Foresight – three moves ahead

Not long ago something really made me think. I saw a nice painting of the biblical King David (in one of the so called “psalters”, a book of psalms). Standing to the king`s left and right there were two figures – named Sophia (wisdom) and Prophetia (prophecy, foresight). This is what you need, it came to me! Two key things to navigate through your life. Competencies, experience, shortly: wisdom. And a good sense and ability to anticipate, to look ahead, to “prophetise”. Indeed, the latter is what we call planning, strategy, vision. So, while the wisdom is what we get from the past, foresight is what enables us to go forward. And, both of them are strongly related.

Without knowledge and experience (wisdom), our ability to anticipate, to predict, would never be where we want it to be.

It is interesting that Prophetia in the painting keeps a roll of paper in her left hand and points to the book that King David holds in his hands. Clearly showing that you can “prophetise” with some foundational knowledge only. Too often people expect that they can plan, predict, innovate – without any foundations, without experience. They just believe they are smart enough to anticipate the future and to make good decisions. Well, “gut feelings” and intuition can help, I agree, but there must be some foundation we can build our future upon.

Let me borrow another example from a book titled I Have Control in which a pilot and an entrepreneur Christian Winkel writes: “A good pilot is like a chess player. The pilot has to always be three moves ahead. And when you think you have done all you needed to do, and it seems there is nothing more to do, then there is something to do.”

I understand that we simply should not stop, we should not stay passive, but rather actively think, “prophesize” – up to three moves ahead (or more). And, do you think a chess player can think three moves ahead without knowing how to play the game, without playing chess many times, without studying possible moves, studying some big chess games of renowned players? Sure not.

So, to be successful, to navigate through life and business as best as possible, we all need Sophia (Wisdom) and Prophetia (Foresight). In that order.

Constantly building our wisdom through work and learning, and constantly thinking ahead, I mean, at least “three moves ahead”. ??