Future Nostalgia for your team
What is happening right now that you might be nostalgic about in the future? Photo from wonderlandmagazine.com
I celebrated a milestone birthday on the weekend with a very 2020 experience - a Zoom dinner party with my family. We all had the same meal at the same time - just a different location. Despite it being far from what I had planned or could have expected, it was fantastic and I am sure that I won't forget my 40th any time soon.
The advantage of unique and unexpected experiences is that they allow us to more readily recall them. Maybe that's what Dua Lipa means with the title track from her #1 album, Future Nostalgia. I’ll let you decide whether this is me trying to prove how I'm still up to date with the young people's music.
We have been listening to the album a lot at our place and it has sparked some interesting conversations. Like many kids, my daughter often surprises me with her insight. After we explained what nostalgia was, she reckoned that Future Nostalgia must be the point at which the past and the future meet - the present. I hadn't really thought all that much about it before she came up with it and it seems to fit. I love this idea of Future Nostalgia being a quirky phrase that can act as a reminder to notice what is happening right now. I have written previously about the idea that wisdom is experiencing hindsight in advance.
If that is true, then the ability to identify and recognise Future Nostalgia in the moment is a gift that you can benefit from both now and in years to come.
While there are many things that have become much more difficult as a result of the events of the last few months, there are some opportunities that have arisen. Without doubt, there are lessons to be learned about ourselves, our teams and our organisations. Leaders and teams who are attentive will be better off both now and in the future. I will share some of the opportunities that I have noticed in future weeks, but for this week I'd like to offer these two questions for you to consider and explore.
Two years from now, what lessons are you likely to recall from this time?
How might you get more benefit from that hindsight now?