Vignette ‘how to’ on foresight – fertile ground
SHIFT ATTITUDES TOWARDS RECEPTIVENESS TO CHANGE
George Bernard Shaw said, “You see things and say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were and I say ‘Why not?’”
It is important to cultivate receptiveness to the new: “Let’s try and understand this better.” The new disturbs existing comfort zones and positions and as a consequence is often dismissed or challenged–it just does not fit with the established order. It is important to recognize this behavior and to educate the organization on its potential consequences, and to give specific ideas for better ways to deal with the new and surprising. In an organization this requires some investment in thinking. If the organization is in a hurry to get results, encourage it to invest twice as much–this is the wisest investment it can make.
Key steps
Executives who have grown up in one kind of organization or in one industry are often firmly invested in their opinions. Eventually many of their views become hard-wired into the organization as conventional wisdom. The more firmly invested in these views an organization is, the harder it is for the analyst to help it let go and explore new ideas.
A simple starting point and approach is to gain agreement that it is important to the organization to improve its receptivity to the new. Model the causes and consequences of behavioral differences towards new information and ideas.
Next, research and understand the key areas where the organization is concerned with the new. These might be about industry growth or decline, as an example of areas where blinders are the most expensive to the organization.
Armed with this knowledge, create a few workshops specifically about highlighting the meaning of the program and the methods to get to some change–focusing on the behavior and the selected content elements. If possible, connect this goal into a leadership development program or other similar programs. Push participants to “lead by example,” and model it yourself.
Be sure to connect the behavior-oriented push to a programmatic approach to foresight. Make a concerted effort to show the value. Measure the impacts of these programs through employee interviews, such as a 360-degree assessment specifically on how the key areas of the business are being improved by this.
Benefits
Encouraging receptiveness to the new is a good practice in general, but will likely “stick” better in an organization when change is imminent or taking place. Many organizations recognize the value of strategic programs, which aim to sensitize their people and approaches to the shifts in markets and industries and to better understand the meaning of those shifts. In periods of growth, organizations may try to build innovation programs, strategic foresight programs, or ideation programs, or at minimum try scenario planning. Often the early attempts are sub-optimal in that they lack a programmatic follow-through activity, and thus fall short of the broad impact they could have.
Also, many organizations have established some means to track trends in their environment. If these rely on classical market-research methods alone, the foresight generated tends to be a linear extrapolation of today’s impacts–and hence will most likely miss the opportunities and risks that a strategic foresight program would be able to identify.
Example
Adam Kahane (2002) tells a remarkable story of transformation in Guatemala. The country has the dubious distinction of having had one of the longest-running and most brutal civil wars in Latin America, from 1992 – 1996. More than 200,000 people were killed or “disappeared.” After a truce, the Vision Guatemala project was formed to help vision a new future for the country. A team of forty-four–including political leaders, academics, business and community leaders, former guerillas and military officers, government officials, human rights activists, journalists, indigenous people, national and local politicians, clergy, trade unionists, and young people–were led through a scenario process by Kahane. The key attraction of the exercise was the process of deep dialogue among people who had previously never spoken with each other. It led to the team enrolling sixty “multipliers,” or grassroots leaders, who worked not to disseminate the scenarios but to replicate the dialogue process in local initiatives. This process of dialogue was instrumental in producing the visioning effort’s successful results.
Further reading
De Geus, A. (1997). The Living Company: Habits for Survival in a Turbulent Business Environment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
Kahane, A. (2002). Changing the World by How We Talk and Listen. Unpublished manuscript. Beverly, MA: Generon Consulting.
Kleiner, A. (1996). The Age of Heretics. New York: Currency Doubleday.
Marsh, N., McAllum, M., and Purcell, D. (2002). Strategic Foresight: The Power of Standing in the Future. Melbourne: Crown Content.
Ohmae, K. (1982). The Mind of the Strategist: The Art of Japanese Business. New York: McGraw-Hill.
This vignette first appeared in “Thinking About the Future: Guidelines for Strategic Foresight”, edited by Andy Hines and Peter Bishop, published in 2006
Vignette ‘how to’ on foresight – trends & business-as-usual
ASSESS FUNDAMENTAL SHIFTS THAT COULD IMPACT BUSINESS-AS-USUAL
Fundamental shifts are those external forces that have the potential of shaking the core assumptions of an organization. These forces are referred to as megatrends, discontinuities, tsunamis, or drivers of change depending on the practitioner. Regardless of what they are called, they have the potential to surprise an organization–unless the analyst can help it anticipate and prepare.
A fundamental shift differs from other trends in that it tends to be pervasive to an industry, an existing business model, and an organizational culture. It has the potential to alter the way the world works. Its impacts are rarely white or black, all-positive or all-negative.
Key steps
To identify fundamental shifts, start with the basics. Basic changes surrounding the organization come from a number of sectors, such as the social, technological, environmental, economic, or political (STEEP) arenas. Start by identifying the significant changes underway in these key areas.
Next, create your criteria for a fundamental shift and prioritize the trends according to them. The criteria might be, for example:
• potential for disrupting the existing industry
• potential for diverting part of the revenue stream to competitors
• potential for altering the organizational ecosystem, or how the players interact
Then, study the collision points among trends, as well as potential paradoxes which could trigger explosive shifts in the business model or purpose. Too often, trends are treated as if they exist in isolation, when in fact they exist in an ecosystem of other trends fighting to survive.
Finally, once the fundamental-shift candidates (for example, miniaturization, digitization, globalization, sustainability, convergence, work/life balance, aging) have been identified, assess their meaning for the business-as-usual models and approaches.
Once an analyst has identified a potential fundamental shift, its impacts need to be explored. The initial analysis typically leads to identifying some opportunities and threats to the organization’s business model and purpose. Later analysis leads to a deeper understanding of impacts across many areas of the business.
Ideally this assessment should be part of the strategic foresight process, linked to ongoing strategic decision-making. It should be professionally facilitated by those with expertise in facilitation and foresight. Analysts may be able to do it themselves, or team up with internal or external experts. The key is to provide an approach and tools that fit the context of assessment and the organizational culture. It requires understanding how thinking proactively about the future can best be done according to the organization’s readiness and foresight process status.
A potential caveat: be wary of the organization wanting to use only criteria that fit its business-as-usual model. If this occurs the assessment will reinforce the organization’s existing assumptions about its business, miss potential opportunities, and be vulnerable to potential threats.
Benefits
The time allotted to assessing fundamental shifts will be repaid multifold once the organization starts accounting for these shifts in its business decisions. This work is at the core of the strategic agenda, so analysts must involve and communicate with senior management. Listening to a thirty-minute presentation is not the same as an internalized understanding gained by directly engaging with the material.
Example
An excellent example of assessing fundamental shifts was Nokia’s proactive shift from paper and pulp, rubber boots, PCs, and TVs to a focus on telecommunications and mobile communications. (Steinbock 2001.) Nokia was established in 1865 as a wood-pulp mill and later expanded into rubber products. After World War II, Nokia acquired Finnish Cable Works, a producer of telephone and telegraph cables, which led gradually to a deep immersion in telecommunications. Today, none of its paper, pulp, or rubber origins are visible in the company.
Through its nimble response to changing markets, Nokia showed that assessing fundamental shifts is important both to choosing new strategic directions and to understanding the best timing for them. Some shifts might be placed into the “maybe in ten years bucket,” while others should be dealt with immediately.
Further reading
Collins, J.C. and Porras, J.I. (1997). Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. New York: HarperBusiness.
Marsh, N., McAllum, M., and Purcell, D. (2002). Strategic Foresight: The Power of Standing in the Future. Melbourne: Crown Content.
Nokia: History. Wikipedia. Viewed August 2005, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia.
Schwartz, P. (1991). The Art of the Long View. New York: Currency Doubleday.
Steinbock, D. (2001). The Nokia Revolution: Success Factors of an Extraordinary Company. New York: AMACOM.
This vignette [1 of 6 I wrote] first appeared in “Thinking About the Future: Guidelines for Strategic Foresight”, edited by Andy Hines and Peter Bishop, published in 2006
