Does a persona of “different” help you drive more foresight in an organization? It can. Chances are, if you’ve been pressing your colleagues to open their minds to new ideas, if you’ve been rethinking things, reframing how you talk about them, reconsidering the conventional wisdom, you’ve already gotten personally branded for your “otherness”. If that’s [...]
"We never get together like this"
It is my privilege and delight to regularly be a part of workshops and gatherings in organizations focused on exploring the future and looking for new business opportunities. One of the things that happens at so many of these events is that people talk about how great it is that [...]
The blog Innovation Weblog cited Gary Hamel’s book The Future of Management a few months ago, and I’ve meant to share it’s key points on impediments to innovation. Here they are along with my interpretations:
Creative apartheid–The long-held notion that creativity is a gift few have and that creative things should, and perhaps can only come [...]
While at home the other morning, I walked by my 9-year-old’s microscope left on the kitchen counter. Normally, clutter and forgotten belongings plague me at home, but I had the thought, what kind of Dad would tell his curious son, “put your damn microscope away!”? Wouldn’t that be like Louis Armstrong’s Mom saying “stop playing [...]
It’s hard to open up a discussion about the future and not put most everything on the table for reconsideration. When the way is clear to do that, great, go for it! But so often, the charge to the group exploring the future is to move more incrementally: find new opportunities for growth, is a [...]
DUSTIN, of the blog Casual Fridays, offers some great wisdom on why new ideas (yours!) can fall flat with your colleagues. His post is well worth a look if you have to communicate about the future. I am certain I’ve experienced each one of these problems in my work as a futurist, and most of [...]
The way to make foresight more effective is to pay it forward. That means sharing what you find in exploring the future with others, in and out of your organization. And when you get the sharing going, and people will share back. You are encouraging a conversation about the future, and it needs nurturing. [...]
As a futurist, my favorite thing is to work with groups to develop scenarios. The technique is powerful and it’s not easy for people to comprehend and do. But the rewards are enormous.
The power of scenario building is in how it gets people to immerse themselves in the future. Working on scenarios leaves them no [...]
Foresight and futures thinking tools should be a part of everyday strategy making in organizations. Making it so means pushing back against the dominance of urgent, immediate problems, and short-term thinking. What we need to do is open up a space for foresight, and make it habitual.
We will always battle the widespread conviction that what [...]
Good foresight is part of ensuring that an organization doesn’t act before it thinks. It’s essential to try to understand the present and future conditions the organization faces. We want to avoid “fire, ready, aim” and try to be sure we know what else is changing around us and what future we’re facing before taking [...]
