Future/Back with purpose.

I’m sure a lot of people reading this are aware of many different types of Future/Back frameworks.

Mine is Insight => Foresight => Action. And I thank @bob Johannsen from the IFTF for this.

Simply put…

·??????Look hard.?What emerging signals do we see now??

·??????Think deeply.?How might these themes or signals or behaviours collide in interesting and concerning ways and what might that mean for tomorrow?

·??????Act quickly.?What are we going to do about it right now?

For those of you who aren’t familiar, it’s a crucial part of any meaningful and sane?disruptive innovation agendabusiness strategy and what’s more, critical for survival in our ever-increasing?VUCA?(Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) world. We used to use the term ‘Black Swan’ for unforeseen and freak circumstances outside of our control. Well, I think it’s fair to say we seem to have seen a whole herd of Black Swans over the last 2 years (the effects of global warming, pestilence, disease, war….. you name it…it’s pretty much happened). So, this begs the question…. are these Black Swan events, or have we just reached a period in our relatively short history which we’d regard as steady state for VUCA? As a proxy (and if you’re interested),??the International Monetary Fund essentially measure VUCA this via the World Uncertainty Index.?https://blogs.imf.org/2021/01/19/what-the-continued-global-uncertainty-means-for-you/??the full break down can be found here:??https://worlduncertaintyindex.com

What is clearly shows is the world is vocalising more and more the degree and notion of uncertainty more regularly over the last 100 years, and is ratcheting up.

A VUCA world is disorientating, which begs the question, how do we better navigate it when we don’t know which way is up??

I believe it’s at this point that personal and company purpose become absolutely critical. We must know what we’re doing and the reasons why we’re doing it. During times of high volatility our resilience and resolve is tested to the maximum. It plays out in our relationships, team culture, stress and sleep levels, productivity, our ability to make or feel like we can make an impact.. and so on. I may an N of one, but perhaps one of the biggest reasons behind the great resignation over the past 2 years is in the fact that people’s purpose just didn’t line up with the company’s they work for, and all that time at home created a situation where they found themselves out. Perhaps it should be renamed the great liberation?, or the great uncovering? Another way of thinking about it is questioning and reframing the fact that people didn’t resign “from” a job, but instead they resigned themselves “to” the fact their personal purpose in a VUCA world stuck out like a proverbial sore thumb. Perhaps the two years of great drama we collectively experienced caused and paused us to reflect on the types of questions that everyday life just gets in the way of.?

I sit here feeling super lucky. My company invests A LOT in purpose and ensuring our people really spend the time to think about it. And it’s not easy. Purpose done properly is difficult, thorny and frustrating. We often can’t find the right words or sentiment to express what we really mean or feel. Likewise, if/when we can find those words they seem ridiculous written down on paper.

I define my purpose as?“To?pioneer into the unknown and forge bright new paths for others to follow”.?Sounds w*nky doesn’t it, but I absolutely stand by it.?It took me a long time to reconcile whether I was pioneering at the front of the pack (with a pick-axe and headtorch in tow), or at the back of the pack (creating the environment for others to pioneer.)

And I’d be lying to myself if I said it was the latter. The reason being, I draw so much energy from the unknown and the opportunity it presents. But that’s utterly pointless if others can’t follow. In the same breath, it’s far harder to push people up the mountain than to find a way to motivate and excite someone enough into wanting to run up it quick time themselves.

So how does that work with Future Back thinking in a VUCA world? For me the only way to march with intent into a VUCA world is to rethink Future Back thinking with purpose.

·??????Look hard.?What emerging signals do we see now??

·??????Think deeply.?How might these themes or signals or behaviours collide in interesting and concerning ways and what might that mean for tomorrow?

·??????Act with purpose.?Why us/me, why now, why not?

·??????Act quickly.?What are we going to do about it right now?

The reason this is important is three-fold:

Purpose has been proven to be a force multiplier for people/business:??

Specifically, 52% of purpose-driven companies experienced over 10% growth compared with 42% of non-purpose-driven companies. Purpose-driven companies benefitted from greater global expansion (66% compared with 48%), more product launches (56% compared with 33%) and success in major transformation efforts (52% compared with 16%).?SOURCE;?HBR / 2015 -?https://hbr.org/resources/pdfs/comm/ey/19392HBRReportEY.pdf?One might argue that times really have moved on since 2015 and that purpose is now more important than ever.??

Purpose manifests when directly linked to purposeful actions:??

Here’s a decent article on the pragmatics of shifting your why into how/what; essentially as we all know, purpose is about as much use on a power point slide as a business strategy is. In short, in order to take affect it must manifest itself through tangible actions:?https://hbr.org/2014/05/from-purpose-to-impact

Purpose becomes more real in a reality we can create:

Without getting too psychoanalytical or philosopical about it, this article from Omar Itani is a super interesting one on how and when our thoughts permeate and craft our daily reality, where perception or not:?https://www.omaritani.com/blog/what-you-think?

Finally, here’s a decent article more broadly on the power of purpose from Forbes.?https://www.forbes.com/sites/tracybrower/2021/08/22/the-power-of-purpose-and-why-it-matters-now/

That’s why injecting your personal and company purpose into future/back strategy is so important. It’s an opportunity to anchor yourself within a VUCA context, and it’s far more likely to manifest itself in the real world via real people.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this and would love to hear any comments.

N Tate // March 28, 2022