The stone age didn’t end because we ran out of stones

The future will be built by people who believe in the change, and believe in their ability to make it happen.

I’m looking at my face reflected in the lacquered sheen of a century-old hardwood board table. A frustrated frown looks back.

“We tend to innovate once every 25 years or so.”

I look up. The board exec of this multinational insurance company leans back in his chair and places his hands behind his balding head, and shrugs.

We’re having a conversation about purpose. We’re painting a picture of a future uncertain in almost every aspect — except that it will be different — really different — from the world we’re doing business in today.

The question is — what’s the role of his business in this changing future?

He seems to be doing pretty well so far. Lotsa business. Lotsa money. Well fed shareholders.

But there are shadows on the horizon. When this business started it was to fulfil a social purpose — to help people protect themselves from risk. Today, the people working here tell me the purpose is to sell products (lots of them, ideally).

The shadows come in several forms. An exploding, nimble online marketplace that can cut his prices in half. A globalising, urbanising, population that doesn’t drive cars, doesn’t buy houses and lives forever. Emerging markets of millions who can’t access his products. A resource base that’s shrinking in all the wrong places. A customer base that’s full of ‘millennials’ asking irksome questions about ethics, provenance and pay grades.

He’s got a choice: work out how to be fit for purpose in this new context, and change to exploit the opportunity it creates. Or, die a slow, well-remunerated, I’m-about-to-retire-anyway kind of death.

The frustration on my reflection’s face is borne of a rising certainty that his choice will be the latter.

But I’ve got a choice too: work with people who like the idea of change but don’t actually want to do it themselves (like volunteering in Bangladesh, or mooning out the car window). Or, find the ones who do — the ones pioneering a purposeful pathway into this uncertain future, finding their piece of the change and making it visible, valuable, and real.

The stone age didn’t end because we ran out of stones. It ended because bumbling humanity found something better.

We won’t switch from petrol to electric cars because we run out of petrol. We’ll do it because it’s cleaner, cheaper, faster, healthier. We won’t educate online because we’ve run out of blackboards. We’ll do it because it gives us all access to all the knowledge. We won’t run out of large financial institutions because we have no need for finance…

Finance. Energy. Education. Mobility. Healthcare. Holidays…

This world is ripe for disruption by the purposeful. Challenge and opportunity lurk as devils and angels on the shoulders of the future.

The brands that will win will be those who help to create it. They will find their value needs to reach further than the quarterly sales target. They’ll find innovation is business and usual. And they’ll be guided by a purpose that reflects their role in this change and the outcome they hope to create for themselves, their customers and their world.

This change won’t start with a united shout of ‘Eureka!’ from the century-old oak tables of corporate board rooms and parliament buildings. It will start with individuals who believe in the change, and believe in their ability to make it happen.

If that’s you. Within wants to work with you. I want to work with you.