COVID and the end of certainty.

Ok, this is kind of a dumb title. There never was certainty in life or business. Yet, most businesses project, plan, and forecast as if they can predict the future. Every year they collectively spend trillions of dollars engaging in months-long processes that ask employees and consultants to chart and agree upon a model to navigate the future with.

Then COVID happened. Much like the collapse of the global banking system happened before it. Or the oil crisis before that. Or the South Sea bubble waaaaay before that.

Sudden changes; global in nature, or more specific to an industry or geography, happen. When they do, all that effort to plan ahead goes up in smoke. What if adopting a 'creative mindset' represented a more effective way to negotiate an uncertain future than a detailed, analytical plan?

Now, you might ask, how often do disruptions actually occur? Once every ten years? No. They happen pretty much all the time. Accenture analyzed 10,000 companies and found 71% of them were either in the throes of significant disruption or on the brink of it. Typical planning relies on two projections. Cost projection and revenue projection. Costs are relatively predictable. They are almost entirely within the organization's control. Revenue is much less so. The customers are in charge. Their behaviour is much less predictable.

So if disruption is inevitable, change is constant, and customers are unpredictable, why spend so much money and effort to plan a future that we know won't go to plan?

Long term planning is actually a human coping mechanism. It is a way of managing the fear and discomfort that the unknown causes us. Planning in business is much more effective at managing employee emotional stability than financial stability (perhaps planning should actually come under the purview of employee wellness initiatives).

Even 'experts' employed exclusively to forecast and project the future stink at it. Take fund managers for example. They sell their customers the promise of 'beating the market'. Turns out, they aren't very good at it.

Experts are asked to process and analyze vast quantities of information in order to arrive at their predictions. If humans aren't effective, perhaps AI will be able to master the prediction business? Alas, human unpredictability presents a challenge. Tech companies like Google and Amazon have famously tried to create predictive models of employee and applicant performance. Unfortunately these models mainly accomplished a more efficient form of profiling, by relying on historical datasets of successful employees. It's also difficult for these models to 'learn' from these mistakes, as the options not taken (i.e. the outcomes of the employees not hired) are almost impossible to track.

Projections of the future rely on analysis of the past. But past behaviour is not an accurate determinant of future behaviour. Human behaviour is changed by past experience. "History" provides raw materials out of which we create new (creative) combinations. These hard to predict combinations create an uncertain future. This pertinent example from Margaret Heffernan's great book 'Uncharted' shows the danger of slavishly modelling the future based on the past:

The 1968 Hong Kong flu outbreak killed 33,800 Americans. The sense was that the government's response was too little too late. In 1976 when a new flu emerged among soldiers at Fort Dix, the head of the CDC, David Sencer, quickly advocated for mass inoculations. 45 million Americans were inoculated against a flu that never emerged. Worse, complications from those inoculations caused dozens of deaths. Sencer was forced out of the CDC and eventually became the NYC health commissioner in the early 1980s. As AIDS emerged in the city, Sencer's response was coloured by this past experience. He was determined not to be alarmed, and along with a bigoted political response to the crisis, the unfolding tragedy was ignored.

Instead of embarking on time-consuming planning and strategic 'journeys' to forecast the future; why not embrace another option? Adopt a creative mindset and embark on a 'creative journey'.

When I started researching how creative thinkers behaved, I focused on the research done by cognitive and behavioural psychologists. I wanted to show that there was science that supported the creative method. As fruitful as this research was, one of the most illuminating ideas I encountered came via John Cleese. In his lovely little book (or pamphlet as he has referred to it) 'creativity', he argues that creatives are uniquely able to leave questions unresolved. They tolerate the discomfort of not mapping out a plan and making a concrete decision. They are more comfortable with uncertainty. Creatives tend to only finalize a course of action when they hit a deadline. Even then they will try to keep experimenting and changing course. It's something that used to frustrate me about working with creatives. But then Cleese provided me with a simple rationale:

"Well, it would be foolish, because if you can wait longer, two incredibly important things may happen. 1) you may get new information. 2) you may get new ideas."

So how can you adopt a creative mindset in order to better navigate the future and manage the discomfort that goes along with it?

1) Have a 'Commander's Intent' approach to strategy and planning.

Ironically this first creative recommendation comes from the typically rigid world of the military. A key component of 21st century military strategy, it addresses an old military adage, "no plan survives engagement with the enemy." I prefer the way Mike Tyson put it:

"Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."

The military recognized the need to abandon rigid frameworks and step by step plans in the field. They acknowledged the limitations of planning in the face of the enemy's unpredictable response. Instead, they provide a clear and concise articulation of what they want to achieve and give their field commanders the latitude to accomplish it in the best way available to them. This approach allows for multiple courses of action and adaptation based on the barriers the field commanders encounter.

2) Seek progress rather than perfection, using an experimentative approach.

Picture a painter at work. Perhaps you think of Ed Harris as Jackson Pollock, staring at a blank canvas, then suddenly struck by the inspiration to produce #5. Rather than being suddenly struck by inspiration, most painters work through a more iterative process. Often they create a series of paintings on the same subject, gradually working toward a resolution.

A creative mindset is iterative and curious. No path is determined to be right or wrong. Each path must be investigated. When organizations choose a strategy to pursue, inevitably that choice forces them to cut off possibilities and options. Instead of spending all that time and money to predict the best strategy, why not redirect it towards conducting a multitude of experimental approaches. Potential approaches can be considered internally by determining the required resources + perceived chances of success. Then, make several bets.

When the system is complex, small experimental approaches can have just as much impact as large rigorously planned ones. These experiments are not 'pilot projects' with rigidly defined success measures. Rather they are an exploration of possibilities. The Dutch home care nursing company, Buurtzorg, provided a clear mandate to their nurses: improve their patient's health outcomes. Started in 2006, Buurtzorg nurses were free to determine the best course of action for their patients rather than adhering to the bureaucratic and overplanned directives provided by the ministry of health. Nurses employed a holistic trial and error approach to healthcare, resulting in patients getting better 50% quicker and reducing costs by 30%. Today the company provides two-thirds of all home care nursing in the Netherlands.

3. Accept the existence of opposing outcomes.

Some companies only see the binary of success and failure. This often leads to the prioritization of short term goals. I often reference Kodak ignoring their own invention - the digital camera. They deemed the invention a failure because it was projected to take at least 15 years of development before it was viable. A company's strategic plan's success is typically measured against rigid KPIs that need to be achieved within a specific time frame. If aspects of a plan fail to perform against KPIs, those parts of the plan are abandoned. Worse, experiencing that failure once often results in an organization ignoring the potential of a similar plan in the future.

Accepting uncertainty, and that no one 'answer' can be absolutely correct, is the hallmark of the creative mindset. Accepting a need to balance the continuum between efficiency and innovation, just-in-time and just-in-case, adaptability and long-term focus sets creative organizations apart.

3M is famous for not adhering to binary results during experimentation. In 1968, 3M's Dr. Spencer Silver was attempting to create a super strong adhesive. In the process he developed a low-tack, reusable adhesive. A clear failure based on his current KPI, Dr. Silver saw potential in the invention. The new adhesive was presented around the company - a solution in search of the right problem. Ten years later the right application was found and rolled out - the Post-it note.

The creative mindset represents a more flexible approach to managing the future. Rather than creating frameworks and processes that seek to narrow options, it embraces the possibility that there are many paths to success.

I'm sure we've all worked for or with companies that spent a lot of time and money talking. Perhaps it could have been better spent 'doing'?