Before you start scanning, you need to reflect on your worldview – how you create meaning from your experience of the world, how you filter events, what you accept as "real" and what you dismiss as irrelevant or rubbish.

Myopia
Our minds are wonderful things, but they are habitual things as well. They look for patterns, and they tend to ignore things that don’t fit the pattern. They simply miss things because they do not see them. For example, the world almost universally missed the recent emerging financial crisis because of this inherent myopia. Yet the strong and growing signals were there for all to see for several years before the crash with some pundits warning of the dangers including ourselves.

Taking an integral approach to scanning therefore draws attention to the intangible qualities that help determine what is scanned and what is not. There are no future facts, and when confronted with uncertainty and the unknowable that characterises the future, your mind tends to retreat to explanations based on what is already known.

Your mind uses your existing benchmarks of what you believe to be right and wrong, how things work, what is real and what is not. It shuts down when something new doesn’t match expected patterns. It misses things that might just be important, and makes assumptions that often are just wrong. Your mind falls into a certainty trap that does you no favours when you are scanning.

Knowing your thinking style
So, when scanning, you will be making a subjective assessment of the value of the scanning hits you identify. You need to be wary of allowing your mind to retreat to explanations and assessments based on what is already known. You need to ensure that your mind doesn’t shut down when something new doesn’t match expected patterns.

If you are not alert to your worldview when scanning, you will miss things that just might be important, and you will make assumptions that may be just plain wrong!

Scanning is not about being certain, but rather about being comfortable with uncertainty, ambiguity, and complexity. Being certain is not an asset when you are scanning.

It is about moving beyond traditional and familiar sources and thinking in new ways about existing and potential markets, emerging technologies, and new business models. It is about looking beyond current ways of working, and thinking the unthinkable to see what might be needed in the future. In short, scanning requires you to:

• have an open, semi-skeptical mind about what might be important, look beyond dogma and perception, and be constantly dissatisified with what you know and what you don't;
• formulate bold propositions and hypotheses and look for ways to improve them;
  
• continually test your assumptions about why you think something is valuable or not, and then look for ways to prove your propositions and hypotheses wrong, or start a new one. Dismiss nothing until tested (particularly if you think it’s rubbish).
• capture your propositions and hypotheses as trends, uncertainties, and wildcards in the form of rounded commentaries, metaphors, and stories rather than transitory, single focused ideas.
  

Source: "Environmental Scanning: What it is and How to Go About It," by Maree Conway 2009 (adapted from the original with her kind permission).

Next: Ways of Seeing Back: Principles To: Shaping Tomorrow

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