How to make Plan for an uncertain future

How to make Plan for an uncertain future

What’s the difference between companies that get left behind by revolutionary changes and those that profit from or even spearhead them? In short: Their ability to change boxes in real time.

Long term success in business requires you to keep your mind open to many possible futures. Beware of the ever-lurking trap of tunnel vision: all too often, we plan for one vision of the future – one that is likely based on our present understanding. In other words, we use predictive thinking to prepare for the future.

We should, in contrast, employ prospective thinking, which asks: What could happen? What could I make happen?

By imagining multiple possible scenarios, your business can stay flexible and well prepared with not only a plan A, but also plans B and C.

When planning for the future, there are two kinds of reasoning available: deduction and induction. With deduction, we take an existing box and sort information into it. For example, you might ask: “What are the most important trends that will affect our industry?”

The problem with this type of reasoning is that the range of possible answers is limited, and focuses too much on what is presently known.

Induction, in contrast, works the other way around: you take information and try to find a box for it. Inductive thinking asks questions that have an unlimited set of answers, inspiring creativity by moving away from commonly shared associations.

For example, you might ask: “How could scenario XY become the most important trend affecting our industry in the future?” This approach allows you to discover opportunities other competitors simply don’t have on their radars, i.e., truly innovative approaches.

As an example, consider that executives from the high-quality glass industry would likely agree that developing screens for mobile communication devices would be among the most important market innovations in the foreseeable future.

But wouldn’t it be better to start a technological revolution while everyone else is competing for a piece of that pie? Like developing materials that make glass obsolete? Or something entirely different?