Planning From the Future

By Larrywomack.com

Time Is An Arrow

“In this world the passage of time brings increasing order.  Order is the law of nature.  If time is an arrow, that arrow points to order.  The future is pattern, organization, union, intensification: the past randomness, confusion, disintegration, dissipation.”—Albert Einstein

There was a time in business when a future could be molded from the present.  That time is no more.  The new dynamics and accelerated tempo of business require a more aggressive approach in addressing the demands of commerce.  Success requires using the past as lessons learned and then looking to the future for information, inspiration, and opportunity.  Einstein’s hypothesis points out that the past is disorder and that the future is pattern.  Opportunities are much easier to identify and to capture in the patterns of the future than in the randomness, confusion, and disorder of the past.  There is no future in the past.

Successful leaders examine the future, image or model potential challenges, then thinking back to the present, create a plan and a process to bring the future into reality.  The future of a company is always in the minds and the hands of its leaders.  If the leader really wants to hit the moon, everyone will shoot at the moon.  If it is not clear what the leader wants to shoot at, many in the company end up shooting at one another.

Most leaders, however, were educated or experienced in a business philosophy that hypothesized: “the future is what you make it.”  The traditional business wisdom of the past three decades encouraged leaders to believe that they could control their destinies and those of their companies; that they could “make” the future.  In those times the future looked more like the past and present than it does today.

Not only has the relationship of the past, present, and future changed; new companies and whole countries have joined in the contest of shooting those arrows at the targets of commerce.  The arrows themselves have become more expensive and sophisticated, and the targets more elusive.  There was a time when merely shooting the arrows of commerce into the air produced sufficient results for business growth.  That is no longer so.  Targets must be searched out and the preparation for hitting the targets more deliberate.

Einstein’s words also give a clue as to how to successfully prepare to address that more murky and elusive future.  “The past is randomness, confusion, disintegration, dissipation,” he said.  Those are not elements of a successful plan.  On the other hand, Einstein told us that the future holds pattern, organization, union, and intensification.  Now, those do sound like elements of a successful plan.

Through examining, predicting, visioning, and modeling the future, patterns will be formed or recognized.  If everyone in the company is focused and concentrating on a single future or target, that is organization.  Union is found in the collaboration that occurs when the work and behaviors desired by the leaders are clearly defined and strongly supported by everyone.  Intensification is that almost unconscious dedication to purpose that comes from everyone supporting the system and the system supporting everyone.

The late quality guru Edwards Deming said that a change or an improvement must always begin with a theory.  If what you were attempting to accomplish fails, then find another theory.  The theory of planning from the future is based on the following assumptions:

•  There has been a shift to a buyer-driven global economy.

•  Technologies continue to rapidly advance.

•  Expanding knowledge is becoming more readily available.

•  There is renewed regard for individual worth and value.

•  Meaningful work requires collaboration.

•  Predicting the future is the primary task of a company’s leader.

•  Securing the present through empowerment is the other duty of leadership.

Agree with those assumptions and planning from the future instead of for it becomes more plausible and achievable.

The attitude of leaders in the sellers’ market days of the past four decades was basically to preserve, protect, and control the resources of the company.  In those days business often appeared at the door of the company begging to come in.  Most of those who rose to the top did so because of their astute financial management capabilities.  The leader set the course through financial projections, usually based on historical accomplishments.  Risk taking was minimal and often unnecessary to produce a reasonable profit.

When the pace of business began to quicken in the late 80s, the economy shifted from supply to demand customers became more discriminating and more frugal, and the marketplace as well as competition became global instead of border to border.

The primary cause of these changes in commerce is technology.  Technology has changed the way we think, act, communicate, plan, and perform our daily tasks.  It has changed the way we serve our customers, make and deliver products, and has changed even the flow of currency.

Technology has created an availability of information that boggles the minds old-style thinkers and energizes the new wave of techno-thinkers and futurists.  Information has replaced money as the fuel in the engines of commerce.

Technology has changed the way we look at the future.  The future no longer looks like the past.  History may repeat itself, but repetition doesn’t bring success.  The future can be found in the patterns and rhythms of the future, not in the disorganized and pulseless past.

The days of mindless work have ended.  People matter once again.  People, however, can no longer hide in their ignorance.  The work won’t tolerate it.  Work is cerebral.  Think about it.  Because valuable work requires thinking, leaders must allow thinking to occur.  When people are allowed to think about what they do, they naturally do it better.  The more power that is vested in the worker, the healthier and more productive the workplace becomes.  People now expect to find joy in their work.  When they do not find joy, they do not perform to their own standards, much less the standards of those standing in the way of their potential.  There is much unrest in companies where the individual is not respected and recognized.

Though the individual is important, success comes from individuals working in collaboration.  Meaningful work requires collaboration.  People working toward a single purpose.  All pointing their arrows toward the same future.  Aiming and firing at that future in concert and counterpoint as orchestrated by the leader for maximum effect.

A leader of a company has two responsibilities:  predicting the future and securing the present.  Predicting the future requires         knowing what customers will want and how the world’s economies, technologies, and politics will impact customer needs, wants, and desires.

The leader secures the present through empowerment.  Empowerment is the leader’s providing the knowledge, information, tools, and culture required for everyone to perform and improve work.

Knowledge is that body of intelligence inside and outside the organization that is needed to make wise decisions.  Information is defined as routinely useful information that everyone needs to stay on track, on task, and on vision.  Tools are the techniques, processes, strategies, and technologies required to perform at peak efficiency.  Culture is the context in which work takes place.

Ineffective leaders are usually those who have knowledge and information but withhold it as a means of control.  Ineffective leaders are often unconcerned or unaware of the cultural problems that reduce productivity and profits.  Most opportunities for dramatic improvements in productivity and in the bottom line are matters related to the work environment.  Ineffective leaders don’t recognize the value of providing the tools required to perform and improve the work.

For the present to work, everyone in the organization must be empowered with the right tools, the right information, and the right attitude.  No one can truly empower the workforce except the leader.

There are five basics to business success:

1. The correct prediction of customer needs.
2. The correct prediction of global economic and political conditions.
3. A system focus and collaborative attitude throughout the organization.
4. A single strategic focus that integrates all planning and work.
5. A dynamic and flexible organizational structure that readily adapts to change.

The first two of the basics address the future.  Predicting what the customer will want and do and the future global economic and political conditions requires constant vigilance and study from the company’s leaders, key thinkers, and planners.  Most leaders of companies, however, are more comfortable developing strategy, working with organizational change, and even addressing cultural issues.  Many leaders attempt to make the company more responsive to the external dynamics of commerce by addressing strategy, structure, and attitude with little regard for the future.  That is a dangerous course to take.

The present and the future are equally important to continuing business success.  There obviously will not and could not be one without the other.  It is important to both the present and the future that everyone in the organization has an appropriate mix of present and future responsibilities.  The higher up the organizational structure, the more the mix of present/future emphasis shifts to the future.

If time is an arrow, the leader is the master archer of the company.

Philosopher/scientist Bart Kosko, the father of the new science of fuzzy logic, says, “The probability that the archer’s arrow hits the deer does not lie in the arrow or the deer.  It lies in the archer’s mind.”