FUTURE READINESS
ARTICLE
Future-Ready has the double meaning of being ready for the future to come and being ready to go forward with our chosen future.
The meaning of “future readiness”
In our era of rapid change and uncertainty, future preparation has become more crucial than ever. This involves not only anticipating and preparing for what may come, but also actively shaping and creating the future we desire and for the purposes of this post I have distinguished between two futures and then I deal with the emergence of scores and indicators developed by two distinct organizations.
The expression “future-readiness” can mean different things depending on the practitioner using it. If you talk to a prospectivist or a futurist, this expression will describe the state of an organization that has done the work of foresight or anticipation in order to determine its preferred future; this future will animate it and allow it to better direct its actions in the present so that this future or its best version comes true. If you talk with people involved in enterprise risk management, the term “future-readiness” means being prepared for the future that will come. One stance is passive, we are ready for it to happen and the other one is active, we are ready to make it happen.
The future of the futurist and that of the manager?
The future of the prospectivist
This future is what we can call the “designed” future or the one that we have chosen following our work with the prospective approach. This preferred future is what we could also call the “determined” future of the organization. This future to be created is designed from the external elements of the company as the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, author of “Thinking fast and slow“, suggests: move away from what we know to open up to alternatives that can be not only radically different but also superior to what is done. In this sense, this kind of future ensures the continuity of the company in the future.
The future of the manager
This future is one that I called the “received” future. It is this residual and undetermined future by our prospective approach so it is all the rest of the future that can happen including the known risks and those which are not. This kind of future is the one we are preparing for in order to eventually manage it with agility. This prevention, preparation and response activity is carried out using the organization’s internal resources; how the company will react, respond, adapt, etc.
The emergence of the score and the indicator
To help organizations prepare for the future, some individuals and organizations have created the following scores and indicators:
The Future-Readiness Score
The Future-Readiness Score (FRS) developed by Ian Khan helps organizations understand where they stand with respect to business readiness in 8 key areas of business impact going forward. The FRS is a scientifically-backed research-based methodology developed to help understand key measures of success for the organization and to help identify metrics that will make you more ready for a disruptive, technology-driven future.
The 8 key domains are :
- Engagement
- Learning
- People
- Accountability
- Collaboration
- Value creation
- Execution
- Technology
The Future Readiness Indicator
L’IMD (International Institute for Management Development) introduced the Future-Readiness Indicator to measure how prepared businesses are for a changing future.
Industry rankings go beyond leadership assessments and business performance analysis and are instead based on other determining factors.
The indicator proposes 7 factors:
- Financial fundamentals
- Investors’ expectations of future growth
- Business diversity
- Employee diversity/ESG
- Research & Development
- Early results of innovation efforts, and
- Cash and debt
Le Future Readiness of McKinsey : doing radically better
McKinsey, on the other hand, suggests the Nine Keys to becoming a “future-ready” company and thus doing radically better. Although these keys do not constitute a score or an indicator per se, they clearly describe the imperatives set by organizations wishing to do “radically better” than their competitors.
The nine keys
Who we are
- Purpose
- Value
- Culture
How we operate
- Structure
- Decision making
- Talent
How we grow
- Ecosystem
- Tech platforms
- Learning
To read at McKinsey & Company
Keeping these distinctions in mind allows us to think about the attitudes and actions needed for an organization to consider its readiness for the future. These general guidelines should encourage us to make additions appropriate for our particular situation.
When we approach the area of future preparedness as [future ready] and as [having a future ready], we are dealing with three levels or fields of action:
Reaction: to act in response to an event, the materialization of a risk.
Preaction: to prepare for a possible event or risk.
Proaction: to provoque changes.
Other points to consider as practices or programs:
- Be forward-thinking.
- Think of resilience as the lower threshold, adaptability and antifragility as the upper threshold or objective.
- Develop the necessary strategies and protocols.Promote learning, implement appropriate training.
- Develop tools for vigilance and continuous improvement.
- Build strong networks and collaborations both internally and externally.
Conclusion
Future preparation is a fairly broad idea that is not exclusive to risks, preventative management or prospective planning. It is in fact rather the fusion of several methods which allow an organization to build resilience and also to take steps towards antifragility so that it can grow following external shocks rather than simply recover.
Considering what “ready for the future” means from all sides, I believe that foresight practitioners are in a privileged position to help organizational leaders get a better idea of the future, which allows them to enrich their efforts, whether in the design of their future or in its prevention, by developing intervention tools better suited to today’s needs.
To your success !