crisis

Keep an eye on the future while righting the ship

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SS_Principessa_Jolanda_sinkingIn a crisis, organizations focus inward, and work to put things right.They right the ship as a top priority. 

But in a crisis, the long-term still needs attention. An organization fixing things can come up short in laying the stepwise plans its needs for its desired future. Fixing things is reactive, and reacting is not enough. 

Organizations need to keep foresight in the mix while they right the ship. Foresight doesn’t serve you if you only consider it once in a while, and it doesn’t work to put it off. If you take your eye off the ball, there’s a strong chance something fundamental will change in the landscape while you are tied up correcting things. 

Righting the ship is about catching up with the present, not preparing for the future. But if you are only catching up you are, in effect, falling behind. See also: If you're only keeping up, you're probably going backwards.

In troubled times it's understandable that everyone drops into the trenches and rolls up their sleeves to fix things. You need to do more than that.

What do you need to do?

Even in crisis, leaders must keep an eye toward the future. They need to give time for generative discussions about what’s next. This means planning for the future. It means assuming success with the fixes and aspiring to seize new opportunities in the future. And doing so means taking actions now for those future successes. In short, it means confidence in present action, and a focus on the future.

While you work on the present:

  • Expand awareness of what else is going on that will shape your future
  • Build views of where you’re headed (scenarios)
  • Make a ten- or fifteen-year forward view a part of the conversation
  • Identify how “fixing things” is part of your long-term strategy
  • Don’t fail to take actions now that go beyond righting the ship, they build towards your future

IMAGE: S.S. Principessa Jolanda, 1907, listing badly right after launch. Public domain.

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

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 

Making the case for foresight: 9 reasons why a global crisis is a critical time to think about the future

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  1. Local, regional, national, global and organizational recovery depends on actions we take now. We cannot wait to begin new strategic initiatives and we cannot descend into the purely tactical and expect to succeed in the long term.
  2. Everything is changing, and many things are called into question. This is a critical moment to move our focus past narrow interests and look at the bigger systems that we are part of. [See: Our big test]
  3. Most of what we do has to be re-thought as our core assumptions about the marketplace get reexamined. The organizations that get that thinking going now can be ahead of their competitors in tackling new opportunities that will emerge when the economy stabilizes, and, hopefully, begins to grow again.
  4. Foresight now can help us have positive thoughts by moving our thinking beyond the immediate crisis to build an opportunity focus, not just a problem focus. We can work to get un-stuck, focus on what we can control, and begin to move forward. [See: Foresight helps you get un-stuck]
  5. Because so many systems are disrupted, we may be free from the usual constraints on our thoughts and ideas to think wholly fresh thoughts about our markets, sector, products, and so on [See: Does the economic crisis create an opening?]
  6. A fresh look at the market, and the skills, technologies, contacts, products, and so on that we have to leverage could yield ideas with low- or zero-budget impact that we can do now.
  7. Now may be the time to “rebuild it better”. In other words, some of the systems, processes, and businesses we have had may best be not shored up and revived as they were, but might better be rethought completely.
  8. Get an edge on the competition. Others may be in a weakened condition and will not be focused on opportunities. The ability to envision a positive path forward and begin to take action toward it now will mean near and longer-term success in the marketplace.
  9. Despite tough times, if we have a positive outlook, a vision, and plans for action, we are likely to give others confidence in us. For example, in tight credit market, lenders will favor those with a positive spirit and a clear path forward. We can show our customers, vendors, business partners, lenders, investors, shareholders, and so on, a positive outlook and strategic view forward.

Does the economic crisis create an opening?

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The economic crisis is disrupting the big systems we depend on, and we have a long way to go before most of us can be reassured about how things will turn out. The market crisis is rooted in badly warped and out-of-control financial systems, but we are also at a moment of potential transformational change in our recognition of high energy costs, and the importance of addressing environmental issues. For Americans, a series of natural disasters, including Hurricane Ike, only add to the sense we face enormous challenges.

These joined crises represent a re-setting of things on a global scale. What was normal three weeks ago, is changed. Conventional wisdom has been shown up and made wrong. Our assumptions about the world, the market, and so on, have to be re-thought. So let’s get some value out of that. What’s bad in our immediate view can be good for driving new futures thinking.

It is time to take up a serious, but positive question: “now what?” We should restart our thinking and look at:

  • The fundamentals: is our business model or organizational mission sound? Should we change it? How?
  • Our strengths and resiliency facing change: not what have we lost, but what have we got that is valuable and strong as we face the future? Put the focus on strengths and opportunities, not just on weaknesses and threats.
  • What do we want? If things are going to change, how would we like the future to turn out? Let’s assume we can’t have precisely what we wanted to have a few weeks ago. But what can we have, and what do we want?
  • What should we do differently? Since “everything” is changing, let’s be sure to not hang on to old ways and old systems by accident. Let’s revisit things we’ve been doing and change them if they need changing.

Being able to ask and consider these questions is an opportunity to make changes as we move into the next few years and decades. This is a way to take a longer-term view and a positive perspective on what’s happening, instead of a bunker mentality, and a false hope that everything will go back to normal.

As the economic crisis continues, we need to be sure all our energy doesn’t go to worrying, fretting, and taking stop-gap action. We must do what we must do, but it’s powerful and valuable to also give energy to the future. Now is the perfect moment to say “what’s next?” and to give answering that question our best thoughts and ideas.  

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