The Future Needs You: Why Imagination, Courage, and Purpose Still Matter Most

GARY BOLLES:

Kyle, always great to connect with you! Let’s dive in. You founded a design agency. You led innovation and employee experience at The Gap. You worked at an impact-focused consulting firm. What were the drivers of those career decisions? Was there a through line that helped prepare you for what came next?

KYLE HERMANS:

My father wanted to build a legacy design firm that my siblings and I could carry forward. That really influenced my early choices. I studied design, graduated, and landed at a prestigious design marketing company. I ended up as an assistant to the CEO, fresh out of school.

What became clear quickly was that, despite our love for each other, my father and I were not compatible as colleagues. I had to step away and find my own path. That led to a sequence of questions that became the arc of my career:

• Where does creativity come from?
• Why are we working with poor creative briefs (aka, “polishing turds”)
• What thinking and decisions come before the brief?
• Why do some absolutely brilliant ideas never get implemented? 
• What blocks creativity?

Eventually, I found a quote from one of my mentors, George Prince, who said, “Another word for creativity is courage.” That was my lightning bolt. I realized that everything comes down to this choice: Build your life through fear, or build it through courage. No matter the area of life, whether it’s setting business strategy, human development, health, fitness, love, relationships, I’ve chosen (and help others choose) courage over fear ever since.

GARY BOLLES:

You’re now working with people in their 40s and 50s who are hitting speed bumps in life. Some are terrified of the idea of purpose with a capital P. Others just want meaning. What are the catalysts that help people figure out what purpose means to them?

KYLE HERMANS:

Purpose depends on a person’s willingness to reflect. We have processes we use to help with that. What I’ve found is that most people don’t make time for self-reflection.

I often work in rooms of 30 to 200 executives. I put up a list of the top 20 biggest stresses a human faces in life—job loss, illness, losing a loved one, etc. 

Then I ask, in the last couple of years, how many of these they’ve experienced. Most hands go up for 10 or more. Most people are filled to the brim with life experiences that negatively impact them and that remain unprocessed and unresolved. 

Then I ask how many have made conscious time to reflect, go to therapy, or work with a coach after those major events. On average, only one in fifty raises their hand. Most people never take the time to figure out what they learned and how those events shaped who they became. 

So we start there: with reflection.

We ask people to:

• Identify 5 to 10 major highs in life.
• Identify 5 to 10 lows.
• Reflect on what they learned from each.

From that, we extract attributes, values, and strengths. Someone may have developed determination, grit, gratitude, and self-reliance during a hard time. Then we map those insights forward into the future. Where could they feel most fulfilled, and what value could those attributes bring to their future? 

Suddenly, we’ve helped people make sense of everything they’ve gone through and helped clarify what matters in their future.

That blend of past reflection and future vision brings people closer to purpose.

(This “Lifeline Exercise” can be found in worksheet form here.)

GARY BOLLES:

How do you apply that to an organization? How do people bring their personal purpose into company culture?

KYLE HERMANS:

It’s about having freedom within a framework. We can get super tactical—down to daily meeting agendas—or very strategic, such as company vision, ESG commitments, and legacy.

One example I love is Patagonia. Before getting into the nitty-gritty grind of a meeting, they start by asking, “How did we serve and impact the Earth today?” That keeps their true purpose front and center.

Another practice I recently was part of a software company was placing an empty chair at the meeting table labeled, “Customer.” When discussions get too internal, we could ask, “What would the customer say about all this?” (Answer: The customer usually won’t care at all about most of the discussions you’re having internally!) The customer, who is perhaps the whole reason a company is in business, should have a voice at the table.

For that company, customer-centricity was core to its purpose. That’s purpose in action.

GARY BOLLES:

Let’s talk about AI. Some leaders now say AI isn’t just a tool, it’s a coworker. I tend to think that every time we elevate our technologies, we diminish the role of humans. I would much rather keep working with humans and have them use AI as tools, but how do you think about this, especially in the context of purpose? When we elevate our tools, do we risk diminishing humans? Can AI help us find purpose? Could AI itself ever have purpose?

KYLE HERMANS:

Great (and big!) questions. 

You know, we’re so afraid of what we don’t understand. The best way to mitigate fear is to lean in and get curious about what we don’t understand. That’s a big part of our work. We shift people from a place of fear to courage by saying, “What’s the biggest thing you’re afraid of?”

“AI taking my job,” they might say. (AI is generally always on people’s “fear list” these days.) 

Then I say, “Okay, so is it true?” 

They usually say, “Well, I don’t actually know if it’s true or not. It’s just a thought that I have, and it could happen.” 

And I say, “Okay, so what would be the courageous thing to go and do?” 

The courageous thing could be to make AI a partner. Go, play, go, experiment, be ready just in case. That’s the courage that mitigates the fear.

In our business, we were advised by the legendary Michael Gillam (actually from a Singularity talk on inevitable futures he did!) back in late 2022 that it would be wise to start making ChatGPT part of our team. So we courageously stepped into that future and named ours, “Fin” (short for infinity–more on that story here).

Whenever we utilize AI in reports or content, we credit it. The key is transparency and using it as a supplement to the human mind, not as a replacement. 

So far, we’ve found that AI is excellent at summarizing what has been thought of in the past. It’s not great at creating insights that haven’t been thought of before. It can’t generate truly original theories or ideas. At least not yet.

That’s where human imagination still wins. That’s why I ask people to put away their phones at first when we’re in creativity mode and not rely on ChatGPT. (You’d be surprised how people will hide that they’re doing this under the table sometimes!)

I could see a way that AI could be programmed to act with purpose. My daily prompt to myself is: “Where is the courage needed today?” I wake up asking that. So what if we programmed AI with that level of intentionality?

GARY BOLLES:

That could be a path toward responsible tech. Okay, say it’s 2045. Future Kyle wakes up feeling disconnected from purpose. What do you do to reconnect?

KYLE HERMANS:

Funny enough, I felt that at the end of 2023. I was close to walking away from it all and opening up a sandwich shop or something. Seriously! Here’s what helped me reconnect to my purpose:

1. Nature. I’m from South Africa, so I’m sort of a “wild” being at the core. I went into the ocean and the forest, unplugging from technology, and let the whispers of nature refuel my spirit.
   
   
2. My coach, David Shepherd. We did four intense days of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) to reset my thinking.
   
   
3. Stillness. I slowed everything down and re-tuned my inner frequency.

I realized I’d been operating in a technological system that doesn’t match human nature. So I tuned back in to what matters and who matters. (More on the process of “Rewilding” can be found here.)

GARY BOLLES:

So, last question. I’m not asking you to have a crystal ball, but how do you think about purpose decades from now? Picture yourself waking up on a weekend in 2045 or 2050 – what would your purpose look like then? 

KYLE HERMANS:

Such a great question. I think the only constant is change, and without a doubt, love and courage will be more relevant than ever.

Love inspires us to do amazing things. To get esoteric for a second, you can walk around and look at plants, flowers, birds, a delicious meal, or art to feel human and connected to purpose. You can look at your kids. The emotion of love is one of the most powerful forces ever.

Equally powerful (or a close second) is courage. I can’t imagine a future where we won’t need to find courage every single day in the face of what’s coming. We’re wired for certainty and control, and we get fearful when feeling safe and grounded is threatened. And there will only be more and more uncertainty in the future. 

What that means is that you’ve got to know what’s worth fighting for. And I don’t mean fight to hurt another person. I mean, when you understand a risk and the stakes are high, and you have the conviction to follow through. It’s when you think, “I love this purpose so much I have to make sure that this thing happens, even if it’s going to take relentless amounts of courage to make it happen.” 

Those are the two forces I plan to follow for the rest of my life, and do anything I can to help others find theirs.

GARY BOLLES:

A masterclass, as always. Thank you, Kyle. And thank you to Singularity and everyone listening. Kyle also has a free purpose toolkit available here for anyone interested in finding their own path.