trade-offs in favor of a winning experience that effectively narrates the story of a transformative future.
15. Be a good sailor of the rough seas.
There is a saying that you know a good sailor only in the rough seas. The rough sea is a strong metaphor for the true test of one’s ability to handle insane pressure. Your real character and capability will show in times of adversity. You must not surrender the leadership of your life to transient external conditions. Regardless of events unfolding in your work or personal life, you must develop the resilience to continue pushing through with an idea while it gains support and acceptability. In some cultures, there will be a price to pay for this exceptional behavior — you will do time. But be patient and you’ll cross the rough seas eventually. Nothing lasts forever.
16. Greatness demands grit and sacrifice. Usually, nothing of great value comes easy in life.
Nothing great is ever created or built without sacrifice. A nation is built on the blood sacrifice of its soldiers and their supporting families. If you are going to create that vision for a transformative future, it’s not going to come without sacrifice. Be ready to do what it takes to get the job done. Set yourself up for a day of wins by joining the 5 AM club. Wait, no — join the 2 AM club if you have to. Reprioritize. Sacrifice. Simply feed the needs that time demands of you now. And you will be rewarded by the natural laws of the universe in due course of time. If you think this represents a severe imbalance between work and life, challenge that thought and watch it wither away. Balance is not about checking-in between 9 AM and 5 PM and separating work from life. It’s simply about giving to life what it demands in the present moment. Sometimes, it will be work. Other times, it will be family. And sometimes, the balance will be in favor of one over the other. You must appreciate this reality if you are to maximize on opportunities in your life. Because opportunities to imagine the future will not appear when you are ready and if you have the time. Instead, you must be ready to meet it when, where and how it comes.
17. Embrace the power of now. You will act right now — not after breakfast and certainly not much later.
Be intimately aware of the gift in the present moment. When inspiration strikes, you must take some meaningful action immediately. The ideas appearing in your consciousness have a rapid half-life. Your ability to make use of them loses potential by half every 90 seconds — this is your window of opportunity. Ideas left unaddressed for even a few minutes can never manifest fully because they just don’t carry the same energy anymore. Think of ideas as seeds you sow in the garden of your mind. Water and nurture these seeds immediately so they can grow into the magnificent tree they are meant to be.
Develop a bias for action. Are you bored? Take action now. Are you tired? Take action now. Are you sick? Take action now. Are you sleepy? Take action now. Success comes only after work, not by sleeping. Win the battle of the mind. Successful people do things that other people don’t like to do even though they don’t like doing it themselves. They do it because it’s the right thing to do. Imagining the future is a rewarding experience but it will manifest only when the price is paid with your action on ideas in the now.
Are you ready?
I hope I’ve been of service to you. My best wishes to you for a warm and fulfilling life.
