In an insightful book "Inevitable Surprises", the author, Peter Schwartz, outlines steps to cope with the future.
"You can't predict the chaos and turbulence to come. But how can you best prepare? What foresight can you cultivate, so that when this level of instability comes, you, and the people you care about, are ready for it? How can we learn from the last Great Transition to be better prepared for this new one?
I have learned that several answers are available from years of helping organizations anticipate the future in scenario practice.
Build and maintain your sensory and intelligence systems. That doesn't just mean technological systems. It means the continued kinds of "strategic conversations" in which you and your cohorts and colleagues keep looking around to conserve and interpret the interaction of forces that might affect you, your enterprises, and your communities.This seems obvious, but it's surprising how many politicians, educators, and businesspeople I have met who do not make time for it. Over the years their ability to observe and interpret the world around them atrophies. In a singularity like the one approaching us, fine-grained awareness of the world outside your own organizational boundaries will be a paramount aid to survival.
Cultivate a sense of timing. When you see an event approaching, make a point of asking: How rapidly is it approaching? When could it occur? How far in the future? Identify in advance the kinds of "early-warning indicators" that would signal that a change is rapidly upon you. For instance, if you are a foreign investor, what are the early signals of potential financial crises? You know they will occur in China and India-what do you look for there? It you are a technologist, What kind of funding will be evident in your arena first, before it attracts financing from elsewhere? If you are concerned about climate change, what represents the next big warning sign? And how do you distinguish it from run-of-the-mill climate variation?Once you've identified these signals, keep an eye out for them and be prepared to act when you observe them. This is one place where my colleagues and I use short-term scenario exercises: "If we saw such a signal. What could it mean? And what would we do in response to it?" in 1997, when the financial crisis hit Southeast Asia, the U.S. Treasury had already undergone the kind of firewall-building exercise necessary in Mexico in 1994-which made it possible to move rapidly to contain the crisis, so that it did not ripple into China, Korea, and Japan.
Put in place mechanisms to engender creative destruction. The institutions, companies, agencies, political parties, and values of the past may turn out to be moribund and counterproductive in a new historical environment. Are you prepared to discard them? What processes, practices, and organizations have you actually dismantled in the last year or two? If the answer is none, perhaps it's time to get some practice in before urgency strikes.Creative destruction is not simply a matter of getting rid of old baggage. It means learning how to mitigate the costs. There is inevitable a fair amount of disruption to communities, the abandonment of secure livelihoods, and the severing of deep relationships. You cannot keep those old institutions for the sake of convenience; you need the creativity that comes from releasing them. But unless you can ease the pain of disruption, you will engender fierce resistance. Moreover, the pain of disruption tends to fall disproportionately on the "20-to-40-percent group": the hidden population of lower-level employees on whom the revival of the economy depends. Unless you can help them bear the consequences of disruption, you may cripple your ability to recover.
Note how many of the most successful businesspeople and politicians of the past twenty years have been successful at this, including the last two American presidents (both of whom arguably rode to success by largely discarding the previous identities of their political parties).
Try to avoid denial. When an "inevitable surprise" comes along that makes life difficult for you or your organization, do not pretend that it isn't happening. This book is full of examples where leaders exacerbated a problem by trying to deny its significance: AIDS in Africa and Russia, the telecommunications "last mile" problem, and the potential severity of global climate change.Unfortunately, most standard corporate or government planning is a recipe for denial. The standard operating procedure is to talk about the various futures that might lie ahead, pick the one that seems most likely to happen, plot the course accordingly, and maybe build in a few exigencies.
Having done this, the planners (being, after all, human beings) are naturally prone to discount any signals from the outside world that contradict the outcome they expected. The very fact that a future feels "likely" should make us skeptical of it. Chances are, we are drawn by our own limited worldview and predisposition to assume that what we expect to happen, will.By contrast, when a future feels particularly worrying or discomfiting, and your first impulse is to say, "That would hurt us if it happened, but it won't happen," that's a signal to pay closer attention to it. Something about that future is trying to break through your mental blinders, and if you deny it or ignore it, you may well inadvertently help to bring it to pass. Indeed that kind of denial may have caused the NASA leadership to deny the potential for catastrophic failure despite contrary evidence on the Columbia.
Think like a commodity company. Most goods, services, and financial sums that are traded are commodities-no one has a monopoly on producing them, and therefore they are subject to swings in supply and demand at any time. This includes not just real commodities, like oil, gold, and wheat, but also stock prices, tax receipts, and trade revenues. It's all too easy to believe, on a price upswing, that this time is different, and the commodity will rise forever. But sooner or later the price will hit a peak. Those peaks can come suddenly, and the aftermath can be a steep and highly disruptive fall.
Be aware of the competence of your judgment, and the level of judgment that new situations require; and move deliberately and humbly into new situations that stretch your judgment. Every successful individual organization has an integrated core of judgment-not just knowledge, but the ability to make wise decisions quickly in a particular field-that lies at the heart of success. When times are turbulent, the temptation to move outside that knowledge to take advantage of outside opportunities is great. Those are the risks that often get you into trouble.
Place a very, very high premium on learning. Most failures to adapt are, in effect, failures to learn enough in time about the changing circumstances. And there will be more to learn in the future. If advances in science and technology are any indication, work will be increasingly knowledge intensive, and the value of scientific knowledge in particular will be all the greater.Unfortunately, most western societies have approached education ideologically. There has not yet been a genuine consensus, among educators and budget-settings politicians, about how children and adults learn, and about how best to set up schools. Until such a consensus is reached in the most pragmatic, nonideological way, we are unlikely to see a functional education system in most countries. Instead, we will have what we have now: various splinter groups arguing that their favored approach is best for schools, and no solid way to compare the results. (Standardized tests measure only a very small part of the capabilities that people need education to gain.) This is an extremely dysfunctional way to deal with the future.
Place a very high premium on environmental and ecological sustainability. This is not just a global political and environmental issue; it is a vehicle for high-quality integration and development. You almost have to run an organization that follows this path to recognize how valuable it is; it focuses attention on the "side effects" of your actions, in ways that are extremely useful.
Place a very high premium on financial infrastructure and support. Individuals need safety nets and insurance against crises. Organizations need to build in safeguards and help individuals build the financial infrastructure they need. And society as a whole will need to watch out for the interests of the "20-40-percent" group, for whom no one else typically is.The risks are greater than we think. In the future, people at all three levels will need safety nets in a way that hasn't been true before. And organizations will need to muster profits and use them wisely. Do you have the kind of portfolio of income and assets that will help you weather the storms to come? Do you have enough profits to fund your transition into the next stage of your evolution, whatever that turns out to be?
Cultivate connections. In the world of 2025 people will be inevitably in contract far more regularly and comprehensively than they are today. Quantum computing, universal broadband, longer lives, globalization and clean, green energy will reshape our world toward far greater interconnection. Are you prepared for this? Do you have the kinds of deep, candid connections that will help you ride through the next transition without having to ride alone."
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