Seeing The Future in the Rear-View Mirror
Recalling the future
Almost all failed business strategies have one thing in common – the future assumptions they rely on turned out to be wrong.
The bad news is that they always turn out to be wrong. And we can do little about it.
But it doesn’t mean we can do nothing.
Oracles and warlocks
We make plans for the future without having a clue about what plans it has in store for us.
Humanity has tried to look into the future in various ways.
In ancient Rome and Mesopotamia, priests did it by peering at the entrails of animals.
In ancient Egypt and Greece, they interpreted dreams – messages from the gods.
In Mexico, oracles would enter a trance using psychoactive substances for this purpose.
Today’s analysts employ complicated mathematical models. So far, they aren’t doing much better.
Failed predictions
In 1894, The Times published an article which stated: “In 50 years, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of manure”. Unknown analysts meticulously calculated the number of horses the rapidly developing city would need by 1944. They didn’t also forget to consider that London would need more horses to remove the manure – and that these horses would produce even more manure.
Many years after this ‘manure apocalypse’ prediction, in 2016, Gartner published its future forecast that stated the following:
By 2020, 100 million consumers will shop in augmented reality
By 2020, 30% of web browsing sessions will be done without a screen
By 2020, 40% of employees can cut their healthcare costs by wearing a fitness tracker
You may find more such examples online. We fail to predict the future – time after time.
The future is something that looks so linear and logical when we think of it and turns out to be so tangled and intricate when it comes.
And the unpredictability isn’t the only problem. Four major obstacles prevent us from thinking better about tomorrow:
Evolution hasn’t taught us to think about the future
We don’t think about the future; we ‘recall’ it
We see the future through the lens of our mental models
We believe the world develops linearly
Obstacle #1. We are inferior future thinkers
“One of the reasons people fail to make good choices and don’t act in ways that are positive in the long term is because they feel a sense of emotional disconnect from their future selves,” says Hal Hershfield, an assistant professor of marketing at UCLA Anderson.
Hershfield compared the neural patterns in the brains of subjects who were asked to describe their current selves, their future selves 10 years hence, and other people.
The neural patterns evoked from thinking about the future self were most similar to the patterns that arose when thinking about another person.
Thus, even thinking about our own future is challenging. Our imaginary future self interests us not more than that guy who served us a cup of coffee at Starbucks this morning.
That’s why we rarely do things we should be doing. We don’t save money for our retirement, don’t exercise enough, and eat cakes in the evening. We are born short-term thinkers.
Evolution hasn’t taught us to think long-term because it wasn’t necessary. Our ancestors didn’t worry about the future mortgage payments and didn’t select a uni for their kids.
Obstacle #2. We ‘recall’ the future
Our brains use the same neurons to envision the future that they employ remembering the past. So technically, we don’t “think” about the future – we ‘recall’ it.
Imagining the upcoming weekend party is much easier than your life in 2034.
This is why Marty McFly from the 1985 movie Back To The Future drives a flying car in 2015 but doesn’t have a cell phone.
I’ve conducted dozens of foresight games. The teams’ long-term forecasts were slightly exaggerated versions of the present—with faster online delivery services, more powerful computers, and larger iPhones.
Obstacle #3. Our distorted mental lenses
“If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”
Abraham Maslow
Your chief of marketing comes to your office and says she’s found a new market for your products. She sees it as a great opportunity. She provides a lot of data – market studies, customer interviews, etc.
Your chief of finance objects that entering this market will require a huge investment. From his point of view, it looks like a recipe for disaster.
The data is the same. The opinions are different.
We all view the future through different lenses.
When I was 17, my mom and I thought a lot about my future. She believed that I should become a scientist. I wanted to play guitar in a rock band. Both of us thought the other was out of their mind.
If you look at a half-full glass of water, what you see does not depend on whether you’re a pessimist or an optimist. It depends on all the glasses you’ve seen before.
Your mental framework, shaped by past experience, distorts your future view.
Obstacle #4. The world is not linear
The picture below is the best I’ve ever seen about trends.
is a consistent critic of trend analysis and bold predictions, and I like his posts very much.
Trend analysis is an attempt to measure a tangled, chaotic world with a ruler.
What can be done?
The first thing we should do is embrace that the future is unpredictable. Period. Our future anticipations will prove to be wrong sooner or later.
So, we must base our strategies on a different basis.
Foresight games
Foresight isn’t a tool to predict the future. It helps you create a few plausible future scenarios.
Foresight experts have developed a graceful approach to future unpredictability. They teach business leaders to switch their focus from trying to guess the future to developing strategies that help them create the future they want.
It guarantees nothing.
It doesn’t decrease the future unpredictability.
Your scenarios can also turn out to be wrong.
But a new mindset, a shift from adapting to the world to creating it helps you look at your strategic ideas from another angle.
As
like to say, everything is the way it is because someone changed the way it was.Learn more about foresight games here.
Look for what won’t change
Jess Bezos once said: “I very frequently get the question: ‘What’s going to change in the next 10 years?’ And that is a very interesting question; it’s a very common one. I almost never get the question: ‘What’s not going to change in the next 10 years?’ And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two – because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time.”
People have always had the same set of sixteen basic needs – and will always have.
Here is a short list of the basic needs that will never change. You can contemplate building a strategy around them. It is not exhaustive – add your ideas.
Simplicity. Saving body and brain energy is our genetically determined need.
Safety and tranquility.
Social contacts. We don’t need yet another social platform. But we’ll always like to talk to our friends and family.
Justice. Everyone understands it differently, but we all have our ideals.
Novelty. Our dopamine-addicted brains love to learn new things.
Be resilient and flexible
Nobody can establish a strategy once and for all. But we shouldn’t carve our strategy in stone. It should serve as the overarching direction for business development. And we’ll adhere to it for a long time. However, we will continuously adjust our tactical actions.
Being consistent in strategic direction and flexible in the details is the best strategy for strategic work.
Your strategy should become a self-reinforcing feedback loop.
A few more words…
The mini-book on strategic thinking I promised you is already in the works, and I hope to present it to you soon – for free.
Foresight is far from perfect, but it can help us make sense of the future and plan for it.
Круто! Спасибо!