Crisis and uncertainty

The unspoken scenario

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WTC lights sister72 flickrConsider for a moment what would happen if you lost everything you own and all your money. That awful scenario is, of course, possible in any of our lives. And no one wants to dwell on such a thought. It would be hideous.

But try out the scenario. What would you do that first morning? You and your family? What would you do first? What resources, deep down, would you still have to try to restart your life?

You would not have lost everything. You would have your knowledge, your skills, your intelligence, and you would have the love and regard of your friends and family. You would have your ambition and your drive to find a way to live. You would have positive thoughts amidst the negative, or you would have try to. You could find those positive thoughts and put them to work to build something new for yourself. This is what I see time and again when a natural disaster hits people, taking everything they own. 

This story of disaster is your unspoken scenario. And in working with clients, I can often detect that they have an unspoken scenario, and sometimes they can too.

It is, of course, far from their minds that they'd like to spend time exploring the unspoken scenario. They assume that if the disaster happens, nothing will be the same anyway. So why dwell  on it? Though they of course resist shining a light on the possibility, organizations can and do fail, and disappear forever. Or they get his with a massive shock that is a thoroughgoing disaster.

In the 9-11 attacks, the brokerage firm Cantor Fitzgerald lost over two-thirds of its workforce in the World Trade Center collapse. But the firm still exists, and it's perhaps stronger than ever. Cantor Fitzgerald faced a sort of unspoken scenario. The firm likely would never have sat down to explore the "what if" of such a disaster. But what if they had? They could have exercised their thinking on how the organization would reroute its massive load of brokerage transactions, using its other offices and infrastructure to reroute the load. They could have thought about and gotten stronger in building the resilience and durability of their mission and culture. CEO Howard Lutnick chanced to be out of the office on 9-11 and survived the attacks. The strength of his vision and determination was a difference maker in their recovery. Perhaps Cantor Fitzgerald had this sort of resilience anyway. The firm brought its trading back on line within a week of the attacks.

What is the unspoken scenario in your organization? It could be a lot of things. Is there an existential threat out there that no one want's to talk about? or at least, that they are reluctant to get into in detail? Often there is. It may be a scenario of doom or a big change that changes everything. But should you explore it? You should.

The unspoken scenario may be an easily-thought-of elephant in the room, or it may be an idea so "out there" that no one is talking about it, but they should. There is power even in an extreme bad news scenario. Why? Because you can look at potential futures where all bets are off, where everything changes, and sometimes, you can see a pathway forward. And the organizations that practice that thinking have a better chance of success.

What you can do. Get a small group of thoughtful colleagues together, and brainstorm your unspoken scenarios. Reflect on them and why they are 1). threats to your existence, and 2). not being discussed. Consider if there would be value in convening a larger conversation, or playing them out in more thorough story building and analysis. You may need and want to do these things quietly–even very quietly, to not alarm people, but involve your strategic leaders in frank discussion of true threats, and, quite likely you will discover more about your strengths and how you can find opportunities in what look like insurmountable challenges.

Image: sister72 via Flickr, Creative Commons attribution license.

Dark clouds and boundless opportunities

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A friend of mine told me the other day that about once a year, the leadership of his company (he runs a division) meet off site and talk about the business. He said the time spent is about 50% "Oh my God, how are we going to survive the year?" and 50% excited chatter about new growth opportunities in the coming years.

They have things about right. No company should let itself feel and act beaten down and endangered as a standard attitude. But a little fear, particularly when it helps drive initiative and ambition, is a good thing and an essential tool for strategic thinking and leadership. We need to face uncertainties, consider what we don't know and need to solve, and confront the very real change that is always surrounding us.

But the fearful talk should be contained, only periodic, and actually used as a stepping stone to get into positive, new-goal-focused conversation.

The mindset and tools of foresight can help the cause here. They can help you discover that there are new opportunities, and get everyone past thinking that's limited to today's crises and constraints. Find ways to stretch your thinking deeper into the future, and you can make sure that the sense of opportunity doesn't lose out to the sense of dark clouds. 

Images: via Flickr, by dryhead, and DieselDemon. Creative Commons Attribution License

Nukes and foresight

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People have trouble assessing, comparing, and understanding risk in our world. Incidents like the the March 2011 Japanese nuclear disaster highlight this, and wake us up to why we need to understand risk, and risk over time, better. With their broad, systems view and long time horizons, the tools that futurists use are great for improving that thinking.

Nuclear energy involves two kinds of risk: acute and chronic. The acute risks are energy plant failure, radiation releases, and core meltdowns. The chronic risks come from maintaining and protecting the nuclear plant over time, and most importantly, safely storing spent nuclear fuel. That aspect could not be more long-term in human society terms. Some products of nuclear fission have half-lives in the range of tens of thousands, or millions of years. Can we even imagine human life in 22011 or 32011? But that long period is what we are affecting with our actions today.

Meanwhile, fossil fuel use looks like a routine, manageable process with straightforward issues of price and supply. But in fact, hydrocarbons are doing ongoing, cumulating damage to the environment, a long-term, chronic problem. Because its chronic, but less visible, and less scary to people overall, hydrocarbon energy seems safer to us.

When we compare these two main energy sources, we have to understand the relationships to time and risk, and they differ, near vs. long-term impacts, acute vs. chronic risk, near vs. long-term costs, and so on.

We can benefit from exploring these differences, in helping people understand the future and the impacts of human action, near and long-term. And we can benefit from thinking about them as a way to portray, and study complex relationships in complex systems.

Unfortunately, people, including decisionmakers, tend to be weak at thinking about the broader systems and longer-term relationships. And whether they are skilled at that or not, the political pressures tend to force issues into narrower frameworks.

The tools of foresight, including systems thinking and scenarios can make a difference to getting people to understand the complex relationships and make more valid comparisons as they think through issues like this. 

So I guess the first step is to take a futurist to lunch!

Image: BlatantNews.com via Flickr Creative Commons Attribution License

Get comfortable with uncertainty

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Foresight gives us grey areas, lots of them. And almost nothing significant we want to figure out about the future is definable or predictable enough to sharpen things to a clear black and white. So exploring the future of anything means you have to tolerate uncertainty.

If you’ve found your way to this blog, you may not suffer from discomfort with uncertainty—I hope you don’t. But chances are, some of the people you work with do, and so will others you will encounter along the way. They will (I predict!) either be opposed to the “squishiness” of what you are doing, or they will feel so certain themselves about things, that they won’t like the grey. Quite likely, both those things will be true.
 
You can't let these folks win the arguments: your foresight work can't produce certainty, nor can you let folks tell you that unless you pin things down, what you are doing isn’t valid.
 
So what can you do about this?
 
First, there’s a simple lesson you need to teach and re-teach:
  • We cannot predict the future with certainty
  • There is a range of possibility for any big question or large system you need to explore
  • Exploring that range is what foresight is about, and it’s what makes us able to be ready for uncertain outcomes. We should not pick a future and aim for it–that's too risky, we have to keep our sense of alternative futures open

Second, set expectations early, and remind people about them along the way. Keep your folks aware that you are exploring an uncertain thing, but that they can get value and ultimately be able to make better decisions by understanding more about the future.

Third, in workgroups, discussions, electronic communications, and so on, keep a watch out for “shut down” comments or actions that look to either provide a clear “answer” to the future you’re exploring, or that looks to invalidate your efforts. You will need to respond, in whatever way fits the culture and politics of your organization, but in a way that counters the negative push back you are getting.
 
Fourth, if you can avoid collaborating with folks who want black and white, sharp-line answers, consider doing so, but remember Machiavelli's advice: “keep your friends close, your enemies closer.” Or, put more bluntly by Lyndon Johnson, "
 
"It’s probably better to have [your enemy] inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in."
 
It may be better to have these folks on board, where you can try to build their understanding.
 
For more on the grey areas, and alternative futures, see:
 
 
Image: PetroleumJeliffe, via Flickr, cc attribution license

The economic crisis and the value of foresight

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Question mark

No, you can’t answer the question, “When will the global economy recover?” That’s the purview of economists, and they don’t know either. The question is leaving people feeling stuck—they don’t know what is going to happen, and don’t know what to do.
 
In the midst of this massive economic crisis, even talented futurists cannot tell you with certainty when and in what ways the global economy will recover. But futures thinking can do a lot to help explain the cascading impacts of the crisis, and the potential changes we will see as the global economy settles down and resumes on a new track.
 
We need foresight, now more than ever. It’s the key to getting unstuck, to turning the question—“what will happen next?” to a statement, “here’s what we will make happen next”.
 
Some of our clients have asked us about near- and long-term trends in light of the current economic situation. They want to know which of the trends will endure the crisis, which could amplify, which might decline, and so on. Much of the thinking that helps answer those questions is about looking at which trends gain strength from the economic shocks, and which may be weakened.
 
The economic crisis will accelerate some trends, and slow others. What will be interesting and often tough, is when the downturn is the final straw for a system, sector, or business, and puts an end to things, perhaps sooner than they might have gone down. The economic strain will kill off some businesses and systems that might otherwise muddle through in good times. Examples are some print media, notably daily newspapers, behemoth cars like the Hummer and H2, and weak retailers like Linens ‘n’ Things and Circuit City.
 
But alongside decline and destruction, there are new motivations, new needs, new possibilities. For example, the economic crisis will raise interest in a number of things: barter, local production, car sharing, used goods markets, reuse/recycling, repair (shoe repair, e.g.), and, when not demanding investment and higher costs, green consumption overall.
 
This swirl of decline and opportunity is where there’s room to make new choices and carve out new, desired futures. We have options and new room to try new things.
 
The tools and skills of foresight can help us explore those options. We can game out scenarios of our future, and open up new thinking about innovations, new business models, potential changes in operations, products lines, and so on. In fact, now is a good time to do those things—so much is in question, and so much is likely to have change forced on it, that we can pick up the old saying “In crisis we find opportunity” and make the challenges we face a tool of positive change. That opportunity demands our best creative, futures thinking. We need to envision, believe in, and build what’s next.
 
 Image: The Ninja Monkey, via Flickr, cc license

Waiting for change: driving change

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I am writing this on Election Day 2008 in the United States. For me, Election Day has stirred up a lot of thinking about change. The sense of my professional futurist community is that this election offers the opportunity for sweeping change for US society, with global implications. For some it is a make-or-break moment. Why is it so important?

As futurists we always focus on change, and on how to foster change. In the past few months, I had become frustrated that in the U.S., change seems to have to slow or stop to wait for new leadership. For example, the global financial crisis had analysts saying that “whoever the next president is will have to ….” But why wait?
 
It seems that we have to wait for the election to get critical change going. Isn’t that a waste of time, a missed opportunity, and sometimes, e.g. in the case of the unfolding economic crisis, dangerous? Like a lot of futurists, I am impatient with a slow to change or unchanging system. And I know that the same thing happens in business.
 
But I recognize that we will always have ebbs and flows in action as a national and global society and in our organizations. We have to accept that, and expect our new ideas to build up, waiting for their moment. It is a lot like what evolutionary biologists call “punctuated equilibrium”. While change is continuous, big change—like the emergence of a new species—often comes in bursts (punctuation), after long periods of little change (equilibrium).
 
We can accept the tendency of human systems to be stable for a long time, and prepare for when there is an opening for big change. Using foresight, we can build the vision of where we want to go, and the rationale for change. We can match that vision with an identification of the gaps and pent-up need for change. We can help people explore the possibilities and get ready for change by creating scenarios of positive futures. It may be more effective to drive big new, initiatives, rather than to try to nurture slow evolutionary change to reach the same result.
 
Most human systems probably do this best as a cycle of renewal. If we prepare the way, create good, clear thinking about futures possibilities and goals, we can be ready when there is new leadership, a New Year with its resolutions, an organizational or personal crisis demanding change, after a strategy making session or planning cycle, with an acquisition, and so on. The pent-up demand for change or the pressures of a crisis can energize people.
 
I hope the new U.S. President has real vision and people with foresight skills close at hand, this is a moment of pent-up need for change.
 
Image: 416style, via Flickr

Economic crisis means dreams must be deferred? No

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Light at the end of the tunnel
 
The economic meltdown looks like it will destroy many individuals’ dreams. It’s hard not to look at it that way. But what about our progress as a global society? What can we expect to happen to our plans and dreams?
 
The crisis will slow progress in some areas, and will delay many of the things people have been hoping for: comprehensive, positive change on environment, solutions to social needs, notably health care, and so on. But a crisis also re-sets a lot of thinking and clears the way for new things. It may, in places, jump start change.
 
A great historical example is the New Deal. That program led to an enormous spike in public goods—notably parks, trails, libraries, art, literature, music, and other public infrastructure, and fostered social change that benefited US society broadly. We would not have undertaken those things without the crisis, and they would have been slow to arrive, if they had arrived at all.
 
Not all the economic problems will impede positive change. Some may drive it.
 
Many people have been envisioning a hydrogen economy and/or a wide adoption of alternative energy sources. Oil price spikes quickly drove up interest in alternative energy, though we need to keep up that interest in the face of temporary price drops. We are likely to be motivated to intensify efforts to transform the energy sector because of unsustainable economic practices in the old energy economy.
 
In the U.S., we want and need change in health care. Economic stress, while it could make it hard to afford changing our system, may force change—many more people will be without health care, or will be making harsh choices about what care they afford.
 
From the point of view of sustainability, quality, and variety, we have begun a return to consuming more locally-produced foods. Oil price shocks, a decline in eating out and eating processed, packaged foods will reinforce that trend. It could enable a full-scale development in a lot of areas of local-production.
 
This is our silver lining. It’s time to get to it. The crisis creates an opening for new ideas, and the acute need to think differently.
 
It makes all the difference if we take the time now to imagine a positive future even in the harsh light of the current crisis. Foresight gives you a critical tool in thinking and rethinking what you do—the ability to jump your thinking out beyond the immediate—shoring up existing systems, etc., to say, “now what?” and begin to imagine it, define it, and figure out how to get there. And perhaps where we can go is better than where we were.
 

Image: Tacit Requiem, via Flickr, cc license 

Be careful

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Coach Mac-John McCarthy who runs Homerun Baseball in Washington, DC and Beisbol y Libros in Consuelo, Dominican Republic, pointed out the other day that we constantly tell our ball playing kids to be careful. He sees one result of this in that most of the kids that come to his baseball programs in Washington are afraid of getting hit by a baseball, and that inhibits them in the game. They shrink from pitches and hesitate when fielding a ball. It makes them less successful as baseball players.

Why would that kind of timidity matter in working to improve foresight? Too many people in organizations operate with fear of making a mistake. They are too careful.

Coach Mac points out that the kids he sees in his programs in Consuelo are far less afraid of the ball. They expect to get hit by the ball from time to time. They don’t worry about it.

We should cultivate a comfort with “being wrong” and become greater risk takers in foresight. Exploring the future is not action planning, and it’s ok to be wrong. In this work, we need to relax a little, and stop worrying about getting hit by the ball.

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