Beyond this Horizon
Peter de Jager is a provocative Speaker, Writer and Consultant. His primary focus in on how we manage change, technology and the future.
In addition to speaking at conferences worldwide, he's also writen monthly columns for CIO Magazine and Computerworld Canada.
His goal is always to question what we think is so, and in so doing perhaps open up new opportunities.
If you'd like permission to reprint any of Peter's articles, please contact him directly.
You can contact him at
pdejager@technobility.com
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The study, or even the casual examination of the Future has a bit of a
shady reputation. Any media coverage of a World Future Society event will include the obligatory references to tea leaves and chicken entrails.
The Sept/Oct 2005 issue of the Skeptical Enquirer compares Futurists to
the very worst of the tabloid Psychics. Not surprisingly, the public perception of Futurists is that of a group of wide eyed mystics looking out a thousand years and making ridiculous, and incredible claims that defy verification.
Futurism is far from perfect, but the image of the crystal balls, incense and pointy hats does it a serious injustice. The University of Houston has offered a fully credited degree in futurism since 1975 and has graduated more than 250 students. These students are now finding, and sometimes creating, positions for themselves in corporations worldwide. Their goal? To look outward 5-10 years and prepare their organizations for what lies beyond the immediate horizon.
Dr. Peter Bishop, head of the current program at the university puts it this way; “Throughout the
traditional education process, we make a point of teaching history to students. They then enter the work force and discover as novice managers that they’re responsible, not only for examining the past, but for creating the future. It makes sense to teach what happened, but
it also makes sense to provide some techniques for anticipating what might happen.”
Futurists make no attempt to predict a specific future. Instead they attempt to create a range of possible futures. Their purpose in doing this is best expressed by a quote overheard recently at a gathering of Futurists:
“Future scenarios serve as wind tunnels through which we fly our corporate strategic plans. Our objective is to create strategic plans which are robust across a wide range of scenarios.”
The tools used by Futurists are not extraordinarily complicated or difficult to access. They range from things we’ve all used in the past for different purposes; ‘brainstorming’, ‘what if analysis’ and ‘systems Thinking’. More esoteric methodologies include; ‘Delphi modeling’, ‘environmental scanning’, ‘cross-impact analysis’, ‘psychodynamics’ and the study of how ideas propagate through a community known as 'Diffusion Theory'.
Obviously any organization involved with infrastructure projects needs to look out at least to the end of their projects, some of which can easily last 5-10 years. Other organizations with no such obvious need are also beginning to realize that looking at the Future is critical to the success of even short term projects.
Harley Davidson Motor Co. is one such company. They make motorcycles, and are in the process of planning their 100 year anniversary celebration. They focus on their heritage
and the future they want to create with their customers. They are also celebrating 13 record years of earnings, demonstrating
that this looking forward stuff isn’t fluff. Sharon Hardy is an OD Manager in their Product Development Center. She describes the companies view as persistently long term. She claims this concern for the Future arises out of their basic values “We build our products to last, and our products demonstrate that in the market by appreciating in value over time. “
Nor are they Futures oriented only with respect to their product. They have a worldwide reputation for creating exceedingly long term, positive working relationships with their Unions. Their concern is to build both relationships and products that last, leading to a strong organization for the future.
We are clichéd to death about how the rate of change is increasing. Futurism makes no claim to be able to predict where it will all take us. It does however suggest that any organization can benefit in the short term by at least looking out past the next corporate report and seeing what alternatives we might have to face.
© 2005 Peter de Jager – Peter is interested in all things related to Management, but especially Change Management.
Contact him at
Pdejager@technobility.com
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