New Year, new plan?

New Year's Day is my favorite day of the year. Full of promise and potential. It's a day I like to use for quiet reflection and projection, imagining what the year ahead might look like. Who do I want to be this year? How will I grow? What challenges will I face? I recently enjoyed listening to a two-part series from Hidden Brain exploring what the ancient Greek philosophers can teach us about ourselves. The first part focused on Socrates and Aristotle lays the foundation for self-knowledge, while the second part (for Plus subscribers only, a worthwhile investment) focuses on applying this knowledge to shaping the future self that we desire. So much of this wisdom can also be applied to how organizations should think about planning for their futures. The essential insight: we cannot control most of what happens to us, but we can control how we respond to it. That response can be coached and reinforced by the conditions we create around us: the people we associate with, the role models we choose, and the clarity with which we understand our own values.

Tell me a story

A recent Opinion column from Inc. could almost be an advertisement for Groundwire Strategies' strategic planning philosophy. The author emphasizes the growing inadequacy of legacy strategic planning processes in most organizations. At best, most companies treat strategic planning as a glorified budget exercise, with projections extrapolated from past experience and justified with the right analyst report that neatly supports the desired conclusions. Given the number of headlines I've seen recently confidently projecting that 2024 will be either a landmark year for U.S. renewables or a total bust, and the shocking shallowness of alleged expert analyses, I'd be wary of most predictions.

Building a good strategy is more like telling a story than drawing a map. A recent editorial in the Financial Times describes the perils of prophecy, and how to make them useful. It is one thing to see the future but it's entirely another thing to know what to do with it. He asserts that useful prophecies are vivid, best viewed in contradictory pairs, and relevant to their audience. In his own words: "A single forecast offers false certainty, assuming we believe it at all. But two compelling explorations of mutually exclusive futures? Now we are starting to move away from the sterile question 'what will happen?' and towards the fertile question 'what would we do if it did?'" When we consider the future, we must imagine not only what might happen, but what might be the implications of such a future. Applying this sort of prophecy to strategic planning for an organization means you must deeply understand your values, your purpose, and the unique features that distinguish your character. The "five whys" are a classic methodology for drilling down to these essential truths. With this perspective, you can begin to imagine what various vivid futures would mean for you, how you might respond, and what actions you could take today to achieve your goals across a varied landscape of potential futures.

Asking "why"? is interesting, but asking "why not?" is more important

Imagination is the most critical tool for designing successful and resilient strategies, and most modern business environments do little to cultivate or reward this skill. Something I appreciated about the FT editorial was the emphasis on presenting counterfactuals, not only prophesizing one future but also its opposite. The author reasons that this helps reinforce how uncertain the future is, which is true, but I think its higher purpose is to stretch our imaginations. Answering the question "why" is so much easier than answering its counterpart. This is the main conceit of an audiobook I started recently: But What if We're Wrong? Spoiler alert: we almost certainly are, about many, many things. Even in the 7 years since its publication things have changed so much that we can think of different possibilities not even imagined at that point. Science fiction and speculative fiction take an extrapolative view of the future, while the versions of the future most likely to actually materialize are the most difficult to imagine because of the limits of our knowledge.

I personally spend a lot of time in this liminal space, the place between what we think we know and understand and that knowledge which is yet to be found. I'm especially fascinated by the world of quantum mechanics and the philosophy of time. Is every moment happening all at once? What if the future influences the past? This quote I selected for my high school senior yearbook still captures my imagination:

THE SERPENT. The serpent never dies. Some day you shall see me come out of this beautiful skin, a new snake with a new and lovelier skin. That is birth.

EVE. I have seen that. It is wonderful.

THE SERPENT. If I can do that, what can I not do? I tell you I am very subtle. When you and Adam talk, I hear you say 'Why?' Always 'Why?' You see things; and you say 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say 'Why not?' I made the word dead to describe my old skin that I cast when I am renewed. I call that renewal being born.

- George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah

Predictions for 2024

The Economist has published two fantastic summaries of trends and predictions to watch in 2024: one focused on industries and another focused on world events. Those who fear what a change in Administration would mean for climate action may take comfort in the 63% consensus of "superforecasters" predicting the Democratic party nominee will win both the popular and electoral votes in the 2024 U.S. Presidential nomination. When taken in context of their 54% consensus that China's GDP growth will fall between 4.5-6%, and the 79% consensus that Quad countries and China will escape the year without accusing one another of using military action against them, I think perhaps these forecasters are influenced more by what they hope will be true on matters of significant importance to them personally. I'd put the likelihood of all 3 of these consensus predictions materializing as quite low. Meanwhile, the business trends analysis asks some provocative "what if?" questions, like a shift in dominance of the U.S. dollar for trade between BRICS nations, or the possibility that continued climate fallout makes "much of America" uninsurable. These potential disruptions offer a nice counterbalance to an otherwise conservatively extrapolated view of 2024, which includes growth of renewables in its top ten alongside the depressing counterpoint that fossil fuels will still meet more than 80% of global energy needs.

Groundwire is working on its own forecast of trends to watch in 2024, with a unique twist. Watch this space for more information coming soon!