Foresight basics

Futurists are presentists: The true purpose of a forecast

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The other day my friend Holly asked me about my track record as a futurist. Holly is a journalist and has a knack for asking quiet, incisive questions.

I had told her about co-authoring a book in the 1990s about the year 2025. [2025 : Scenarios of US and Global Society Reshaped by Science and Technology] Holly’s question got me thinking about the purpose of my work.

It’s reasonable for people to expect futurists to predict the future. But accurate prediction is not the real value of our work. What futurists do is very much about today. Forecasts should show the range of and directions of change that get us started toward a desired future. The forecast endpoint is not the point.

There is little point in framing an idea about the future and then waiting ten or fifteen years to see “Did you get it right?” Today is where foresight has its power. 

The best question I could ask when we get to 2025 is: Did people who read 2025 in the late 1990s act differently because of the ideas in the book?

Why did we write 2025? To help business people in the late 1990s understand change and potential for the future in that year. So my book, 2025, published in 1996, was for people in 1996 to understand future possibility.

As the year 2025 approaches, I still expect to be embarrassed about where we were wrong. Most often that will be about what we did not forecast at all and where we were too optimistic. But I should forget about it. That was not the point or the purpose of the book. 

How should you think about this?

When you work with a futurist or engage with the future, know your today reasons. Allow the process to range imaginatively over future ideas. But don’t worry about certainty and accuracy at some future date. Explore what those ideas tell you about what to do now.

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For some further thoughts on this, see What do futurists really do?

What is and What if

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In organizations, knowing what’s going on today across the business landscape (”what is”), is essential. Too often the press of daily work keeps an executive from knowing enough.

But understanding how things are changing and the emerging challenges and opportunities in front of you (”what if”) needs attention too. Nearly always, the press of business and immediate demands shut down attention to “what if”.

Here is what is involved:  

“What is” — the operating environment:

  • Due diligence — care and attention to the organization’s interests
  • Industry focus — sector and market knowlege
  • The state of the art — best practices and the latest technology, systems, processes
  • What’s going on — the competitive landscape

“What if” — the future:

  • Leading edge change — emerging change in the market, technology, society, that will impact the organization
  • Emerging and future possibilities — identification of specific opportunities and challenges and potential responses to them

For both, we can’t help but stand in today as we think and work to understand. But we must try to think forward to better anticipate the future.

“What is” functions poorly without “what if.” Taking action in response to conditions today, without thoughts toward the future, is risky. But the reverse is true too. You need to know enough about current conditions to fully explore potential change. 

What to do about it

Broaden your view of “what is” by exploring the environment more broadly, beyond the specific marketplace niche, or issue, or geography you focus on.

Deepen your view of “what if” into the future by: Explicitly testing out ideas about 5 or 10 or more years from now. Ask the “what ifs” questions. Build stories (scenarios) of future possibilities. Draw implications of those “what ifs”.  Attention to both questions will make you stronger and more limber as you face challenges and meet new opportunities.

For more insight on this and a related illustration, see: Management, strategy, and foresight, compared

The future shaping the accounting industry

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I will be speaking in October 2017 at “Women Who Count,” the national conference of the Accounting & Financial Women’s Alliance (AFWA) in Alexandria, Virginia. For AFWA, I wrote the article linked below, which closely tracks the theme of my talk.

My key themes:

  • Accounting and finance professionals can have a great future, but it’s not guaranteed.
  • They have to sieze the initiative and make the transformation they want happen. 
  • The scary news: The center drops out–mid-skill level work is destined for automation, and that includes accounting and finance.
  • The good news: The transformation of commerce–new business forms, new scales of operation, and other elements of the “millennial economy” create new opportunities for accounting and finance professional.

The Future Shaping the Accounting Industry

Eclipse 2017: Shared learning and our future

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Being a futurist means believing in progress for human society. And it means working for that progress, even when progress seems threatened.

I look, when big things happen, for any evidence that society as a whole has learned something. No matter the circumstance, good or bad, learning means we have gained something. When we share that learning as a society, it is most powerful of all.

The 2017 solar eclipse that crossed the United States was one of those learning moments for Americans. Hundreds of millions of people shared the experience. The hour-and-a-half shared experience was not dampened by division or politics.

The eclipse may have inpsired millions of American children to go and learn more about science, about the earth, the sun, the planets. Where I watched, I was with a specialist in space policy and a Phd student in Astrophyics. We talked about whether more students will now take a course in astronomy, or even major in it in college. Was it good for science? I think and hope so.

Millions of Americans heard about it, millions took a look. The First Family viewed the eclipse from the White House’s Truman Porch. That too was part of the collective experience. Did the President look without eclipse glasses? We even learned from that minor moment of controversy.

My best guess is that American society tends to take two steps forward, then one back. And this experience may be no different. But at least there’s some movement forward. The future gained something.

Eclipse photo: Jane Galbraith Mahaffie

6 Foresight hacks

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Hacks are shortcuts for getting things done and being clever about it. Foresight needs hacks too. And there are great ones that fit into real, busy lives. Here are six that you can use to get a better sense of your future: 

1. Scan the scanners–Find the bloggers, news sites, tweets, podcasts, etc. that select what matters from the wide range of news and information you need to monitor. They are doing work for you, free. More here.

2. Use push–Use email subscriptions, rss feeds, social media follows, etc. to make sure that fresh insights, in the appropriate volumes, flow to you, so you don’t have to remember to go and look at them.

3. Automate serendipity–As you do 1 and 2, be sure you don’t create your own, finely-tuned echo chamber. Find sources that give you breadth and variety. Use push tools online and develop the habits that make sure you encounter things to open and change your mind.

4. Get out from behind the mouse–Going with no. 3, and running over your efforts in 1 and 2, be sure you don’t only learn from electronic sources. Go places, talk to people, see things. Experience the changing world. Surprise yourself.

5. Lurk–Take a note from great novelists—listen in on others’ conversations. This can be about exploring online discussions/social media, even without participating. There area tons of places where people share ideas. You can dip in, search, follow, or just visit, and open up a front for encountering new ideas. You don’t have to subscribe or even have an account, and you don’t have to participate.

6. Take a futurist to lunch–Believe me, they want lunch! Ask most futurists any question and they’re off and running. You will get all sorts of insights. For the cost of lunch, or coffee, or an online post, your effort will pay off. 

Decide what you most want to explore about your future. Then try a hack or two. No matter what, it will expand and enrich your view of the future.

More “hacks” are among my 27 Habits of highly effective futurists 

Deep down, it’s about thinking differently

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“A professional futurist is a person who studies the future in order to help people understand, anticipate, prepare for and gain advantage from coming changes.  It is not the goal of a futurist to predict what will happen in the future.  The futurist uses foresight to describe what could happen in the future and, in some cases, what should happen in the future.” — Association of Professional Futurists

That’s a good definition, rooted, as you’d expect, in considerations of the future. And it nicely characterizes what I do. But what’s even more fundamental about my work is getting people to think differently.

When I work with groups to help them explore change, what I realize is how much they already know, at least about the near-term future. But their view is too narrow. They need help: advice, tools, an independent pair of eyes, to see past the immediate, change their perspective, and get somewhere new. They need to think differently.

Foresight is a superb capability. It jumps your thinking beyond what’s in your inbox, beyond what’s going on today that is soaking up your time and attention. It opens up a space to anticipate change, and to do so with colleagues.

But that fresh thinking needn’t only be about the future. Opening a door and looking out, encountering something new, even in the here and now, is already transformational. Of course, foresight helps. It keeps you from falling back into narrower thinking patterns. It helps makes sure you think differently.

Change is messy

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It’s easy to fall into assuming:

  • No change is happening because we cannot see or feel it (a famous metaphor is the frog in heating water. AKA change blindness)
  • Change is gradual (after-the-fact simplification of history can lead to this)
  • Change is sudden (forces, trends, and evolutionary change are not plain to us until a moment of crisis or a high-profile event, e.g. Occupy Wall Street marches in 2011-12 or the risk of extremist terror after 9-11).
  • A small change is significant (this is aligned with confirmation bias, in which you place excess significance on something you are particularly aware of or interested in).

Understanding history helps us see that change does not work in only one way. It’s not always gradual. It happens whether we’re focused on the changes underway or not. It includes sudden shifts, like Post-9/11 change as well as gradual ones, like the rising influence of the Baby Boom after World War II.

And change happens;simultaneously for each element of society; populations and communities, natural systems, technologies, etc. Some change gradually. Others jump forward. And the changes all interact. It’s messy.

The future will emerge the same way. The future will be messy.

Image: James Lee, via Flickr, Creative Commons attribution license.

5 stages of grief for people facing their future

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In her 1969 book, On Death and Dying, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross identified five stages of grief and loss. To anyone trying to get people to face and accept change or the need to change, the stages ring familiar.

Experts in change management recognize this. They have used the stages in identify what happens when people face change. The stages make sense in foresight too. They are a lens for looking at how people cope with the future.

Don’t be a victim of change

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When you face change, your responses fall on a spectrum. Foresight makes sure you are in the right place.

Reactive — Watching and likely being blindsided by change, and only making a move when forced to do so. Often your action is expensive and not effective. You miss opportunities and risk failure and economic loss.

Responsive — Preparing for and responding to emerging, visible change. You gain agility for responding, and may get ahead of crises and seize opportunities.

Proactive — Anticipating and shaping change. You are ready for crises and sharp change. You can seize opportunities ahead of others.

Never be a victim of change. Anticipate and shape it. Foresight is decisive in making you ready.

What magicians can teach us about foresight

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Don't look where the magician wants you to

Magicians rely on tricking the eye and the mind to dazzle and puzzle us. How they do it offers cautions for exploring the future. We are easily tricked by the signals of change or blinded to them.

How do the things magicians do trick us?

Magician Teller of Penn and Teller (the silent one) explained ways a magician's tricks the audience in a recent article. Below are the tricks with my interpretation of parallel issues in exploring the future:

  • Exploit pattern recognition — Magicians make viewers trick themselves by relying on our pattern recognition. In foresight, we also interpret things from the known and the familiar. That obscures important unknown and unfamiliar change. 
  • Make the secret a lot more trouble than it seems worth — Magicians rely on their audiences not believing the magician would, for example, modify every card in an card deck to enable an illusion. Audiences assume something simpler must be going on. In foresight, we reach for the easier-to-understand implication or outcome. For example, we think the future will be a lot like today, with a few high-profile and highly-visible changes.
  • Make 'em laugh — Jokes distract audiences. In futures, we fall victim to 1). our own jokes about the future–"bet you're wondering where your flying car is" which make light of change or even foresight itself, or 2). others' sense that all this future stuff is a bit wild and crazy, so why look closely at it? 
  • Do the trick outside the frame — A magician get us to focus on their right hand while the left is "out of frame" hiding something in a pocket, for example. In futures, things that matter happen further afield than we think is relevant. What's right in front of us distracts us. 

So you risk being tricked when you set out to understand the future. The solution is to know that, acknowledge it, and fight it all you can. Don't look where the magician wants you to.

Image: By trialsanderrors [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

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