The Future Has Other Plans
Navigating Disruption with Pascal Finette
If you’ve ever felt like the future is coming at you faster than you can process, you are not alone.
In this episode of How We Future, I sat down with one of my favorite tech-forward thinkers, the brilliant Pascal Finette.
Pascal lives and learns on the edge of tomorrow. But unlike many futurists, he’s not trying to predict an uncertain future, he’s focused on helping leaders and organizations build the capacity to thrive in it. As he says, “We believe the future is unwritten – and we’re here to help you build what matters.”
He’s the co-founder of radical and author of Disrupt Disruption: How to Decode the Future, Disrupt Your Industry, and Transform Your Business and the forthcoming book that Pascal is writing “in public,” Outlearn: The Art of Learning Faster Than the World Can Change (2026).
We started our recording by asking each other to fill in the sentence: “The Future is...”
And, in a moment of unexpected irony, the internet immediately froze. We lost connection. The screen went black. When we finally reconnected, Pascal laughed and gave the perfect answer:
“The future has other plans for us.”
That moment of technical chaos was a perfect microcosm for our conversation. We dove deep into why the future isn’t a straight line, how to spot the “thin whispers” of tomorrow, and why we need to embrace the weirdness.
Pascal is one of the most curious, expansive and generous thinkers that I know. He’s constantly learning on the edge and then takes time to share his discoveries widely – and most of his resources are free!
Here are just a few takeaways from our conversation.
1. The Future is a Paradox
Our brain craves certainty - it’s a neurological survival mechanism that’s been passed down from our great great great ancestors.
Given that wiring, our brains often want the future to be one thing: It’s either bright or scary. It’s either high-tech abundance or a dystopian nightmare. But Pascal reminds us that futures thinking requires holding two opposing views at once. It’s one of the hallmarks of productively navigating ambiguity.
And yet, it’s always amazing to me how few leaders have taken a class on ambiguity when, in a world filled with speed and surprise, it may be the skill we need most.
Pascal argues that we have to get comfortable living in the gradients. Life is not black and white; it’s a spectrum of color. As leaders, we have to navigate the tension of AI being a tool for incredible creativity and a source of existential anxiety.
Pascal’s posture is to learn wide, fast and deep. His bi-weekly newsletter, blog, and books are focused on sharing “headlines of the future,” new research reports, and field guilds inviting readers to widen their lens of how to process and prepare for what’s coming.
2. Breaking Out of the “Official Future”
There’s a concept in futures thinking called the "Official Future." It’s loosely defined as the future we expect to happen, based on assumptions, beliefs, or “truisms” that influence how we think the future may unfold. Sometimes the “official future” is articulated explicitly, like in an organization’s business plans or fundraising pitches; and sometimes it’s implicit - an unspoken worldview that colors our beliefs and actions.
For example, here in Silicon Valley, the “Official Future” is that technology will drive positive progress, and that its growth trajectory is up and to the right (referring to the ubiquitous charts in AI business plans that show increased users, increased revenue, increased return, among other projected outcomes). But you don’t need to be in pitch meetings to feel this “Official Future” - just drive down the 101 highway to see billboard after billboard touting the next best AI-empowered tool!
While it’s important to have a vision of the future, being too rigid about it in a rapidly changing world can lead to vulnerability. Pascal points out that most organizations operate like athletes running a race: they have a singular goal and a narrow track. That focus is great for winning a 100-meter dash, but navigating a dynamic world over a longer time frame requires a more agile stance.
When we lock ourselves into one “Official Future,” we blind ourselves to the disruption happening in the peripherals. And then, seemingly overnight, a new disruptive change will come along, and we’ll find ourselves on the back foot, scrambling to catch up.
Pascal shared a quote from sci-fi author Jeff VanderMeer that I love:
“A circle looks at a square and sees a badly made circle.”
As Pascal said, “We look at squares all the time. You can see the future. But we want them to be circles because that’s the thing we expect and want.”
We can get so locked into what feels familiar and known it can be hard to see a different future, even when it’s staring us in the face.
3. Look for the “Thin Whispers from the future”
Finally, we talked about how to actually see what’s coming.
Pascal calls these signals the “thin whispers of tomorrow,” which he regularly shares in his radical newsletter. These are the things that look weird, fringe, or silly today, but are actually early indicators of massive shifts.
A few years ago Pascal introduced me to a social influencer named Lil Miquela. If you haven’t met her, Lil Miquela is a 19 year old musician and fashion influencer from Brazil with millions of followers, brand deals with PacSun, and a bustling modeling career. She travels all over the world enjoying a wildly vibrant life.
She’s also... not a real human. She is a CGI digital human.
Lil Miquela is a great example of a “thin whisper of tomorrow,” an emerging idea on the edge signalling a potential radical shift in how emerging technology might disrupt an established industry. Her first instagram post was published in 2016, well before the launch of commercially available generative AI and the world of social influencers. In 2018, she was named one of Time’s most influential people on the Internet, and was featured in product endorsements for luxury brands such as Calvin Klein and Prada.
Fast forward to today, we’ve seen the mainstream adoption of generative AI in nearly every aspect of social media, marketing, and even entertainment. Hollywood writers and actors staged a 5 month strike over its use in 2023, costing the industry billions in economic losses.
Pascal and I talked about different practices that all of us can use to identify these “thin whispers” and potential implications of them. One of our favorites is the Futures Implication Wheel, originally created by Jerome Glenn, which is a mindmapping approach to explore not just what happens next, but the implications of the implications.
Listen to the full conversation to hear Pascal’s take on how digital humans are rewriting the rules of connection and creativity.
How We Future: Your Turn
Thinking about the future is a practice. So, before you click away, I invite you to flex your curiosity muscle this week.
Remember that quote from Jeff VanderMeer? “A circle looks at a square and sees a badly made circle.”
Your challenge this week is to find something in your industry or life that looks like a “badly made circle.” Maybe it’s a new tool your kids are using that seems silly, a weird trend in your market that feels like a fad, or a piece of technology that seems clunky right now (like that old Palm Pilot!).
Instead of dismissing it, pause and ask:
“What if this isn’t a broken version of today, but an early prototype of tomorrow?”
“If this weird thing becomes the new normal, what happens next?”
Don’t judge it. Just get curious about it. And if you find a good “thin whisper,” let me know in the comments!
I purchased "Outlearn" which is a work in progress that is just one good chapter written in 2025. What is the timeline for fleshing this out?