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Simple triage to keep sane while scanning

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TriageIf you work at anticipating and understanding the future, you are in a permanent, 24/7, 365 day-a-year environmental scan. It's what you do, on the job or off. 

But that means endless opportunity to distract yourself, if you are doing a good, broad scan of lots of sources of information. That kind of scan, done right, means you are not sure what you are going to find as you work–you have to be "all over the map". It's what you're supposed to do..

So you have a problem: you find it hard to focus the scanning on your current needs and work–it's too open and exploratory. You can easily get lost, or use up time exploring, unsure if you should be doing that.

Don't try to narrow what you look at, you need the power and value of the view broad. But you also need a bring some discipline to your scanning efforts. 

Here is a triage approach you can use. Consider three categories of information, and how to handle them:

1. Short and of immediate use — things related to your current work. Read, process, share, etc. right now. Get the value from these sources as you discover them.

2. Park for later today or sometime soon, when you are not working on this particular task — things of near-at-hand use, such as on a different task or project than the one you are doing now. You might leave these on your bookmark bar.

3. Long read, extended viewing, etc. for my leisure time or reading time — things that you can tell are good to know, are informative or educational, but are more speculatively-linked to your work. Save links to these, download, print, bookmark, etc. There are lots of ways to do this, and you can find one that fits you. I use the Instapaper web app. I just click on "Read Later" and then go to my Instapaper collection, download them to an e-reader, and read them when I have time.

Your version of this approach can make a different to your productivity, and perhaps your sanity, as you work to be effective at scanning.

Image: Brian Gratwicke, via Flickr, creative commons attribution license

Two sides of foresight work

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Two Sides of ForesightOver a long time as a futurist, I have come to look at futures work as having two sides: analysis and experience.

That is a hard won and only recently-clear conclusion. I think it's valuable to think about the difference, and the critical need for both sides, for doing good foresight work, for dealing with different kinds of thinkers and learners, and for being effective in communicating with others. 

Here's how I see it: exploring the future depends on, and benefits powerfully from wide-ranging research, close analysis of what we know, careful consideration of what is more and less certain and what is wholly uncertain, the comparison of alternate scenarios, and so on. We cannot be futurists without putting effort into that work. That is our analysis work. It is, in fact, what most futurists I know do best. (It involves plenty of creative effort as well–don't take the word "analysis" too narrowly.)

But, analysis alone is not all that we need. Too often, especially with today's availability of information, the work of analysis consumes us. We also need to have, and foster in others, experiences in exploring the future. Our careful analysis is unlikely to be wholly successful if we fail to give people some chance to do their own thinking about the future. That is central to effective work with groups. It is also a part of how we need to approach sharing ideas about the future with others. Giving people a futures experience through images, stories, and the chance to question, challenge, and interact, make all the difference in getting through to them with new ideas. 

In working on the future, we have to consider our work incomplete if we have only done our careful research and analysis. We have to give the experience side our best creative attention as well. We need to guard time for "playing" in the future–to come with ideas about future possibilities–without an over-concern about plausiblity, liklihood, or data. We need to let the creative ideas flow. Analysis by itself does not get us where we need to go.

Here's one approach that futurists use, as an example. Working with a group, choose a year ten years or more in the future, for example 2024–fifteen years from now. Have groups of 5 or 8 people spend time coming up with newspaper headlines from that year. (Nevermind that we may not have newspapers by then, the front page is a familiar concept for people to play with.) Have them draw front pages on flip charts and then share them with the other groups. The headline creation gets people's playful juices going, and brings out people's assumptions about the future. It gives them a chance to play with ideas about the future, rather than just sitting hearing someone else's ideas. It moves them toward stories from the future, rather than just extrapolated trend data, or technical concepts. 

There are lots of techniques like this, and you can create your own. Just be sure they help you break away, sometimes, from just doing analysis, when what you also need is some experiences.

Is environmental scanning just one more chore?

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A few weeks ago, I gave a talk to a group of association executives on environmental scanning. My proposed title for the talk was "Environmental Scanning 2.0," by which I wanted to reflect the potential and power we have in harnessing new tools and the network to make envirobmental scanning much more effective. My host urged me to use a title clearer to my audience, so we went with "Technology, Members, and Effective Environmental Scanning." Just another chore? In my view and based on comments I got, the talk went very well. My audience had thoughtful questions. Most of them said they did not currently do environmental scanning, but I think that reflected their assumption that that would entail a somewhat formal process culminating in a report, called "environmental scan." I advocated, as I have here on foresightculture.com, for making scanning a daily, continuous habit, a part of building a culture of foresight. I told them about online tools they can use, such as RSS feeds and iGoogle to organize and "push" information to themselves. I urged them to tap the available technologies such as listservs, GoogleGroups, Facebook, etc. to create sharing and collaborative space for the results of scanning. I also urged them to shop carefully among the sources of information and the tools for accessing and sharing it, and to make sure what they set out to do was going to work for their specific constituencies and situations. Throughout our discussion lingered the question: "Isn’t this just one more task to add to our over-burdened lives?" I tried to show how doing scanning differently could help the cause of busy executives trying to be effective. Inevitably, however, each of those in attendance will have to decide how important new insights on change and better readiness for dealing with emerging issues and opportunities is to them and their team. The value of scanning has to outweigh the added burden. By making scanning a part of the fabric of each day, it’s my hope people can avoid adding it as a task. I try to be sure to show people how more important than adding new sources information to what they see is attaching meaning to it-meaning for them in their organizations. I hope my group from that Friday’s meeting arrived at that thought, and understood that new efforts and a clearer focus on how to fit scanning into their work is worth it.

Update: Please see also this special page on environmental scanning.

Environmental Scanning, Flickr, YouTube, and photo blogs

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youtube-flickr.jpgEnvironmental scanning is a technique in which almost anything goes. Scanning simply means exploring the universe of information available to discover deeper insights about what is going on and what is changing in the world. It’s the core technique of foresight, and there is no substitute. But too often, people’s environmental scanning is too narrow. One way it is narrow is in depending mostly on the written word: traditionally print news sources, and more recently, electronic sources that are word based. What’s missing is the rich and evocative potential of images. Since people working in foresight cannot go everywhere and be everwhere, it’s powerful and important to open up an additional channel in environmental scanning that gives at least a flavor of change around the world, in different cultures, in different sectors, and in different social circles. Fortunately, there is a world of "eyes" out there, capturing pictures and videos that we can look at, think about, and use to help others think new thoughts. You can consider working to add the visual to your foresight efforts. For example:

  • Add image sources to your environmental scanning. There are dozens of "daily photo blogs" on different themes and, particularly, from different places. The authors monitor, among others, daily photo blogs from Shanghai, Ho Chi Minh City, Russia, Accra, and Sao Paulo. Adding the images to your regular scanning adds deeper insight on what is happening around the world.
  • Use more pictures in your presentations–you might even try a presentation that is all images. Most people will benefit, and some who are visual learners will much more reliably understand what you are trying to convey. Flickr is a great images source–you can’t go see everything yourself, but there are pictures from all over the world on Flickr. You can also sometimes get a sense of how others look at the world through what the people sharing images on Flickr show and say about their pictures. 
  • Carry a small digital camera whereever you go, or use your cell phone camera, and try to see signs of change. Some of the images will evoke a lot of ideas for you, and you can use them in your work and in conveying things to others.
  • Explore YouTube. You might take a regular look at the top videos there. Whether artful, amateurish, meaningful or ridiculous, the top videos meant a lot to a lot of people, and are worth at least a glance.

It may be that for those of us exploring the future, a picture is worth even more than a thousand words. Anything that helps us think more deeply is especially valuable to our efforts, and "going visual" will yield better foresight.

Update: Please see also this special page on environmental scanning.

Scanning the landscape for challenges, issues, trends, and opportunities

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Environmental scanning is the ongoing review of information sources that is integral to identifying trends and monitoring for leading-edge change. To some people who don’t do environmental scanning, it looks like a lot of web surfing and magazine reading—a distraction or waste of time.

How can it be a good use of time? It’s open-ended. Yet futurists urge people in organizations to do more of it. Can business executives really afford to spend that time? What does it yield?

Environmental scanning is a perfectly good fun, and continually interesting, especially since a big portion of it is often driven by one’s interests. But the scanner is left with a little angst—what to do with the stuff? Should I print it out and file it? Should I blog about it? Should I tell someone? Is there some way to collect the good stuff and make it useful?

In fact, the act of scanning can be as loose as it often is, without being ineffective or inefficient. Scanning builds context for one’s thinking about the future. The more accumulated clues, cues, and knowledge you have, the better the chance that analysis and decisions will be properly thought through, tested against existing and emerging realities, and informed by a broad range of contextual forces and factors.

But yes, you should make something of your discoveries. Environmental scanning helps ensure that you get earlier notice of emerging change—issues, trends, and new challenges that may come from beyond your current view, especially from outside your field or sector. It may prevent you from finding out about something critical from a customer, a vendor, or even from a crisis.

A scanning discovery is not of any use until you put it to use so consider these ideas:

  • Drawing a conclusion about what you find for your work. Write it down. You are converting a raw observation into something that may lead to action, a change of direction, a decision to monitor something further, etc.
  • Keeping a “commonplace book”—a note taking place for your discoveries and observations. If you are a good trend spotter, you can log the trends you are observing or discovering. A list of leading edge trends is a powerful tool to draw out for a team discussion, to test ideas, ensure you are thinking comprehensively about a problem or opportunity. Maybe for you this would work as a daily or weekly blog, so colleagues can share your discoveries.
  • Telling your colleagues—one or more people who really should know about what you found. We are glad to share funny YouTube videos, but seem less practiced at sharing a discovered trends, a thought-provoking blog, a story that shapes our understanding of the marketplace.
  • Sharing your discoveries by email/listserve/blog and ask for comment. You might be the right person to “report” on trends and issues this way. If the messages are provocative and suitably well-labeled, you might get ongoing interest. Does your organization have a trend person? Could you take up that role? It might only require a few minutes a week to do that.
  • Using scanning discoveries to provoke dialogue—send a note, for example, that says: “I am seeing a lot of things suggesting a backlash against bottle water—do you think this will come to a head and affect our closures business?”

Update: Please see also this special page on environmental scanning.

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