Did serendipity have a hand in landing you here? Let's prod that probability.
May I introduce myself: Max Kaizen. Creative technologist. Collector and connector of ingenuity from across the ages, cultures. and species. Why? Because our human lives are absurdly brief, and business models opportunity EVERYWHERE.
You know there's more.
In you. Out there.
Under the surface.
You just can't reach it from where you're standing.
How do you find what YOU alone can see and bring into the world through all the noise. This is a high stakes moment for our living planet. Who do you need to become next to meet it with gusto, ready and wise? Loose in limb and limbic system.
For some of us, none of the conventional unlocks work. You may need something surprising. Not another retreat. Here we do foresight field trips and expeditions to discover, and build the futures full of life ⚷
Yup, MAXIMILLIAN KAIZEN.
I know. My name. IRL more pocket-sized guildmaster than battle-ready Teutonic barbarian, but drive to explore the edges of the known? Samesame.
Lace up yer boots, nerd, let's go.
Come raid reality - and see what you couldn't have from a safe distance.
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." - Buckminster Fuller
I hunt genius and the emerging opportunities it ripples out, through culture, science, business and the natural world.
Genius always has coordinates: sometimes lodged in deep time, sometimes in a serendipitous slip, in pairing an old problem with a new tool, sometimes randomly, Tuesday, 17:29.
My job is to equip others to recognise the surprising, useful and novel. To peel back the familiar until the extraordinary underneath becomes impossible to ignore.
Not just to admire or lock away, but to bring it to life. In trade, tales and tools. Genius doesn't sell itself. It needs marketing to make connections and move to make a difference.
I've spent eighteen years doing this inside the roiling machinery of the world: whether learning programs for institutions adapt to sudden change or elite business schools, mentoring scrappy startups, in policy war rooms, even running a professional kitchen. The breadth allows me to speak an array of insider language, to see connections for interoperable intelligence. And the gaps where life can flow again through what is breaking now.
I know what it costs to try to change things from the inside. And what it feels like when the fog finally lifts and new realities can gain a footing. Let's go there →
NARRATIVE FORESIGHT
More than ever we see that powerful stories sway markets and the fate of companies and countries. Defying fundamentals.
None of us want to be caught playing a bit part, reacting to the mad main characters, rather than creating the narrative we choose.
Narrative foresight is time travel cinema. It's not predicting the future, nor the sexy futurist showmanship of new tech and consumer trends. It's the preventative health check-ups on reality. The workouts and veggies version of futurism.
Inoculating us against future shocks and expensive surprises. A way to choose, rather than hope for the future storylines with happy endings.
It requires hunting down the many hidden stories coursing under the surface of reality, to name the monsters, unflinchingly detail the fiascos. Then rewrite the scripts, and rehearse our part if one of the dystopian disaster flicks we foresaw, starts playing at a reality theatre near us.
Shortening the gap between freak-out ➔ figure-it-out takes getting our reps in. Never in isolation. It takes MANY kinds of minds, community inventory, role-play and skill-discovery to evolve through complex transitions, be they personal or planetary. Abstract dread ➔ action-packed invitations to plans + practical adventure.
It's also the realm of strategic mythmaking for those with big responsibilities. Cultural diplomacy. Placemaking. Film, food and fashion as soft power?You know it. We deal in big time, thick data, tiny actions and deep nerdery in decision-craft for this high stakes period.
Be Prepared
"Prepared for what?"
"Why, for any old thing"
- Lord Robert Baden Powell (Boy Scouts)
INTELLIGENT
LEISURE
Genius is no tame thing. Epiphany flirts from the periphery. It's often slippery, serendipitous, silly. It hates being grasped tightly, under a spotligt
Brute-force talent and deep pockets frustratingly come up short in trying to industrialise innovation. Breakthrough innovations refuse to materialise with reliable certainty upon command or calendar.
Unfurl your surface area to "luck" with intelligent leisure: fascinating friends, skill sabbaticals, writers retreats, grownup field-trips, creative tech tinkering, cultural immersions, raiding the adjacent possible. Anything but leaving it to chance alone, if we want to chart our own journey in this one lifetime.
= doing things that aren't for your resume, and where income isn't the only outcome. Surprisingly often, supercharges both.
Nothing is too boring when you can see the clues ... hidden in everything.
The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!"
but "That's funny..." - Isaac Asimov
huh...?
CURIOSITY-DRIVEN CAREER LIFE
Self importance obstructs learning
We often mistake WHAT to DO next, rather than WHO to BE next.
Too many brilliant people squish themselves into a role too small for their soul: the seemingly safe/sensible choice in the hot industry, high status or the one too lucrative to turn down. Golden handcuffs vs the arena wherein they (secretly) yearn to test themselves.
Retirement knocks many high-powered leaders adrift, because their identity was tethered to a prestigious job title. Or the uncomfortable void waiting for those who've succeeded at something massive and retired early in glory. Big wins have big dips that we've rarely been prepared for.
Wealth and fame aren't protective. Winning our true character, that respectfully doesn't give a hoot for status or applause, being able to trust our compass of internal clarity. This is real freedom. A rare, embodied luxury that money can't buy.
It comes by way of choosing fun that's not easy, and guaranteed to be cringe, daring to sweat as we learn, to be rejected, honest feedback and strive for the things that ACTUALLY make us come alive. But may not know why. In the company of courageous friends who pull us out of the mud and celebrate effort and character.
NATURE'S OPERATING SYSTEM
& Synthetic Intelligence
Ironically, the pinnacle of our human genius: silicon-based intelligence, may become the Rosetta Stone for decoding the ancient language of carbon-based life on our planet. Helping us work with this 3.8 billion year old operating system, written in chlorophyll and encoded in mycelium networks, collaborating with the unfathomable bounty of interoperable lifeforms around us.
We don't yet have a roadmap, but we do finally have the tools to swerve out of the doom loop. To upgrade our operating systems from those forged in the Enlightenment ➔ to the Enlivenment. Developing symbiotic intelligence with other living creatures on our lone living planet. Destruction is not inevitable.
It's a time of rewilding our imaginations to see beyond our coin-operated reality.
Yes, the odds are absurdly long, but with mad ambition we have
the chance in our lifetime of bringing LIFE roaring back. With the healthy abundance we crave.
This is a call to epic adventure, across the threshold of the known.
psst .. if you're trying to figure out what your purpose is here - this may be the clue you need ⚷
"The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don't go back to sleep.
...
People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Don't go back to sleep."
- Rumi (A Great Wagon)
IT'S ALIVE!
INDUSTRIAL SABBATICALS
& FIELD TRIPS
to hunt unexpected genius in the everyday. The thing only you can see. Give your (surprising) life's work the chance to find you.
Breathe. Observe. Begin anew.
