The Foreseeable Future

Where planning fails, foresight succeeds

Preparedness for the future is the essence of foresight. Only, we don’t take a single-track planning approach and attach some figures to show the probabilities of success. Foresight suggests the concept of multiple plausible futures and utilizes an inclusive approach to reach them. In the process, we build numerous scenarios and explore their implications for each of us.

When I was 15, I volunteered in the Israeli “Magen David Adom.” Being a first responder in cases where people are in a life-threatening situation captivated me. My school was on the Carmel mountain in Israel. I used to walk down from there, through the streets of Haifa, to the station. It probably took me an hour and a half each of the three times I went there every week. I put the coat with the logo on and waited eagerly for the speaker to call our team to action. The first in the ICU car, I used to sit on the edge of the paramedic’s box, ready to spring out of the car and rush to the patient.

In this reality, I had only one dream of what I would do when I got drafted into the army. I was going to join an airborne search and rescue elite team. I loved the adrenaline rush, knowing what to do in an emergency, and being a member of a first responders team.

Unfortunately, I did not make it to this unit. At the point of drafting, when presented with the options, I volunteered to be a navy officer. It wasn’t a hard choice, given my options, and it turned out to be a good one. In hindsight, this decision affected my life’s course. It’s not the only decision that did it, but I can see how this specific one rippled through my life and future choices.

The business context

You probably have your own stories of how you thought about your futures, planned for a specific desired eventuality, and then, faced with a situation that did not allow you to achieve your desired objective, made decisions based on your options. We usually wonder why we bother making plans while we know things will never work according to plan. It’s true- why make plans? The rationalization is that there is no better way to prepare for the future. But is this statement accurate, or just a way to rationalize our actions?

It works very similarly in the business world. Planning is usually a single-track exercise. The most we do to accommodate unforeseen events is have contingency plans. We pick a desired future, make a detailed plan of how we get there, and say what we’ll do if things don’t go according to plan. It is more common to see single-track planning than multi-track preparedness actions. This single-track way of thinking is rooted in our present looking at the future. We look around, see where we are today as individuals or as an organization, and say where we want to be in the future. On its face, this sounds very logical, but it’s not.

Let’s say I plan for ten years ahead. Then my plan should account for the situation I’ll face in ten years, not the one I see today. We make an unconscious assumption that extending the trend line of events we see today is the basis of the reality of the future. Now look around at any industry you want, and tell me if this assumption has been correct through the last 50 years. It’s not. Disruptions, new technologies, and unforeseen events shuffle the cards. The future is not a linear extension of the past in a single dimension. It is the intersection of many trendlines, cyclical and non-cyclical disruption events, and a host of effects from multi-dimensional drivers. While this was always the case, the VUCA world reality we’re in accentuates the need to think differently about our future if we are to prepare for it.

Scenarios

Global warming is a good example of the use of scenarios. Can you predict its effect on the world in ten years? No, because, despite the massive amount of data gathered on the subject, you don’t know what anthropogenic impact the next ten years will bring. Leaders are erratic in their decisions, the industry is slow to respond, and the planet works in longer cycles than humans do. In its 2022 report, the IPCC outlined five scenarios, from a global warming average of 1.9C to 8.5C. Instead of predicting one future and arguing about its probability, we are encouraged to prepare for a set of plausible futures. We prefer the 1.9C scenario, but we prepare for all five.

The foresight approach holds for business future preparedness process as well as personal. It is not limited to policymakers. Had I imagined at fifteen myself at eighteen, I could have seen the various plausible scenarios I’ll face, one of them not making it to the elite search and rescue unit. In my mind, I could have imagined myself weighing my options in each scenario and making a decision based on my future reality. If done correctly, this future-based decision-making process is fundamentally different from the present-based one.

Imagining scenarios for my business with that many variables seems a daunting task, but why? The knowledge to build plausible future scenarios is already in the organization and its networks. Most organizations follow relevant trends in the market, regulatory space, public opinion, and mega-trends that affect us all. Imagining extreme scenarios helps reach plausible ones:

• “Regulation will ban material X in ten years from industry Y.”
• “A new technology presented in 2025 will make all current technologies in the market obsolete.”
• “Severe climate events will cause all businesses to abandon the region.”

The argument that it is improbable this will happen is irrelevant. The scenarios help us prepare for the future. ??

It is up to us

We, the managers in our organizations, should conduct these processes. Giving the reigns to an external consultant is, in my opinion, a mistake. It will not produce valuable results as long as it’s a detached, theoretical process. We need to be personally involved. When I think about a scenario in ten years, I, first of all, imagine my age and the age of my children. I picture myself in the office, holding a different role in the organization. Then, I imagine myself on my way to the office when I hear the news: “After years of deliberations, the government finally passed a law to ban material X from all uses. The ban will be effective two years from today.” ?I think of the initiatives I’ll pitch to management, given the scenario I’m considering. This process doesn’t work If I think about what others will do. I know myself. I can’t tell what others will do. And this is the question: what will I do after hearing the news?

Tools are varied, but there’s a structured process for foresight. One resource I like is a 2018 compilation by the Global Centre for Public Service Excellence (GCPSE), an advising body of the UNDP. It contains multiple easy-to-apply foresight tools. I encourage you to read it and use it as a reference.

In closing, I want to mention the inclusive nature of foresight. Inclusion is a must to ensure the success of the foresight process by considering the multiple forces at play today. Different people from different backgrounds bring different viewpoints and put different weights on the societal, governmental, industrial, and technological drivers at play. But it’s not only the process effectiveness that requires us to emphasize inclusion. Long gone are the days when companies operated without regard to the societies they were in, the environment, and their employees. These are not just stakeholders. Companies are entities within local and global communities, and we expect them to be considerate and respectful to other members of society. Inviting participants from the organization and outside of it to these foresight sessions helps us imagine a future together. The fear of competition stopped us in the past, but there is no competition in imagining a future together. It is a pre-competitive exercise that should include people from my organization, my competitors, the society I operate in, and the organizations I collaborate with now and can collaborate with in the future.?