#7: The under-rated skill product leaders need to cultivate now to avoid future shock

And no, it's not another framework.

On Wednesday evening I found myself in town at the Cambridge Product Managers Network meetup, listening to Paul Jervis Heath deliver a preview of his talk for UX Scotland. High energy, and packed with space and sci-fi references, this was the perfect way to get to know this group. We met in The Waterman in Cambridge, in their cosy potting shed out the back.

Photo credit: Daniel Megson

The premise of Paul’s talk was future shock, a term coined by American futurist Alvin Toffler in his novel of the same name. It refers to a psychological condition resulting from the acceleration of change in various aspects of life, including technology, information, and family dynamics, i.e. too much change in too short a time. If you spend any amount of time on Linkedin or at tech events nowadays you may be feeling this exact way about AI.

Paul is a self-proclaimed futurist, which is something we have in common (if my Clifton Strengthsfinders report is anything to go by!). Futurists are, unsurprisingly, folks who like to think about the future - but especially how it may be different from the current state of affairs, and generally in positive utopian terms, not dystopian.

Pause for thought: how often do you think about the future?

Many folks find they struggle with thinking about the future: beyond what you are having for dinner this evening, or that you need to save for retirement. But I see future thinking as an increasingly essential competency for product leaders to develop, supported by a cluster of complementary skills. Our role in this is not only to develop the skills ourselves, but also the capability within our teams and organisations. We must be ready to anticipate and respond to change, rather than react when it catches us off guard. If we’re not proactive in understanding future possibilities, we risk irrelevance and being outstripped by not only our competitors, but also cultural momentum.

And as with anything skill-based, it is possible to learn it - if you want to.

So here’s what I see as the three essential skills to cultivate that support future thinking and avoid future shock:

• Creativity

• Critical thinking

• Decision making

Today, we’re starting with the most misunderstood of the three: creativity

Creativity

Throughout my career and coaching practice I often hear people say “I’m not creative”. This limiting belief has its roots in who we stereotype as the creative people in our society - painters, writers, film-makers, fashion designers, and so on. And there is certainly an element of creativity bounded within their skillset.

But what people often think of as creativity is actually artistic talent. It’s important that we distinguish between the two. Creativity is an inherently human trait, and throughout the history of our species it has propelled us forwards through invention and expression. Here’s some examples of creativity in action that many folks may not realise:

• Daydreaming

• Playing with children

• Having a conversation

• Putting an outfit together

• Deciding what to have for dinner

• Working out directions to someplace new

• Figuring out a daily schedule so everybody’s needs are accommodated

Did anything on that list surprise you?

What these all have in common, and therefore, how we need to define our creativity, is they all involve the ability to generate novel and meaningful ideas, solutions, or expressions by combining existing elements in new ways. And the wonderful thing is that we do this multiple times every single day - often without realising that’s the skill we’re using.

The biggest myth product leaders have is that creativity belongs exclusively to the designers. In reality, it’s a core leadership skill.

Pause for thought: what do you now recognise as examples of your own creativity?

To enable creativity we must engage in two similar skills: visualisation and imagination. We can illustrate the difference between these with this simple exercise:

• Bring to mind a mental picture of an elephant

• Now imagine that it is green

Green elephants don’t exist; grey ones do. Visualisation is creating a mental picture based on what we know to be true about the world - having seen a real one, or pictures or films of elephants we know what they look like. Meanwhile, imagination is creating a mental image of something that does not (yet) exist.

(Side note: I was going to say ‘pink’ elephant as an example, but I thought someone smarter than me might point out that one actually did exist in nature, and then I had to Google it just to be sure, and lo and behold… you’re welcome).

I encourage my coaching clients to use their imagination skills when we cover goal setting. What I am inviting them to do is imagine a future where they have achieved what is important to them: first of all, what is it they want to achieve, then how will that feel, what will they be doing differently, how will that impact people around them, and so on. We then use a technique which Paul calls ‘backcasting’ (going to nab that from now on!), which is the opposite of forecasting. Working backwards from that future possibility, what are the key steps we need to take to achieve that goal or future state?

Some clients struggle with this, so I invite them to switch up their perspective using the rocking chair exercise. In this, you imagine yourself at 80 years old, sitting in a rock chair and looking back at your life. By playing with time perspective in this way, we engage our imagination to look at our goals from the other side, as if they had already happened. A similar technique is used in product management when we’re writing the press release for a product we haven’t yet built, and describing how it solves all our customers’ problems.

Bringing this back to the day job, here are a few ways you might already be flexing your creative muscles:

• Envisioning a new product in the portfolio

• Discussing how to leverage AI (or any other emerging technology) with your tech peers

• Mocking up a quick prototype to help your team understand the shape of the problem

• Navigating a path through competing customer or business priorities

These may not feel like creative acts, but each one involves generating new ideas, combining inputs in novel ways, and imagining possibilities that don’t yet exist.

So now, if you're feeling the rumble of future shock, with too much change happening too fast, start by recognising the creative power you're already using every day. Cultivating creativity is about expanding your capacity to imagine new possibilities, navigate ambiguity, and shape the future rather than be shaped by it. If you become the next Salvador Dali or Tracey Emin in the process, well, that’s a bonus!

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Thanks for reading. In upcoming posts, we’ll explore the other two skills that build on this foundation: critical thinking and decision making. But for now, give yourself credit: you’re more creative than you think.

— Caroline

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If you’re feeling overwhelmed with future shock, and worried about how to future-proof your career, I can help:

• Work with me 1:1 to develop your self-belief that you are creative (and learn how to apply that skill in your career)

• Invite me to your event or podcast to inspire creative self-belief in your team or organisation.