cannot be truncated quite as neatly as a two-hour Hollywood epic, and that moments of friction can derail adventures, even for some of my biggest heroes. And we will explore the uncertainties of what might happen in situations where the journey takes you off-path and where ‘good' doesn't necessarily destroy ‘evil'. The inherent tension and friction of making each paradigm shift will also be discussed and highlighted, with the ambition that you will be able to curate your own hero's journey away from this friction and toward seamlessness – that magical place where successful leaders and brands of the future reside.
To concretise this methodology of the hero's journey, let's take an executive summary look at how it played out for Frodo in the Lord of the Rings movies:
1. Ordinary world: Frodo and his best friend, Sam, and his two cousins Merry and Pippin live happily in a small village in the Shire.
2. Call to adventure: Gandalf calls upon Frodo to set out on a quest to destroy ‘the one ring to rule them all'.
3. Refusal of the call: Frodo is initially reluctant to leave his cosy life in the Shire, but changes his mind when he realises that his and his friends' lives will always be at risk as long as the ring exists.
4. Meeting with the mentor: Frodo meets again with Gandalf and then with the rest of the Fellowship, a group of trusted allies of Gandalf's who have sworn to help Frodo in his odyssey to destroy the ring. The Fellowship consists of Frodo's hobbit companions; two men, Aragorn and Boromir; Gandalf; the dwarf Gimli; and the elf Legolas.
5. Crossing the threshold: With the aid of the Fellowship, Frodo begins his quest – his long journey to the volcano Mount Doom, the only place where the ring can be destroyed.
6. Tests, allies and enemies: Frodo encounters many obstacles, allies and enemies on his odyssey. He journeys over the mountain pass, barely escapes the wrath of Balrog, becomes allies with the elves, is almost captured by the forces of Saruman, is attacked by Gollum and nearly eaten by a carnivorous spider (Shelob).
7. Approach the inmost cave: As he moves through stage 6, Frodo also has to separate from the Fellowship, alone with Sam, to continue his long journey to the fires of Mount Doom. The Fellowship meanwhile cannot continue with Frodo, because they must help defeat the forces of Sauron that are growing more powerful with each passing day. Frodo and Sam use Gollum as a guide to travel the secret back paths to reach the entrance of Mount Doom.
8. Ordeal: Frodo must achieve his goal of reaching Mount Doom to destroy the ring, while the Fellowship and its allies must defeat Sauron's forces contemporaneously.
9. Reward (seizing the sword): Frodo destroys the ring in Mount Doom, while the Fellowship and its allies overcome the forces of Sauron.
10. The road back: Frodo falls unconscious from exhaustion and Sam and Frodo are rescued by Gandalf and his eagles.
11. Resurrection: Several weeks after losing consciousness Frodo awakens in time to witness Aragon's marriage to his long-time love Arwen, and Aragon's ascent to the throne. Simultaneously all the members of the Fellowship (with exception of Gandalf) are knighted by Aragon.
12. Return with the elixir: Frodo returns to the Shire enervated by his epic journey and the Fellowship of the Ring (and eventually, Frodo journeys to the Undying Lands to live peacefully for the rest of eternity).
Sorry if I ruined the ending for you. However, even if you now know the structure behind this epic, and feel like you have just seen the process behind the magician JRR Tolkien's tricks, these tricks are hardly his alone. This type of mythical structure is deeply embedded and in rapport with our subconscious souls, and has always been part and parcel of that most fundamental of human skills – the art of storytelling. Indeed, throughout this book, I use the hero's journey contained within another epic – Star Wars IV: A New Hope — to more fully illustrate this type of narrative arc, and the similarities contained within the story arc of my own, closer to home, hero. Through this journey, you will learn how to design and guide your partners, clients and collaborators in quests that lead to true adaptation and transformation.
For as long as stories have been told, the most engaging and connected of human stories are those of transformation, change and adaptation – which is perhaps why I, as a futurist and science fiction geek, was so strongly drawn to support my hero on their transformational journey, so that they could one day return home with the elixir to their business problems. (And good story also holds something back. We'll get to this hero in chapter 1.)
The narrative arc that I have just described stands in stark contrast to the idea of seamlessness. If you think of Frodo's journey, for example, nothing about it was seamless. Rather, the whole experience was filled with seams, friction, obstacles and paradigm shifts. Moving from one stage to another was neither easy nor without interruptions or problems, and Frodo and his fellowship didn't perform perfectly and certainly not without any flaws or errors. Few of us do. However a dream, a destination, a vision, a strategy was always part of these epic journeys. And, at the end, there was a sense of relief, of calm, of a beautiful life, of peace, of perfection.
So I want to uphold ‘seamless' as a kind of ‘end of the rainbow' state – a utopia, Holy Grail, and paradisiacal, mythical place. It is a special world that we can all imagine. Because it is brands, leaders and organisations that are able to design journeys – customer journeys, talent quests, change projects and transformational odysseys – empathetically and in such a way as to guide their stakeholders from a status quo of living an ordinary, boring life in the Shire, through a special world of dragons, demons and disruptions, to return fully transformed, that will excel in our near-horizon future.
The hero's journey is one of both inner and outer transformation, and of movement between ordinary worlds and special worlds. And again, the transitions between inner and outer transformation, and between different worlds, can be either frictive or seamless (see figure I.2).
Figure I.2 : the journey between what is (the status quo) and what could be
And this moves us to the second of Arthur C Clarke's laws – that ‘The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible'. This book is designed to take you into the magical world that is the future – of current im-possibilities. Please let me co-design an extraordinary one with you. And as I say to my clients and friends, you better start preparing for the future today, because it is where you will spend the rest of your life.
With this in mind, fellow futurephile hero, join me on a space odyssey, sign-posted by the following twelve steps, equally the chapters in this book:
1. Ordinary world/status quo
2. Call to adventure
3. Refusal of the call
4. Meeting with the mentor
5. Crossing the threshold
6. Tests, allies and enemies
7. Approaching the inmost cave
8. Ordeal
9. Reward (seizing the sword)
10. Road back
11. Resurrection
12. Return with the elixir
Butterflies,
