STRATEGY CENTRAL

When you have "futuring" exercises are you conciously working to keep your present from absolutely determining where you are going to end up?  Or are you simply leaving the future to be predetermined by the way you’re currently doing what you’re doing?

I love this idea from Burgess Winter, former CEO of Magma Corp:

"The usual place to stand [when thinking about the future] is in the existing set of constraints, issues and opportunities that confront the organization…Our recommended approach is to stand in a future that is not directly derived from present conditions or circumstances…Although the future is informed by the past, it is as "past-free" as possible…When I say the future is "past-free," I mean that the future should not be an extrapolation, extension, or modification of the past The Knowing-Doing Gap (pp. 97-98)."

If you want to build a "past-free" future, this is the way you’ll think.  How would you do that?  Only by willfully insisting that it’s the only way to play.  In order to be in the room where the discussion about the future happens you have to be able to think gray.  Everyone else needs to wait outside!

Every once in a while I trip across a great resource that really stands out. About a month ago Management Craft featured a podcast with Glen Hiemstra, the founder of Futurist.com.  Here’s a link to my post on the podcast.  The conversation on the podcast turned to Hiemstra’s new book, Turning the Future into Profit, which is divided neatly into two halves. Part One focuses on 4 long-term trends that the author has identified that hold tremendous potential for future revenue. The four that are examined are:

• demographic tidal shifts
• five key technology trends
• increasing the knowledge content of your business
• and, the next energy wave.

While Part One is both interesting and helpful, Part Two is fantastic and totally relevant for all of us. The detailed explanation of a three-stage process for preferred future planning is absolutely worth the price of the book!  There is a diagram in chapter 5 that will definitely become a permanent fixture in my white board planning exercises.  Anyone leading an organization into the future will benefit from the ideas here. Turning the Future Into Revenue will help you learn to develop foresight, choose a future direction, and then decide on strategy.

In his new book, Turning the Future Into Revenue: What Business and Individuals Need to Know to Shape Their Futures, author Glen Hiemstra summarizes his take on how to predict the future of your organization and plan for it with the following four assumptions:

• The future is creatable, so you have choice (He’s getting at the idea that what you are doing now plays a big role in what will probably happen later).
• The future is knowable, so you need to look (You may not be able to know everything about the future, but there are aspects of it that are already clear).
• The future is unpredictable, so you need values (There are equally aspects of the future that are unpredictable that you will need to respond to and your response will be based on your predetermined values).
• The future creates the present, so you need vision (In the sense that you can begin with the end in mind and then work back to the present, the future does create the present).

Interesting, isn’t it?  Take a few minutes just to think about these four assumptions.  Do you share them?  Are they reasonable?  If they are reasonable then it is possible to shape the future.  And if it is possible to shape the future then it only makes sense to ask ourselves, "why aren’t we paying attention?  Why aren’t we doing what we can to shape it for our organizations and even for our own lives?"  No answer?  Or at least no good one?  Why not try the following exercise?  Set aside some time to work through the following questions:

1. What choices are you making now that will determine a path that you really don’t want to take?  What choices are you delaying that will keep you from capitalizing on a present opportunity?
2. What do you know for sure about where your organization is headed if nothing changes?
3. What are the values that really hold dear?
4. What would the future look like if you ended up exactly where you want to be?

By the way, this isn’t an easy exercise.  It will take hard work.  Not doing it will play a part in determining your future.  Doing it will help you end up where you want to be.

If you took a careful look at what your organization is doing now and added in your best understanding of where things will end up if it just goes along the current trajectory…you come up with what you might think of as your probable future.  Now, granted you may really need to pull in a few really good thinkers, analytic types, who could help you be very realistic and pragmatic.  In other words, not just wishful thinking, but as close to a true trajectory as you could develop.

Now the question: Is that your preferred future?  Is that the trajectory that you’d really hope for?  Even wish for?  What would have to happen for that preferred future to be real?  Obviously something different than you’re currently doing.  But what will it take?

I just listened to a great podcast over on Management Craft on the idea of Strategic Planning by futurist Glen Hiemstra.  It has an idea or two that you need to hear.  Great.  Very, very transferable.  He’s got a new book out that sounds great, Turning the Future Into Revenue: What Business and Individuals Need to Know to Shape Their Futures.  I just ordered mine.  I bet you do too!