Eight Critical Value Points of a Futurist
As a Futurist, people often ask me how many of my predictions have come true. I find this to be a rather uncomfortable question. It’s uncomfortable, not because my track record hasn’t been up to par (actually, a high percentage have come true), but because accuracy of predictions is a poor way of measuring the value of a Futurist.
In a world filled with MBAs and number crunchers, there is a constant push to reduce our analog world to digital analytics so we can accurately measure our return on investment.
But not everything is measurable in this way.
As an example, for several years I have been tracking when my best insights occur, and they happen with far greater frequency when I’m riding bike. Therefore, it’s easy to conclude that if I spent 8-10 hours a day riding bike, I could somehow unlock the secrets of the universe.
However, the world is far more complicated than the simple surface details we can measure. What’s the value of a new idea, a new strategy, or adding awareness to a previous blindspot?
Too often, our ability to focus on one all-consuming detail blinds us to the oncoming train that is about to destroy an entire industry.
For this reason I’ve put together a list of the Eight Critical Points of Value that a Futurist brings to the table.
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The Power of an Epiphany
The future is never a destination, it is always a journey. An idea that holds great value today, may be of little value two weeks from now.
Many of our best ideas appear in the form of an epiphany. An epiphany is an ‘AHA’ moment; a sudden insight or revelation into the world around us. An off-the-charts idea would be considered a Category 5 epiphany if we were measuring insights with an earthquake scale.
Creating an environment that cultivates great epiphanies can be hugely valuable. Every new business that gets launched happens as a result of an epiphany. Every new product idea happens as a result of an epiphany. It’s in our best interest to create new epiphanies and often.
Eight Critical Points of Value
Thinking about the future is like a muscle that rarely gets used. Over time, our brains will atrophy and we lose our ability to think productively about what the future may bring.
At the same time, the world is shifting faster than ever. Our “need to know” about the future is no longer a luxury; it’s a functional imperative.
With this in mind, here are some of the values a Futurist has to offer:
1.) Altered Thinking – The future is constantly being formed in the minds of people around us. Each person’s understanding of what the future holds will influence the decisions they make today. As we alter someone’s vision of the future, we alter the way they make decisions today. Our goal is to help individuals and organizations make better, more informed decisions about the future.
2.) Unique Perspective – The future is unknowable, and this is a good thing. Our involvement in the game of life is based on our notion that we as individuals can make a difference. If we somehow remove the mystery of what results our actions will have, we also dismantle our individual drives and motivations for moving forward. That said, the future can be forecast in degrees of probability. By improving our understanding of what the future holds, we dramatically improve the probability with which we can predict the future.
3.) Evidence of Change – Empirically speaking, forecasting the future is not done by staring at tealeaves of reading tarot cards (that is the realm of psychics). Rather, futurists take an inter-disciplinary approach and employ a wide range of methods, from the study of cycles, to trend analysis, to scenario planning, to simulations, to strategic planning and visioning. Futurists use data from the past and present, as well as other concepts and methodologies to understand how the present will evolve into probable futures. We also borrow freely from other fields, such as forecasting, chaos theory, complexity science, organization development, systems analysis, and sociology.
4.) Connecting the Dots – Futurists come from a wide range of backgrounds and perspectives. What we have in common is well-researched big picture thinking, strong pattern recognition, and innate curiosity. Ideas that are routine in one industry can be revolutionary when they migrate to another industry, especially when they challenge the prevailing assumptions that have infiltrated rank and file thinking.
5.) Find Your Future Competitive Advantage – French novelist Marcel Proust once said, “The real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands but in seeing with new eyes.” The most successful companies don’t just out-compete their rivals, they redefine the terms of competition by embracing one-of-a-kind ideas in a world heavily steeped in “me-too” thinking.
6.) Take Control of Change before the Changes Take Control of You – Are you changing as fast as the world is? Change is inevitable, but how you deal with this change can vary greatly. In a world that never stops changing, great leaders can never stop learning. How do you push yourself as an individual to keep growing and evolving? Does your company do the same?
7.) The Future is Where Our Children Live – Our desire to leave a legacy is a uniquely human attribute. However, our legacy becomes meaningless if we don’t have new generations of people to pass it on to. To many this may sound like an obvious statement, but to those in the business world, there is a constant battle being waged over the needs of the present vs. the needs of the future. It’s very easy to place short-term profitability ahead of long-term problems.
8.) Every Avalanche begins with the Movement of a Single Snowflake. Our ability to tap into and leverage the power of the future is directly tied to the number of times we think about it. The more we think about the future, the more we expand our understanding of it. And the more we understand the future, the easier it becomes for us to interact with it.
The Reaction Paradigm
Most companies operate within a paradigm of reaction. When bad (or good) things happen, they continue to forge ahead. They may or may not adjust their way of doing business. This unswerving reaction paradigm occurs, frankly, because it takes all they can muster to keep the doors open, make payroll and turn a profit.
It’s a tough world out there, and one widely held belief is that we’re all just trying to chip away at the world in order to make a buck. In this line of thinking, when things happen, you just do your best to hang on, and hopefully do better next time around. These are companies that are always preparing themselves for the next disaster.
Other companies plan for the future. They understand that markets shift, technology evolves and unexpected waves of mayhem occur. These companies often do better than the previous ones because they have the resources and foresight to weather this type of storm.
Their leadership has given some thought to the murky future ahead of time, and allocates resources to various strategies for adapting to the ebb and flow of these natural occurrences.
In the end it becomes easy to see that the greatest companies are those that take control of their own future. As a futurist it is my job to help these forward thinking companies weather through or simply avoid these stormy trends and achieve a more profitable, vibrant and successful future.
Final Thoughts
Famed author Jim Collins often asks the question, “If your company went out of business tomorrow, who would miss you and why?”
Can your customers live without you? If they can, they probably will. So then what?
The researchers at Gallup have identified a hierarchy of connections between companies and their customers — from confidence to integrity to pride to passion. To test for passion, Gallup asks a simple question: “Can you imagine a world without this product?” One of the make-or-break challenges for change is to become irreplaceable in the eyes of your customers.
The future cannot be our only priority otherwise we lose our ability to function in the present, and here is where it gets confusing. Near-term futures invariably take precedent over long-term futures, but our ability to prioritize importance is directly tied to the context of our own future thinking.
Our thinking about the future cannot be made against a simple black and white, right vs. wrong backdrop. Every microcosm is a part of a larger microcosm, and I tend to agree with Futurist Mary O’Hara-Devereaux when she says, “Beware of conventional wisdom because it is usually wrong.”
