What’s worse than reading one bad trend report? Reading 100 of them. It’s that time of year again. As we inch towards the last quarter of the year a flurry of trend reports will hit our news feeds and inboxes. It’s not just the exclusive privilege of those of us in foresight and futures who get to spend hours trawling through these, everyone one of us is sent one trend report or another. Anyone and everyone can have a perspective of what is likely to be influential in 2024.

The problem isn’t a lack of perspective, the problem is homogenization of perspectives. And the lack of complex, critical thinking applied to it.

Perhaps without forethought, planning and preparation, all of that goes out the window. If you don’t communicate your personal brand in the way you set out for it come across, what does it matter how you set out to position it? Some things need to be filtered and some things must stay private.

We see what’s familiar as better, more important and more ‘true’. That’s not surprising as it’s a fairly known human behavior. But I do wonder if in business it’s more intentional than that. It’s not that we are just too busy to venture into it, or it’s too expensive to research, or it’s too complex to understand … it’s that we don’t want to. Because we don’t really care. We believe it’s less important because it’s less familiar.

Meet the human being, we are flawed, we are imperfect. We aspire to be and do better, but, you know, not all the time, and not with everyone, and not with every thing. We are complicated.

Our interest in the darkness that lies within human being is very much linked with what we do in our day jobs; however they come, we work hard to really see people. Flaws, contradictions, hypocrisy and all.

Music stimulates parts of our brain, it engages our physical body, it can alter our moods. It is even said that music is at the center of what it means to be human. It’s an interesting claim considering that we often talk about humans as being visual creatures without perhaps exploring how other senses influence what we ‘see’. But it’s perhaps most interesting because of how little we consider, research or leverage music in the consumer good space.

We break plans apart so we can rebuild them stronger. We question things like an outside company would so that our activities stand up to competitor scrutiny. We consider the worst alternative so that we build contingencies for that reality. We pressure test, we rethink, we reassess our plans with positive intent. It’s fun to play the devil’s advocate, sure, it’s easier to spot the negatives than the positives, but it’s also imperative that we do so.

Surely, the act of thinking - pausing, reflecting, considering, probing - is the most critical one in propagating curious behavior that is worthy of our time.

Curious action without curious thought is aimless. But curious thought in itself without curious action is fruitless. In fact, you could say practicing curious thinking, while critical, is not pushing us towards that aspect of curiosity that is so distinct and so revered - bravery.

They accept that that openness to opportunity also means an openness to the unknown. And the unknown is fraught with nerves, with a test of your confidence, and with big risks that come attached to dire consequences.

We can debate whether this type of mindset is sustainable or even if it’s brave. But it’s undoubtedly very human.

Curiosity extends beyond digging deeper into one topic you’re exploring. It’s about bringing disparate, disconnected pieces of information together and thinking about what story they might tell. It’s learning about the context of history. It’s about questioning who the ‘bad guys’ and ‘good guys’ really are. Too often we pigeonhole learning, and limit its potential to not just transform the outcomes we regardless must reach, but in the ability to transform our thinking.

As Michelle and I discussed on the show, we are complex and contradictory creatures and that will never change. So perhaps what is changing is our desire to understand that better. To showcase that ‘humanness’ to others. As Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” That is surely what drives a lot of us into professions where we are paid to examine life and the living.

We think we know ourselves pretty well, and at the same time we admit we don’t know that much. We’re still learning who we are, how our minds work, why we fall into predictable habits we can’t seem to break out of. Why we disrupt, sometimes destroy, our own goals. Why in the world would we then assume we know our consumer inside and out?

Marketing is a fairly linear path and certainly you may find some people move to marketing from sales or insights but it’s less common to hear of a financial expert, an ex-banker doing that. Actually good marketing is all about the right investment choices, about a strong ROI, even when you’re creating something artistic, and so it’s refreshing that when rose was pulled into marketing she didn’t try to overcompensate for her banking-brain, she’s leant into it.

The WSJ reported that Apple is studying ways to make AirPods a “health device”. This isn’t necessarily a surprising move for Apple, as the company has been publicly and actively expanding its footprint from the smart home to the smart out-of-home. If there’s one thing Apple is consistently good at, it’s focusing on their core offer, in this case ‘smart devices’, and iterating on them.

You may be reading this having worked most of your life in one field, or with one organization, following a fairly linear path and curiously wondering about another. And to you I say grab those binoculars. There are many paths to success, and each path holds a plethora of inspiration.