Being a Lead-time Ahead: The Key to Improving Readiness in a Turbulent World

Strategic Workforce Planning was once a rational and useful process.  There appeared to be time to think through future scenarios, map out needed skills and resources, and involve stakeholders to build consensus. But no longer. In this fast changing world, by the time strategic plans have been formalized, the plans are outdated, opportunities are lost, and risks have accelerated beyond reason.

Sensing and anticipating the future has become not just a survival skill but a critical leadership requirement for all leaders. These abilities are essential in a world characterized by uncertain prospects and growing global interdependence. It has been said that there are two types of companies today:  The quick and the dead. It is preferable to be the former, not the latter.  

Organizations that do not sense, adapt, and quickly respond, will be left behind. This is not just true for companies but entire industries and even the planet itself. Just consider the disruptions in the newspaper, banking, energy, automotive, and hospitality industries, to say nothing of the devastating impacts we are all feeling because of inadequate preparation for the pandemic.

Valuable Insights

“Lots of companies don’t succeed over timer. What do they fundamentally do wrong? They usually miss the future.”  Larry Page, Founder and former CEO, Google

“If you don’t disrupt yourself, someone else will.” Peter Diamandis

“Plans are meaningless, but planning is everything.” Dwight Eisenhower

“Failure to prepare is preparing to fail.” John Wooden

“Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over standing still.” Will Rogers

Lead-time Ahead Building Blocks

Being a “Lead-time Ahead” is one of six Fearless Talent Choices (Forman, 2020) that leaders can choose to make or ignore. Leaders can wait to react to new circumstances, or they can try to anticipate and address problems before they become serious impediments. It may be more comfortable to wait, but the cost of delay and hesitation can be catastrophic. Furthermore, the act of waiting to address an issue rarely solves the problem; it only ameliorates the symptoms (Heath, 2020). Band aids do not fix systems.

You cannot, however, just flip a switch to suddenly become proficient at identifying possible futures and improving readiness. It is complicated and involves breaking past habits and behaviors. But the good news is that we can get better at this. There are four key building blocks to better preparation, being ahead of the curve, and helping your organization “see around corners.”  

? Demonstrate a Forward Looking Mindset – Look beyond the immediate and prepare for what might come. Ask questions, be curious, keep looking ahead and take ownership. If you do not think this is important and a key component of your job, you will always be trying to catch up. Behaviors follow attitudes and mindsets.

? Recognize the Landscape of Impending Changes – The world has become an exceedingly small place. It is important that everyone take a broader perspective, be aware of the external factors that can impact people and organizations, and look outside their own silos—because what happens over there, can be here in a flash.

? Anticipate Possible Futures – No one can predict the future, but we can all prepare for different futures, now. There is benefit in the actual process of thinking through possible futures (Duhigg, 2016). By doing this frequently, it improves our ability to respond to different futures when they occur, even if the future that eventuates was not among those anticipated. The more we practice, the better we get.

? Demonstrate Emotional Strength – For real solutions to emerge, it takes strength and fortitude to confront risk, take chances and be fearless. It is not just a matter of logical and rational thought. If emotions are ignored or shortchanged, there will not be enough power to break past practices. Emotional strength is more easily demonstrated in organizations that exhibit psychological safety (Edmondson, 2018) and value setbacks as learning opportunities, not failures.

Three Techniques for Anticipating Possible Futures

There are several ways to develop skills for sensing and anticipating possible futures. One technique is to work with colleagues to identify two or three likely futures that are on the horizon. This brainstorming session is useful because it gets people viewing the business in a broader lens and thinking about what can be done now to enhance readiness. Three futures that might appear on many lists are: 1) A new spike in Covid-19, 2) Climate change and resource scarcity, and 3) The rise of Artificial Intelligence and smart systems. Getting the team to focus on these scenarios—and what to do about them-- once a month, or even once a quarter, can be very beneficial.

A second techniques is to use an external factor framework, such as PES-TLE-HES, because unstructured brainstorming sessions can overlook factors that might not have occurred to participants. PES-TLE-HES is an acronym for: Political, economic, social, technical, legal, environmental, health, ethical and security.  Using this framework, factors that might emerge could be cyber security, speed of economic recovery, tariffs, legal restrictions, changing consumer preferences, or increased social tensions.

A third technique focuses on the societal megatrends that will likely impact not just companies or industries, but everyone on the planet. PwC has identified five such global megatrends (Figure 1). A useful exercise is to assign each megatrend to a group of colleagues and ask them to delineate the possible impacts; and from this large list, pick three to five impacts that are most likely to occur. Once this is done, then identify the skills and capabilities needed in the workforce to address these challenges.  

Societal Megatrend Possible Impact Likely Impact Needed Skills

Rapid Urbanization

Climate Change and Resource Scarcity

Shifts in Global Economic Power

Demographic and Social Change

Technical Breakthroughs

Figure 1: Societal Megatrend Scenario Exercise

We can and must do a better job in preparing the workforce for the uncertain world that awaits us. The way to get out from behind the curve is to get in front of it by envisioning possible futures and taking appropriate actions. This won’t be a perfect process, but it works; and we will be running in the right direction. The train is coming.

“The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence. It is to act with yesterday’s logic.” Peter Drucker