Peter Flatow is one of the smartest people I know, though he would blush that I write this. Before becoming a dreaded consultant, he covered himself with glory at some of the biggest and best marketing organizations in the world.
His client list is even more impressive, as are his accomplishments since throwing off the corporate coat and tie and donning a permanent "consultant casual."
Managing The Foreseeable Future
By Peter J. Flatow
Could we have known about September 11th ahead of time and if we did what might we have done about it? Was the “dot-bomb” foreseeable? What about the telecom crash? Do any of these questions have any relevance to everyday business management?
Whether fact or not, the media would have us believe that “The Government” (who ever “they” are) let September 11th happen because “they” didn’t connect the dots. Those dots are the data points that people should have been focusing on, or at least considering, if there was any possibility of avoiding September 11th.
While the press reports and Congressional hearings sounds like a lot of coulda, shoulda, woulda, we will just never know what could have been avoided. What is important is there was far more known than anyone thought. What should trouble us all is the distrust each agency (FBI/CIA/NSA, etc.) has for the other which made them incapable of “connected the dots”. Doesn’t this sound a lot like Marketing vs. R&D?
As business people, we can and should learn from this because we face similar situations everyday. Maybe not as emotional and cataclysmic, but certainly as important if one considers keeping one’s job, ensuring the future of our companies, and growing our retirement funds important. The fact is, various data points, pieces of information and general new learning come to us and our employees everyday which must be processed, importance determined and then decisions made on what action should be taken.
If we know there is going to be a problem (how to foresee disruption to our plans), then why wouldn’t we want to do something in advance? The following suggests some techniques and best practices we can all utilize to better foresee the future.
- Be a student of the past
- But a practitioner of the future
- Allow for creative exploration while utilizing analytic disciplines – scenario panning as a tool.
- Flawless execution is a team sport
Too often I find that people over intellectualize a problem or situation that they are facing. For reasons that are unexplainable, people attempt to take what would be a simple situation and make it almost unsolvable. I guess they believe this will make them appear smarter.
This is unfortunate because it only lowers the probability of your eventual success. Keeping the situation simple is critical to the process of foreseeing and managing the future. The goal should be to define those things that could cause a disruption to your plans. People are often confused when they hear terms like foreseeing the future. I am not talking about crystal balling who is going to win a sporting event. What I am suggesting is if your goal is to win a game, you should be able with a bit of foresight to map out what might keep you from that goal and as well as what can you do to mitigate those inhibitors.
One proven technique to help you think about what might disrupt your future is scenario planning. If you’re not familiar with scenario planning let me recommend Peter Schwartz’s book “The Long View”. It is an easy read and well worth adding this tool to your own skill sets. Scenario planning allows us to think about the past in conjunction with what we believe could happen in the future by developing future stories or scenarios.
A scenario can best be defined as something that has a low probability of occurrence but a huge impact should it happen. Schwartz writes, “…a ‘scenario’ is a tool for ordering one’s perceptions about alternative future environments in which decisions might be played out.” In scenario planning, separate “stories” are built at the outer limits of critical axis on a perceptual map. For example, recently I worked with a client on a scenario plan where one of the stories we looked at was consumer shopping behavior (only shops online vs. never shops online) and how they pay (only uses cash vs. never uses a cash).
For those of you who are more short term in your perspective, let’s look into the foreseeable future with a more pragmatic tool. Your goal is to sell 1,000 widgets by the end of the year. It is now the end of the year and you only sold 800 of those widgets. Your boss is demanding to know why! Well here is how to answer that question before you promise him those 1,000 widgets.
Make a list of all the possible reasons for only selling 800 widgets (lost distribution, competitive reaction, product availability, terrorist attack). For each possible reason, assign a probability that it could happen and then estimate a range of impacts if it does happen. The range should be in the form of a minimum (short of thermo nuclear war you would sell X), a maximum (under the best of all circumstances we should sell Y) and a most likely (what is our best estimate.) If you really are not sure then the most likely should be the difference between the min and max. Multiply out the probability against the range and you will determine that factor’s impact.
At the conclusion of this process what you will find is there are several factors which have a high probability of occurrence and a significant impact. Now you have time to address them before they ruin your plan. If they are not fixable then consider revising the plan. Or possibly decide this isn’t such a bright idea after all! In any case you have combined disciplined thinking and analytical rigor to determine an outcome for the foreseeable future.
My concluding point is about making execution of what ever you decide to do about the foreseeable future a team activity. One of my favorite business clichés is the “pocket veto”. This is when executives sit in a meeting agreeing to a course of action with absolutely no intent to follow through on its execution. Not only is this intellectual dishonesty it is one of the greatest causes for failed strategies and businesses. As illustrated by 9/11, so often we know, or could know, what is going to happen and how to stop it from disrupting our plans but corrective action is not taken because of poor team execution.
For reasons that are hard to explain business people seem to think that considering the future is a waste of time. Yet it is probably one of the most critical strategic initiatives any executive could take on. It is not black box. It is not make work for a staff person where the results will never to be considered. Developing future scenarios and utilizing that knowledge is a proven way to increase your ultimate probability of success. Is this not what business is all about?
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Kevin Hoffberg
Last modified:
07/24/05