Arriving at the New Address Futurism and Organizational Transformation
What individuals and organizations start out to become and what we evolve into being are two decidedly different things. The future is a series of journeys along a twisting and turning course, affected by what we choose to do with our careers and the priorities we assign.
Along the way, there are warning signs that we either recognize or pay the price for overlooking. Our futures are determined by choices we make, talents that we do or don’t develop and circumstances beyond our control.
Our present tense and, thus, our future is further influenced by time and resources we spend interacting with other people and the actions of other people, directly or indirectly affecting us. The perspective of future actions is based upon mistakes we make…and what we learn from them.
Companies and individuals undergo continual transformation. Recognizing it enables the successful ones to benefit from change, rather than become victims of it.
Society is filled with many strange and conflicting quirks. One must understand and deal with several odd dynamics. Some people are more comfortable with failure than success. Organizations do many things that set themselves up to fail (knowingly and by instinct).
The old ways of doing business will not cut it in the future. Every organization must look forward in order to survive and succeed. The skill with which one adapts and changes makes the difference between the company simply existing and moving forward in a growth mode.
These truths about change management set the tone by which one plans to succeed in the future, rather than being a victim of it:
This chapter is intended to take Futurism out of the esoteric and into the weekly practice of business. I offer nine of my own definitions for the process of capturing and building a shared Vision for organizations to chart their next 10+ years. Each one gets progressively more sophisticated:
The Search for Truths in Your Business
We are temporary caretakers. We tend the earth and must give back to it. If we believe that we are just here to get all that we can, we are in for a rude awakening.
Each segment of society has an obligation to the other. Adults do things in the name of their children. Young people need to do things for their elders and must show proper respect. If the cycle is not reciprocal, then it is an empty life.
Companies driven only by money (making it and keeping it) see business as a game, not a philosophy of productivity.
Human beings and the organizations they inhabit are products of change. The manner in which they accept change has a direct relationship to their future success. The ability to adapt, learn and innovate is the basis of change management. Thriving upon change and mastering it is the basis for Futurism.
People and organizations who do not learn from the past cannot see the future. People and organizations who do not study the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them.
Yesterdayism is a concept that I use in planning and visioning processes as sources of Insights. It does not mean living in the past. We study those before us… and our own past mistakes. Review the mistakes of those who haven’t learned from them. Understand the scope of those who saw things happen. By reviewing the case histories, we teach our organizations, reapply the lessons to our own future growth and keep the creative juices to continue innovating.
Yesterdayism is filled with the lessons of past choices made (how you’ve evolved), good choices (why they worked) and bad choices. Lessons in Future planning may be learned by reviewing choices made against your will or for the good of the project, career or company.
People concerned only with processes and procedures cannot see The Big Picture of their business. They set up screens to keep truths from filtering in.
A piece does not constitute the whole. Computers only constitute 2% of technology, which only constitutes less than 1% of the importance-emphasis of the overall organization. Recycling only constitutes 2% of a total environmental protection-awareness-advocacy program. Affirmative action is only a small piece of the important mosaic toward racial equity, which in turn is a fraction of the broader concept of multicultural diversity.
Sets of circumstances are not provable evidence. Busy work should not be compared to professional work. Holding a job is not the same thing as a career Body of Work.
The costs of acting too hastily include band aid surgery to haphazard processes, make-goods for errors, material overruns, overtime wages and delays passed on to other scheduled work projects. The broader opportunity costs include damage to goodwill, reputation and customer relationships, as well as executive time to review-modify-correct (three times what it would have taken to plan on the front end).
The costs of acting too slowly include small priorities absorbing larger chunks of time and resources than they need, interrupted flow of work. Uneven schedules-processes create concerns, wastes and worker uneasiness. Being unsure of what is expected and company goals lead to quality management issues. Moving slowly or little at all becomes a habit. The company gets stuck in a rut.
If you ask the best of other people, then you must offer the best. It is difficult for a competitive company to see things changing. You don’t always have to be better than other people. Be the best when it counts.
The only good opportunity is the one in front of you. To make the most of it, understand the ones in back of you. Also, it is knowing how and when you do your best work: John Lennon and Paul McCartney set deadlines of two hours in which to write each of their masterpiece songs.
The seven main ingredients of Futurism are:
Factors of Futurism which must be addressed include new kinds of products, a new company, economic necessities, changing competition and turning competitors into collaborators and sometime-suppliers.
By putting people above technology, keeping a customer focus and looking to impact your customer’s customer. In today’s era of information overhead, the planning process cuts through the clutter, changes definitions of productivity and concurrently re-engineers the organization.
The more creative forms of planning and Visioning are where new ideas come from, thus, creating new business concepts, philosophies, processes. Expanded levels of understanding and thinking ahead and developing insights-visions beyond the information starting point.
These are the actual steps in the Futurism Process:
Hucksterism and Hype. People buy easy solutions and instant answers, such as those offered by technology peddlers. Futurism must embody ideas that inspire, manage and benchmark change.
Definitions of Change. Society is filled with many strange and conflicting quirks. Gossip sells. Media thrives on it. People believe what they see and hear to be fact. The system tends to disseminate opinion with instant analysis, so as to discourage individual examination, rationale and investigative activity. One must understand and put speculations and hypotheses of others into proper perspective.
Process vs. Vision. People focus upon micro details of jobs, rather than reasons for the organization being in existence. Each task, tool and technology must be related to the bigger purpose.
Realistic Degrees of Change. People are more comfortable with failure than success. Organizations do many things that set themselves up to fail (knowingly and by instinct), rationalizing that they are adhering to proven formulas. Research shows that change is 90% beneficial. So, why do organizations fear what is in their best interest?
Esoteric vs. Pragmatic. People are inclined to be armchair quarterbacks. Few dare to innovate. Many will criticize, nit-pick, copy or try to change what the few created. The art of survival is to find some kind of stake in new ideas and, at least, buy into pieces of them.
Predictions Without Follow-Through. Organizations say one thing and often do another. It takes rare courage to truly “walk the talk.”
Futurism Is What Can Be…Not What People Are Selling. Futurism constitutes what you will do and become…rather than what it is to be. It is what you can and are committed to accomplishing…rather than what mysteriously lies ahead.
Recommendations for Futurism to be successful:
Through Futurism, as charted by the Strategic Planning and Visioning processes, you see how far you’ve come. By continuing to benchmark and recognize progress, you see what things that you could not do before this process began.
End goals are not the objective…making strides is most important. Recognize that no end goal may be reached and that goals are constantly changing. Create a “buddy system,” a network of supporters for your pro-active process. Continue to change in realistic increments.
“The future ain’t what it used to be.”
“Tomorrow is another day.”
“You ain’t heard nothin’ yet, folks.”
“You cannot fight the future. Time is on our side.”
“I like the dreams of the future better that the history of the past.”
“The fellow who can only see a week ahead is always the popular fellow, for he is looking with the crowd. But the one that can see years ahead, he has a telescope but he can’t make anybody believe that he has it.”
“Everything flows and nothing abides; everything gives way and nothing stays fixed. The way up and the way down are one and the same. From out of all the many particulars comes oneness, and out of oneness come all the many particulars. A dry soul is wisest and best.”
“The future is neither ahead nor behind, on one side or another. Nor is it dark or light. It is contained within ourselves; its evil and good are perpetually within us.”
“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
“The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.”
“I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging the future but by the past. The future belongs to those who dare.”
“There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.”
“Run to meet the future or it’s going to run you down.”
“Let him who would enjoy a good future waste none of his present.”
“Conservation is humanity caring for the future.”
“The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.”
“The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created—created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them, changes both the maker and the destination.”
“A generation which ignores history has no past and no future.”
“As long as anyone believes that his ideal and purpose is outside him, that it is above the clouds, in the past or in the future, he will go outside himself and seek fulfillment where it cannot be found. He will look for solutions and answers at every point except where they can be found—in himself.”
“The future belongs to those who prepare for it today.”
“The illiterate of the future will not be the person who cannot read. It will be the person who does not know how to learn.”
“In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.”
“The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present. The present contains all that there is. It is holy ground; for it is the past, and it is the future.”
“The future is not something we enter. The future is something we create.”
“The most decisive actions of our life—I mean those that are most likely to decide the whole course of our future—are, more often than not, unconsidered.”
“My past is my wisdom to use today… my future is my wisdom yet to experience. Be in the present because that is where life resides.”
“It is because modern education is so seldom inspired by a great hope that it so seldom achieves great results. The wish to preserve the past rather that the hope of creating the future dominates the minds of those who control the teaching of the young.”
“To make no mistakes is not in the power of man; but from their errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future.”
“Many people think that if they were only in some other place, or had some other job, they would be happy. Well, that is doubtful. So get as much happiness out of what you are doing as you can and don’t put off being happy until some future date.”
“How small a portion of our life it is that we really enjoy! In youth we are looking forward to things that are to come; in old age we are looking backward to things that are gone past; in manhood, although we appear indeed to be more occupied in things that are present, yet even that is too often absorbed in vague determinations to be vastly happy on some future day when we have time.”
“Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils; but present evils triumph over it.”
“Poetry reveals to us the loveliness of nature, brings back the freshness of youthful feelings, reviews the relish of simple pleasures, keeps unquenched the enthusiasm which warmed the springtime of our being, refines youthful love, strengthens our interest in human mature, by vivid delineations of its tenderest and softest feelings, and through the brightness of its prophetic visions, helps faith to lay hold on the future life.”
“Children have neither a past nor a future. Thus they enjoy the present…which seldom happens to us.”
“We think very little of time present; we anticipate the future, as being too slow, and with a view to hasten it onward, we recall the past to stay it as too swiftly gone. We are so thoughtless, that we thus wander through the hours which are not here, regardless only of the moment that is actually our own.”
“All science is concerned with the relationship of cause and effect. Each scientific discovery increases man’s ability to predict the consequences of his actions and thus his ability to control future events.”
“Look not mournfully into the Past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the Present. In is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy Future, without fear, and a manly heart.”
“The greatest loss of time is delay and expectation, which depend upon the future. We let go the present, which we have in our power, and look forward to that which depends upon chance, and so relinquish a certainty for an uncertainty.”
“At the bottom no one in life can help anyone else in life; this one experiences over and over in every conflict and every perplexity: that one is alone. That isn’t as bad as it may first appear; and again it is the best thing in life that each should have everything in himself; his fate, his future, his whole expanse and world.”
“STRATEGY is a style of thinking, a conscious and deliberate process, an intensive implementation system, the science of insuring FUTURE SUCCESS.”
“Man has a limited biological capacity for change. When this capacity is overwhelmed, the capacity is in future shock.”
You have more strengths than the others.
Yours must be seen as a “demand” industry.
Opportunities far outweigh the threats.
Turn others’ weaknesses into your threats.
Nothing can grow without proper nurturing, care and attention.
Everyone has to market and promote the cause.
Use experts from outside your industry.
Champion change.
Business and public stewardship are honorable public trusts.
Being a role model, you become a better executive and leader.
Success is more about building and sustaining relationships.
Most of life’s great secrets are found through creativity of people.