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Greetings,

Most people don't realize the raw business potential and risk that will happen in the period that "follows" COVID-19. In my first book Exploiting Chaos, and more recently in Create The Future – Tactics for Disruptive Thinking, I spent a lot of time studying chaos and opportunity.

Today, I want to inspire you with some new thinking about chaos and consumer needs, and then I want you to sign up for one of our Free Future Festivals, so you can join 12,000 people already implementing some of our frameworks about crisis, chaos and recharting. You can get your FREE ticket HERE (and there is current 3-for-1 deal on the PRO workshops and Day 2 upgrades).

1. CHAOS IS THE NEXT PHASE, NOT THE CURRENT - Time periods of chaos reshuffle the deck and switch who is in the lead. However, interestingly, we are not in one of those periods of chaos, yet. Chaos is what happens next. Currently, we are still in a period of crisis because people can't live their lives yet. So you cannot study your consumer perfectly because they are struggling to navigate through and not making the same choices they will make next year. (Here's a 2 minute video on Crisis, Chaos and Recharting

2. YOU CANNOT EXTRAPOLATE THE STATUS QUO - Most people mistakenly try to extrapolate our current situation into the new normal, but realistically, consumer preferences don't simply evolve, they diverge, rebound and rebel. You can predict how things change using our patterns of chaos and innovation and by extrapolating certain megatrends. But the status quo never continues post-chaos.

3. PEOPLE WILL MAKE UP FOR LOST TIME - After a year of lockdown and restrictions, consumers everywhere are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. On one hand, vaccinations give us the promise of finally emerging back to our lives of travel, regular work and entertainment. Only things won't be as regular at all. They will be the roaring 20s with people wanting to make up for lost time.

4. THE QUESTIONS YOU MUST ASK, CHANGE - What will happen in your market, to your consumers? What new innovations will be launched by competitors who spent a year behind closed doors, reinventing? What new competitors will cross into new markets? How will you react if a tech titan, like an Amazon, buys your closest competitor? These are the sorts of questions many are facing as we prepare to jump from our current period of "crisis" into what will be a year of "chaos" and reinvention.

5. SCENARIO PLANNING IS YOUR BEST BET IN CRISIS - When faced with a complicated pathway like this, military leaders in the cold war used to turn to Scenario Planning -- the science of breaking down your uncertainties into a grid of "Alternative Futures" that might realistically unfold. Alternative Futures and different from the Expected Future, which is simply the status quo extrapolated. The inspiring part is that you can use these techniques in business to develop reaction strategies. Liken this time we are in now to the calm river before the rapids. If we plan for different scenarios that might unfold, we can navigate those scenarios when we are moving too fast to be able to plan. An example matrix is shown below.

JOIN US FOR MORE - On Day 2 of our Future Festival we will do a new version of my Scenario Planning Masterclass, where we will walk you through a post-2021 world. Will COVID go away forever, or become endemic with COVID-21 being some new strain that stays? Will your consumers go back to normal life or alter? Will your competitors invest in COVID-proof strategies or assume life goes back to normal?

You can come to the Day 1 of Future Festival FREE, and then if you want to explore these scenarios in a workshop form, and get the extras, our PRO day, Day 2 offers much more, OR you can talk to us about our own facilitators conducting a private Scenario Planning Workshop for you. FREE ticket to Future Festival.

Which scenario do you think will unfold? Are you prepared for all four?

Enjoy!

Jeremy Gutsche
CEO, Author & Keynote Speaker - JeremyGutsche.com

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