Chris Marshall is a futurist, behavioral scientist, and founder of the Playfulness Institute. Futurism is not about predicting the future, but it involves looking beneath surface-level events to identify trends that drive seismic changes. 

Chris's journey as a futurist highlights the importance of curiosity. In his experience, being multi-passionate and embracing diverse interests is advantageous in a world of rapid change and disruption. A curious mindset fosters resilience and creativity, allowing entrepreneurs to adapt more effectively to uncertain environments.

Our conversation revolves around adapting to change and embracing a multi-dimensional perspective in navigating disruptive environments. 

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform.

Check Chris Marshall’s Decoding Change: Understanding what the heck is going on, and why we should be optimistic about our future, and use the affiliate links to support Pity Party Over at no additional cost to you.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn.

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TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: My first question for you, which probably would serve a lot of people listening to this episode, is who is a futurist? 

Chris Marhsall: So what's a futurist? A futurist basically, it's not sci-fi. It's not predicting the future even, because that's what a lot of people do think it's about. It's kind of we have a crystal ball somehow and go, oh, well, this is going to happen at this date and this time.

The way I approach it is I look at the big drivers, the big trends and megatrends, which are just kind of bringing about seismic change, but often under the surface. So I guess for me, the definition I like to use is that a futurist looks below the surface level events and look to what is happening beneath the surface, which might not be being picked up by mass media and things like that.

And really, when we start to understand that, we start to see that everything is always in flux. Everything's always changing. You know, this isn't new thinking. In fact, Eastern philosophies have talked about this kind of natural law of impermanence for millennia.

Being a futurist, the way I try to look at it is, well, what's the current trend? What's currently powering society? If we're looking at kind of societal philosophy or we're looking at business technology, what's the current trend?

What's the one which is potentially coming in because that's the one that's then maybe going to take over? And then we can build out scenarios around that crossover. And you can also go further out and go, well, actually, what's right at the fringes, what's being developed right at the fringes today? And this has less probability, has less certainty around it.

It makes you aware of what's happening, what might change the world, what might move this market or this group of people or this business or organization. It's a far more scenario-based way of looking at things rather than the typical, let's go back to business and the business plan, which typically has one scenario, and it's normally very, very positive, and I'm going to get 1% of this market share. And hey, Presto, it's an amazing business.

Futures thinking really just tries to bring in the different scenarios and then paint kind of, well, what are the pros and cons? What are the things we need to be aware of in each of those?

Stephen Matini: As you're talking, I was also wondering when you realized in your life this passion of yours, because for me happened really, really early on, and I could express it as a passion for patterns. You know I could see patterns in everything. How did you find out this attitude of yours?

Chris Marshall: So I lived in North Wales. I still live in North Wales. Obviously, a few hundred years ago, 1,000 years ago now, the Romans came and kind of conquered Britain. And Welsh roads, they weave in and out. They have a corner every about 30 centimeters. The joke is that there used to be sheep paths. And the Roman roads in contrast are pinned straight. Now, whether this is true or not, my parents told me that this would kind of save travel time and it would stop bandits lurking around a corner and all these kind of things.

And for me, I was always interested in these big shifts that we had these kind of, I'm going to call them scars on the landscape from eras gone by that no longer exist, but they're still visible to us. And so I was fascinated by these big moments of change, kind of pivotal moments or paradigm shifts. That kind of like lay dormant in me for decades.

Obviously, just curious. And I think that's probably the key is I'm a highly curious person. And that sent me down an awful lot of rabbit holes of, you know, kind of if I list the titles of things that I've done. I'm a master distiller. I'm a psychotherapist. I'm a performance coach, a behavioral scientist, a futurist, an investment manager.

What's happened in the last few years is really, I think it was when I was researching for the book "Decoding Change," I realized that all of this life experience, this kind of life of being a multi-passioned person, this highly curious person, actually, they do have crossovers.

They have transferable skills and transferable insights. So for me, it was really just a life of being highly curious and often getting stuck into things which fascinated me, which I found interesting. Some people would just call them distractions from what I was meant to be focusing on. But essentially, over that time, I just found all these different avenues. And then eventually it all came together.

This is maybe going back only maybe seven, eight years into this field that, okay, if we actually add all these together in this kind of beautiful Venn diagram almost, then right at the center is the overlap between all of these things. So that's for me, and I constantly draw on all of those different experiences and skills I've built.

Stephen Matini: Basically, based on what you're saying, you need to have so many different tools to navigate in a way that makes sense. I don't think you were unfocused. You were building your resilience, probably. 

Chris Marshall: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, and I couldn't agree more. In fact, most of my work now not only draws on all those different skills, but helps people promote it in their own lives. And this isn't to say that if you are a highly focused person with one focus, one job, one project, that that's bad. You know, the world needs both types.

But what we've done, I think, in the modern world is promote this kind of idea that we go through school and we continually specialize until we come out with this hyper-focused specialization in this niche area. And that's all we do and all we look at. But as you'll know from your teaching in your own life and seeing this in businesses, when we kind of look for creative solutions, they tend to come from spillovers. So I think Einstein described it as creativity being combinational play.

So this idea of knocking two molecules together which have never met before. And you don't get that very easily when it's just one molecule. It's got nothing to bounce off. So you can get it in a committee, you can get it in a team, you can get it in an organization, but you can also get it in individuals.

And the world we've promoted, I mean, if you even think about how you promote yourself individually, if you're a multi-passion person, the question I hate the most is, what do you do?

I struggle to answer that one because it's like, well, what's your interest? And I'll tell you what's relevant. But the way we've promoted the world, these kind of 30 second, 60-second elevator pitches that we're all told to have, they don't allow for multi-passion people to kind of promote themselves and thrive. In fact, all too often, they're hit back with these ideas of, "You're not focused," or, "You're a jack of all t