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Changing Futures
The world todayThe most significant changes affecting organisations know no borders or markets and affect every part of society today. Global trends, uncertainties and surprises have the potential to significantly change the way the world works tomorrow. Countries, governments, businesses and institutions continue to witness ever increasing surprise as complexity increases. New surprises impact on us all far faster, and more profoundly, than we might think e.g. pandemics, changing weather conditions, terrorist events, social values, economic and political uncertainties and technological advance.
Organisations too, face additional new challenges including:
- severe competition,
- market convergence,
- new entrants, and
- high volatility in all aspects of their activities.
The world tomorrow?
- Greater prospects for global, national and local disruption and shock are increasingly in evidence.
- Forecasting models projecting past patterns can therefore no longer be relied upon to predict the future.
- An increasing number of drivers are reshaping companies business context.
- Drivers include climate change, globalization, new technology, regulatory change, demographics, and new consumer values.
- Shaping the world we want to live in means being more aware of the future and seeking better approaches.
A new, more agile and resilience focused, approach is being led by smart, forward-thinking organisations. They have learned that searching for emerging trends, tipping points and weak signals is a vital intelligence tool to help them survive and thrive in an ever more competitive future. Consider those who were prepared for the financial crisis and those who were not! The prepared and thoughtful sail on, with hardly a mention in the media, while the high profile failures and troubled short-sighted organisations get maximum coverage and brand damage.
Forward-thinking organisations do not attempt to predict the future but are putting in place holistic systems and processes that anticipate possible futures and determine their response to them. By better preparing their organisations for change they continuously enhance their agility, capability and robustness.
Their cost-effective tools provide anticipatory intelligence but do not replace sound analysis. Instinct and sound thinking is still required but with a much improved lens and less drudgery than traditional methods.
These organisations use what they can see in the fog of the future to determine their way forward, avoiding risks, or using them to advantage, and seizing opportunities ahead of less far-sighted rivals. They continually ask themselves strategic questions to stay ahead of the game such as:
- how are customer values changing?
- where are the new opportunities for growth?
- who might be their new competition?
- what competencies will be needed tomorrow?
- which capabilities need modifying/strengthening or divesting for the future?
- when is the right time to move?
They know that by looking further ahead they can change a vicious reactive cycle to a responsive virtuous circle making their work more satisfying and less wasteful of time and resources.
Further References
- Technology Forecast
- 1998: Globalization ... 2008: Continuous change
- Making complexity manageable
- Bringing order to chaos
- Foresight and Business Futures (Slideshare: registration required)
- Outside in (Slideshare: registration required)
Next: Future Practices Back: Home To: Shaping Tomorrow
Copyright: Some rights reserved. This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.
thryller |
Latest page update: made by thryller
, Nov 9 2008, 11:19 AM EST
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Keyword tags:
Agility
Change
Competition
Disruption
Forecast
Foresight
Futures
Organisation
Resilience
Shock
Strategy
Tipping point
Trends
Volatility
Weak signal
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