Futurist, Richard Neville, said that Local Government and governance go back a long way, but at the same time we need to move forward.
“The underlying assumptions of a global society are shifting,” he said. “Politicians have a lack of foresight and they need to look further ahead when planning for the future. While it is key to inhabit the present and the power of now, it is also crucial that we look to the future, as well as acknowledge the past. We must be capable of living in three time zones and we must be able to move fluently between them.”
Richard Neville said organisations generally fail because the people running them have made assumptions.He said that leaders need to identify trends and understand their impact.
“We raise foresight by looking further ahead and becoming acquainted with the future,” he said. “When people start awakening and transcending, it leads to globalisation. It is a catalyst to change history. Too often, leaders put their needs first and those that fail to see a need to personally transform are stuck.”
He said that people selected to project the future also need to be different.
“If the people were all the same, they would all predict the same future,” he said. “But there is not one future, there are hundreds.
“We need to be constantly alert, aware and listening to all sides.
“Communities need to be open to new ideas.”
Richard Neville said we must accept the future and not take it for granted.
“We have already come a long way,” he said. “Our next journey is to move away from extraction towards restoration – away from quantity to quality. We must move towards networks, collaboration and connectivity. Connectivity leads to creativity, and through creativity we can achieve wonderful things for the community. We will see consciousness become larger than consumers and through this, we will make the meaning of life more thrilling and dynamic.”
