DOUBTS ABOUT FORESIGHT/PROSPECTIVE

Introduction

Foresight, let’s say, has its ups and downs, it is popular one moment and abandoned the next. In our articles, our goal is to inform well, but there is always a skepticism that hangs over it, the speed, the rigor and certainly the harshness of business often if not always take over, and strategic planning generally extends to the short and medium term since strategy means action.

The goal here is to become aware of doubts that become objections when they remain unanswered. Foresight must attract us by the logic of its usefulness, its relevance. We must come to say to ourselves that we are better off with it than without it, that we cannot take the risk of ignoring it except in the case where our competition practices it and acquires an advance, a competitive advantage. And there is the case of the uncertainty of the future that is reflected in the present.

Doubts, questions without answers

Not our business !

Usually, information about the future comes from governments or government-sponsored studies. Smaller companies say that the big ones determine the future, they just follow. Making the future is futile, more than useful.

Although foresight seems to be the prerogative of governments and large corporations, often the changes come from small, creative and agile businesses. Foresight has two aspects, that of foresight, anticipation, and that of detecting a preferred future.

In reality, social movements are a force that ultimately drives everything and that is why we use foresight, among other things, to try to detect these movements.

Short term predominance

Foresight is often seen as an exercise that takes us out of reality and since the future is far away, what’s the point? Short-term emergencies are part of the business game. The predominance of the short term creates myopia and produces effects that can be perverse. Business requires two modes of thinking, fast thinking and slow thinking (Kahneman 2011).

Variations : Danger of getting out of the present, illusory. Defocus.

It’s been OK so far!

Indeed! However, it must be noted that the future comes to us faster and unfortunately, the past is no longer a guarantee of the future. It is often said that what got us here will not get us there (What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, Goldsmith 2007).

Foresight involves scanning the environment and prompts us to a form of thinking that would not be possible without the type of information or intelligence it provides. Finally, there are a large number of companies that have disappeared due to lack of vision or foresight.

Cost of innovation

Innovation is perceived as expensive. It is expensive, but often our idea of ​​innovation is institutionalized or derived from institutions, or it is information that comes to us from big business as if it were there to discourage us. The fact is that many innovations and inventions come from individuals. Think of Oculus, or GoPro, a clever collage/tinkering of this and that, and where it seems that the glue was the most useful material. SpaceX which did what NASA did, but at a fraction of the cost. It is all relative, of course.

Risk is also a significant cost associated with innovation. The cost associated with innovation is a risk, just like the cost of not innovating. Often, innovation is also this natural impulse to do better, to save time for example. We often innovate without really realizing it.

Speaking of innovation, there are 4 types: architectural innovation (through the use of technology), incremental or gradual innovation, disruptive innovation, and finally radical innovation (to be covered in a future article).

Variations : It looks complicated, long and expensive. Too small. Everything changes quickly anyways.

All or nothing, either/or

We often get stuck in the all or nothing, or this or that mentality. We fall into ambiguity, ambivalence, as if polarity were the only choice, ambivalence rather than versatility. One of the effects of polarizing our choices by limiting them to opposites is to create a form of resignation, which leads us to a form of sarcasm, what’s the point, it doesn’t achieve anything anyway, etc.

Foresight is the unified field of possibilities, of alternatives, this space where, momentarily removed from the constraints of the present, from institutional, cultural and social imperatives, we allow ourselves to imagine all sorts of scenarios, all sorts of surprises, impacts and consequences of consequences, in order to better prepare for the greatest possible number of eventualities and to identify opportunities that the short term cannot reveal because it does not contain them.

Uncertainty (imposed and manufactured)

Foresight is said to help us escape the uncertainty created by rapid and discontinuous changes by engaging us in scanning our uncertain environment so that we can better prepare for it. Ultimately, demystifying the problem is part of the solution. Conversely, if uncertainty is created and therefore imposed by the environment and we can reduce it by using foresight, for example, does this mean that not doing foresight is a way of inducing it, of manufacturing it? Are there other internal practices that have the effect of manufacturing uncertainty?

Foresight, as an isolated practice

I must say that foresight is indeed an isolated practice, it is a silo in the future, the silo of the future, which seems to contradict the fact that we say that we act in the present with an intention in the future. We almost always do something for tomorrow, a more or less distant future. The particular problem with foresight, or perhaps more with prospectivists, is that they are often experts in the future and amateurs in business, which amplifies their withdrawal into the exclusive practice of foresight. This impression also comes from the fact that in the end, we are reverse engineering the future. Many specialize in exploring the future but lack information on business constraints, management, governance, legal and financial imperatives, financing, accountability, etc.

The fact is: LEARNING AND DOING FORESIGHT IS EASIER THAN APPLYING IT. Applying it is like playing in the mud. What does it do today in our business, our priorities, our emergencies?

SMALL SALES PITCH

Our goal at AUGMNT is the integration of foresight and its results into all aspects and horizons of the organization, which requires discipline, indiscipline, planning, improvisation and tinkering, business in other words! Having great respect for the theory on which we depend, we do not however seek to conform business to theory, but rather, rightly or wrongly, to adjust theory to business.

The prefered future, why?

The preferred future is not a magic solution, a magical future. The preferred future is in fact the one that replaces a determined, imposed future, which is thus not preferred, the one where we feel directed in spite of ourselves. So, we can say that it (preferred future) produces a form of hope. Will it come true? Maybe yes, maybe no, probably not in the form hoped for since the action takes place in a chaordic universe. The environment is complex and the causal relationship is not simple, we cannot link a result to a particular action, we act in a system that is complex and are subject to its dynamics (the dynamics of the system – system dynamics). The goal of the preferred future is to engage in a process of determination, a mode of creativity and creation higher than that of the present, a clear vision and an unequivocal but adaptable sense of direction. It must be so engaging that it positively influences our decisions and actions today.

In conclusion

The question of foresight is not one of “all or nothing”. It is one of familiarization, progression, experimentation, domestication. Without breaking its meaning, its reason for being and its rigorous foundations, the use of foresight is done in a certain comfort, as much as the necessary discomfort, in order to challenge habits, the status quo, mental models and cognitive biases. It gives a virtuous meaning to the expression “the end justifies the means”. Ultimately, we use foresight in order to create a sustainable and lasting business.

Foresight helps us to see alternatives and to have a vision, a direction, an opinion, where we don’t have any!

To your future !