Reports from the Knowledge Labs about our recent findings, research topics, and interviews with lifestyle leaders who are creating their own futures.
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How to stimulate your own powers of foresight. Consider the following thought provokers. Ask yourself, in these categories what are the brand new trends and forces? Which are the ones growing in importance? Which current forces are loosing their steam? Which have peaked or are reversing themselves? Which are the "wildcards" about to disrupt us in the future? POLITICAL AND TECHNICAL thought for food: Electronics, Materials, Energy, Fossil, Nuclear, Alternative, Other, Manufacturing (techniques), Agriculture, Machinery and Equipment, Distribution, Transportation (Urban, Mass, Personal, Surface, Sea, Subsurface, Space), Communication (Printed, Spoken, Interactive, Media), Computers (Information, Knowledge, Storage & Retrieval, Design, Network Resources), Post-Cold War, Third World, Conflict (Local, Regional, Global), Arms Limitation, Undeclared Wars, Terrorism, Nuclear Proliferation, Weapons of Mass Destruction, Governments (More/Less Power and Larger or Smaller Scale), Taxes, Isms: Nationalism, Regionalism, Protectionism, Populism, Cartels, Multinational Corporations, Balance of Trade, Third Party Payments, Regulations (OSHA, etc.) Environmental Impact, U.S. Prestige Abroad. SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC Food for thought:
Labor Movements, Unemployment / Employment Cycles, Recession, Employment Patterns, Work Hours / Schedules, Fringe Benefits, Management Approaches, Accounting Policies, Productivity, Energy Costs, Balance of Payments, Inflation, Taxes, Rates of Real Growth, Distribution of Wealth, Capital Availability and Costs, Reliability of Forecasts, Raw Materials, Availability and Costs, Global versus National Economy, Market versus Planned Economies, Generations: Y, X, Boomers, Elderly, Urban vs. Rural Lifestyles, Affluent vs. Poor, Neighborhoods and Communities, Planned or Organic Growth.
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The Journal of 2020 Foresight
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Thursday, February 27, 2003
Over-Specialized, Obsolete and Temporary -- But Not By Choice
Chapter Two: The Ridge
By Steve Howard, CKO
The Knowledge Labs
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Basecamp
Chapter Two: The Ridge
Chapter Three: The Outpost
Chapter Four: The Tribal Territories
The Polls are open. We’re asking people like you to rate trends and predictions that have the greatest direct impact on your livelihood and future plans.
Today’s top five:
37 – From 1998 to 2008: small and large growth stocks will do well. Also emerging countries in the international sector (Dent)
36 – During this timeframe (1998 to 2008) real estate and REIT funds look attractive (Dent)
35 – Dow will reach 21,500 around 2008 -- the time to harvest stock and most real-estate investments (Dent)
34 – Shift into long-term treasuries and very high quality corporate bonds between 2006 to 2008. (Dent)
33 – In 2009 or 2010 expect the first serious U.S. and global stock correction and shift bond portfolios into Japanese and some European stocks. (Dent)
Register your vote
Journal of 2020 Foresight: You told us in 1997 Lone Eagle and Lost Explorer teamed up to lead an expedition focused on the doing-what-you-love story lines: “Staying Put, Doing What You Love;” “It’s Wired, Doing What You Want – Anywhere, Anytime;” “Struggling Lone Eagle, Overpriced for Local Market;” and “Trapped & Permanently Temporary.”
Trailblazer: That’s right. And, we briefly mentioned another learning expedition of HR executives. In addition to the economic picture repeating itself a decade later, “two of the talent scenarios” – “Me Go-Go Fast” and “Absent Minded Professor …” informed the “Trapped & Permanently Temporary” and Struggling Lone Eagle, Overpriced for Local Market” scenarios.
J2020F: We’ll come back to the HR executives a little later. Tell us the story line for “Trapped & Permanently Temporary.”
TB: Well, essentially this is a story of a generation, just under 80 million, in their 40s and 50s who fall victim to cost cutting measures at large companies. Unprepared for what is to follow they find themselves living more frugally. With higher than expected living costs for their elderly parents, their inheritance that they had counted on vaporizes. Forced to work, without much of a pension or retirement savings, they find themselves over qualified, over specialized, and discriminated against.
J2020F: So in other words, these middle-aged Boomers are thrust unprepared into local, cutthroat, and competitive labor market? And, since they populated the middle management, executive management, and senior professional positions they’re priced out of the market due to their salary demands?
TB: Sure. In an employer's market like in this scenario, they’re forced to take on temporary contracts that fail to lead to permanent work equal to or better than their former positions.
J2020F: So, having played by the old rules they had fully expected to last through the magic combination of years of service and age to qualify for a fully funded pension?
TB: Right. Instead, they’ve been cut lose prior to meeting the test. And, because of global competitive pressures and their own selective filtering of the industry trends they should have paid attention to (which led to layoffs and restructuring in the first place) local comparable positions in the same industry are virtually non-existent for them.
J2020F: So, they’re over specialized in arcane, and now commercially obsolete jobs. I bet that makes it even more difficult to consult and command high fees. When push comes to shove, the hunt for other opportunities takes too long and their forced to take whatever becomes available.
TB: That’s right. The more they followed their former organization’s way of doing things, and the longer they repeated the process, the more out of touch they’ve become with current market and industry demands.
J2020F: So they’re shocked to discover that what worked so well in one organization – the way customers are satisfied, problems are solved, opportunities are cultivated, etc. -- doesn’t transfer easily to another work setting.
TB: Imagine the emotional devastation when they realize the safety and security of working for one large company not only doesn’t pay off for them; it makes for a more uncertain future golden years.
J2020F: Since the event occurs near the twilight years of their career and at peak earning years, they may have early retirement, but they will still need to work to make ends meet for a couple of decades.
TB: Absolutely. They will not want to cut back on expenses, but they will be forced to live more frugally. They’ll find themselves competing in the marketplace with part-timers, temporaries, and younger people with less experience who will gladly work for less.
J2020F: Organizations favor this strategy because it allows them the flexibility to expand and contract their labor force without creating negative public relations.
TB: The peak earning, middle managers, become a permanent loser in a winners and losers conflict.
J2020F: In this sort of business and economic cycle, large companies and even smaller ones continue incessant cost cutting moves to increase productivity.
TB: Which is why we see some overlap with the HR Talent Scenarios.
J2020F: They’re under pressure to target high salaried boomers.
TB: Information Technology (IT) groups only purchase the new technologies if it can cut transaction costs and give better and tighter controls on current worker’s expenses.
J2020F: What happens to the Trapped and Permanently Temporary, then?
TB: They first turn to their home equity as a source for capital to stay afloat, or to fund a business. But, that source eventually dries up. Even if they manage to own their equipment in a home office, they find it difficult to fund growth.
J2020F: Why?
TB: Because, those who bought homes at the peak of the housing market find themselves in the unenviable position of paying high house payments for a home whose value has declined to the point that they lose all their equity if they place it on the market.
J2020F: What do they do, then?
TB: They resort to loans from families, cash advances on credit cards, and savings. Hoping that business will pick up and pay down the loans.
J2020F: I imagine, though, for those starting out, if they can't find alternative sources for capital, the barrier to the entrepreneurial option is too high and too risky.
TB: Yes. We also see a rippling effect, as well. Because housing is the biggest investment we typically make, how that investment retains or doesn't retain value directly influences consumer confidence about the future. If boomers don't feel good about the future they don't buy as much.
J2020F: So, a lag occurs in the economy sooner than could be projected as a result of a generation moving past its peak spending patterns.
TB: As their parents reach their final years less wealth transfers from the elderly generation to the boomer generation. While financial planners predicted the wealth transfer would offset years of low savings rates among boomers, it doesn't materialize for two reasons. Much of the elder generation's wealth is in the form of annuities and those income streams dry up upon death.
J2020F: While they lucked out with the run up in real estate values and life-long jobs with pensions and high savings rates, much of their current well being is derived from government programs?
TB: That’s right, like Social Security, Medicare and private pensions -- which had been included in calculations of that generation's wealth. None of these will be transferred.
J2020F: And doesn’t the Bob Hope generation consumes more today, than they in the past and at a rate higher than younger generations? Much goes to medical care that prolongs their life, I presume.
TB: True, they spend more and transfer less than their parents did. Taken together, the total amount of bequests in the United States in 1990, $208 billion, was 2/3s less than what it could have been, $344 billion, if more of their wealth was in assets that would have been passed on, as was the portion in 1960.
J2020F: So bottom line, for those boomers who expected to use a larger bequest for their entrepreneurial options or for their own long-term retirement, the amount available will be an unwelcome surprise.
TB: And for their children, in the short-term, a much larger shock. The negative impact on consumer spending, especially for retail chains in the region during the make-or-break holiday season falls off.
J2020F: Sounds like a game of dominoes. More and more the retail business falls off driving them out of business. With fewer entry-level positions.
TB: Right. Wages remain flat while the real estate prices remain under what had been market value at its peak.
J2020F: Boomers feel the pinch with less discretionary income.
TB: Which means credit cards and installment debt piles up at an alarming rate, making it virtually impossible for them to get out from under. As economic realities become direr, those hard charging consumers will suddenly scale back, prompting sale after sale to move retail goods early.
J2020F: So, holiday spending, while lower, will go towards the purchase of clothing, toys, and home electronics, followed by jewelry and sporting goods.
TB: At the federal level, we experience the impact of a default on the Treasury debt due to the Republican and Democrat battles over the federal debt ceiling and the budget. Civil-service trust funds holding billions of dollars for future civil service retirees become drained first.
J2020F: What happens with the Treasury debt?
TB: That borrowing power for the Treasury is short lived, after it hits the $4.9 trillion debt ceiling. But manipulating the trust funds, taking back government securities and replacing them with IOUs only works for so long before interest payments, maturing bond payments, and T-bills add up quickly.
J2020F: Sounds like an elaborate shell game.
TB: And it gets worse. While thought unthinkable by Wall Street, because of global ramifications, the default occurs just the same. First the stock market hits record highs, but then investors grow nervous prompting a small rise in bond yields and a jump in gold's price.
J2020F: That doesn’t sound too bad.
TB: Then the huge amount of debt es its toll since the Treasury has to sell over tens of billions in securities with short maturities in a short period of time.
J2020F: Then?
TB: Foreign investors, who owned more than 20% of Treasury debt, begin liquidating their holdings on a wholesale scale, even though securities had been the base of world bond and currency markets.
J2020F: Hadn’t it been the global market that was deep and liquid? Foreign central banks had been heavy investors. That bolstered the dollar and weaken the other currencies.
TB: The bulls were caught off guard. They sensed a buying opportunity since the U.S. bond yields could have rebounded when the major source of demand, those foreign buyers dried up.
J2020F: Why? Did the bulls expect foreign investors to stay out for only a short term.
TB: Yup. Politics did them in. The Republican and Democrat wars should have been concluded and the crisis resolved. If reason had prevailed, the bulls had expected a return to an environment of falling interest rates.
J2020F: But instead, the expected balanced budget failed to materialize, keeping short-term interest rates high, instead, and triggered the negative reactionary spiral?
TB: That’s right. These “trapped and temporarily permanent boomers”, forced to work without much of a pension or retirement savings, find themselves over qualified, over specialized, and discriminated against in a vicious economic spiral.
J2020F: So the second location-specific scenario, Staying Put, Doing What You Love plays out in a more positive way, right?
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Copyright ©2002 - 2006 Aarnaes Howard Associates. All rights reserved worldwide.
7:33 AM
Wednesday, February 26, 2003
The Fools on The Hill See the World Spinning Round
Chapter Two: The Ridge
By Steve Howard, CKO
The Knowledge Labs
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Basecamp
Chapter Two: The Ridge
Chapter Three: The Outpost
Chapter Four: The Tribal Territories
“Our present situation requires specific capability to fully exploit opportunities and diminish threats to success. Vision, fueled with will power, creates a "tension" between the future and present. Like a magnet across time, tugging us through worthy change, it stretches us beyond the ordinary, the everyday, the urgent. Only fools lead others into the wilderness of the future without a careful reading of history in their knapsacks. The Past is a collection of anecdotes, beliefs about our journey through time, what it has been and what it means. When mapped out it shows how we have repeated ourselves, what we have never tried or tried too often, and what paths were never taken or were over trod. (Basecamp) ends when we know why the journey is worthwhile and what got us here in the first place.”
Jim Ewing, “The EmpowerMap”
The Polls are open. We’re asking people like you to rate trends and predictions that have the greatest direct impact on your livelihood and future plans?
Today’s top pick:
47 – International affairs and national security as a major societal factor (Cetron)
Register your vote
Journal of 2020 Foresight: Earlier you said you structure scenario stories in a four-box matrix as a trick is to minimize the size of the “window pane” for our personal and collective blind spots. And you gave two different examples of the stories past learning expeditions scripted.
Trailblazer: That’s right. In 1997 Lone Eagle and Lost Explorer teamed up to lead an expedition focused on the doing-what-you-love story lines:
“Staying Put, Doing What You Love”
“It’s Wired, Doing What You Want – Anywhere, Anytime”
“Struggling Lone Eagle, Overpriced for Local Market” and
“Trapped & Permanently Temporary”
J2020F: As I recall, Lost Explorer dabbled in the consulting option, but found an internal position. So, he decided to “stay put, doing what he loved.”
TB: Right. But, Lost Explorer shared his “scenario implications wheel” expertise mastered in an emerging, high technology company with Lone Eagle. He’d been helping the research and development group chart a highly uncertain 5-year laser technology and marketing roadmap.
J2020F: So this story telling technique works in careers and in organizations?
TB: Yes, in fact, later in 1999, prior to the dot.com bubble explosion and meltdown, he led an expedition of “Human Resources Executives through their four Talent Scenarios:”
“Me go-go Fast Scenario”
“Running Together Scenario”
“Welcome Back Kotter / Learning Together Scenario” and
“Absent Minded Professor / Out to Sea and Treading Water Scenario”
J2020F: I imagine the two different expeditions overlapped in some areas, then?
TB: Yes. As you no doubt remember, “talent was king” in the later half of the ‘90s, unlike 2000 to 2003.
In addition to the economic picture repeating itself a decade later, two of the talent scenarios – “Me Go-Go Fast” and “Absent Minded Professor …” informed the “Trapped & Permanently Temporary” and Struggling Lone Eagle, Overpriced for Local Market” scenarios.
J2020F: Why do you suppose that happened, because Human Resource Executives develop the people side of their organizations?
TB: Sure, they’re on the hook to attract, select, orient, assimilate, develop and retain the talent critical to their organization’s success. And the same forces affecting people earning a living shape the career and recruitment markets.
J2020F: We also know that organizations grow through life stages, and what works in one stage doesn’t necessarily work in another – especially during extreme business cycles.
TB: So, the HR executives need to anticipate the demand for different sets of talent. During layoffs, they’re the ones delivering the bad news and arranging outplacement services.
J2020F: Sounds like rounds of musical chairs to me.
TB: When you look at all 8 scenarios, it looks more like a matter of fit. From the individual perspective, you want to find out as much as you can about the culture and advancement opportunities at a prospective employer or organizational client.
J2020F: And from the HR perspective the fit assessment depends upon what’s missing from their current capabilities, how long it takes to develop their internal talent pool to make up the gap, and how many of their surplus talent they can afford or let go.
TB: Or, the “Trapped & Permanently Temporary” scenario. Usually, pain (layoff, firing, company relocation, etc.) or gain (entrepreneurial, career fulfillment, or killer idea) motivates people to join expeditions.
J2020F: Let’s talk about some of those forces the two expeditions identified as highly uncertain and yet highly significant to future success and failure.
TB: Typically we ask questions to narrow down our choices. We pretend to look back from the future to the present. Since the life changing decision has already played out, we ask several hindsight questions –
If only I’d know that would happen, I would have done this differently …
J2020F: For the Lone Eagle Scenarios, what did their expedition identify?
TB: Remember the Lone Eagle scenarios, in essence, were about managing a portfolio of tangible and intangible assets created by doing what they love. So, the income streams necessary over a lifetime were threatened by shifting forces several times.
J2020F: So, largely the uncertain business and economic cycles then?
TB: Predictability of the economy for “killer investments,” opportunities for emerging markets, with enough advanced warning to make career moves without disrupting cash flow.
Avoiding prolonged dry spells that eat up cash reserves, and balloon credit card payments.
The impact of the global information economy and the degree to which it transformed organizations.
Their openness to telecommuting and online project-by-project engagement of knowledge workers.
The transfer of the center of work from a specific geographic location, either within driving distance or a relocation for a better corporate position, to the virtual home office.
The quality of life factors and cost of living factors attracting the migration of boomers to different geographical locations.
Initially, some 22 different factors sorted down to this list in response to the first question.
J2020F: What is the second question?
TB: What in the macro environment caused the factor to unfold as it did and to impact my decision the way it did – or cause that major disruption?
J2020F: Now, this was in the mid-90s, right. When AOL dominated the online world and the Internet hadn’t really taken off until Mosiac, the World Wide Web, and finally Netscape came on the scene?
TB: Roughly 5 to 8 years ago. Some of these factors still apply, others don’t:
Basic affordability of office equipment and sophistication of technology tools to deliver reports, materials overnight, if not instantaneously.
Ease of use and excitement of the internet carrying over from the early adopters to the majority of consumers.
Spending influence of babyboomers generating the prosperous economy. In the empty nest stage, they return somewhat to their earlier, non-conforming, change agent roles in society at large.
The migration to smaller towns.
Lower housing prices, deflation, individualistic-consumer oriented demands on business and organizations.
Cut-throat lower margin businesses or customer-intimate and product leadership value disciplines.
Breakthroughs in financial, communications, and entertainment markets.
J2020F: And, the third question from the future looking back?
TB: Which, as it turns out where the critical driving forces I should have paid attention to because they had the most impact and which were the most volatile, uncertain?
J2020F: And I take it, the goal is to identify two or three factors critical to the success of the decision, and the driving forces that are the most important.
TB: Right. Before 56K modems, the degree to which the following forces played out represented the most uncertainty:
Degree to which Internet / WWW becomes the source for boomer entertainment, communications, and financial transactions.
Degree to which boomers can easily access and surface, entertainment level pleasure
Degree to which they can search information to use in making key decisions or monitor performance of financial investments or competitor information to improve their business.
Degree to which one-on-one transactions are helped or hindered by the Internet. Hindered because buyer can't find the seller and the seller can't be visible to the buyer. The needle-in-the-haystack phenomenon.
Degree of financial speculation in the stock market.
Degree to which boomers can afford to answer their calling in non-conformist ways and see the internet as a vehicle for realizing their aspirations.
J2020F: So, taking these driving, uncertain forces into consideration, the lone eagle learning expedition crafted four qualitatively different stories to account for how their futures unfold, right?
TB: While largely a creative writing project, you can rely on typical plot structures as catalysts for developing story lines. The story plots revolve around the actions of, not individual people, but of larger organizations and communities.
J2020F: Of larger organizations and communities? How? Like which ones, for example?
TB: These groups enter the stories as catalysts for or as reactors to changes produced by growing forces -- for example, professions, trade associations, social institutions, nations, universities or companies.
J2020F: Give some examples.
TB: We’ve used a handful to roughly a dozen. We almost always work in three:
Zero-sum game of winners and losers;
Adventure stories of challenge and response; and
Growth and decline through evolutionary change.
J2020F: What are the others?
TB: In addition to evolution – revolution or sudden breakthroughs and co-evolution or changes in one system causes a chain reaction in another. Borrowing from the natural world dramatic structural change, like volcano eruptions or earthquakes. Something on that order of magnitude.
J2020F: What about in financial markets?
TB: Usually we throw in cycles and infinite possibilities. In the latter, the accelerating growth leads us to higher and higher plateaus. Booms lead to bubbles and then cycles exert themselves – usually in politics and in the stock market.
J2020F: Any others?
TB: Well, the rest of the world sees the US as a maverick, a cowboy, the Lone Ranger. In technology, this might be the start-up in a David vs. Goliath struggle. And, finally, the emergence of new generations with different values and expectations.
J2020F: So, how did the Trapped and Temporary scenario unfold?
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Copyright ©2002 - 2006 Aarnaes Howard Associates. All rights reserved
7:09 AM
Monday, February 24, 2003
Stories for Skipping Across the Valley of Despair
Chapter Two: The Ridge
By Steve Howard, CKO
The Knowledge Labs
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Basecamp
Chapter Two: The Ridge
Chapter Three: The Outpost
Chapter Four: The Tribal Territories
“Scenario writing works the same way. It takes years of practice, creating and understanding scenarios repeatedly. Thus, the most helpful exercise is to go back to old scenarios a year later. "Well, I missed the thing that was actually going to happen," you might say. "What did I not see?" Or, conversely, "What is it that led me to really see that surprise that nobody else thought about?" How do you judge whether a scenario was effective? The test is not whether you got the future right. That is fairly easy if you consider multiple scenarios. The real test is whether anyone changed his behavior because he saw the future differently. And, did he change his behavior in the right direction? Did he do the right thing?”
Peter Schwartz, “The Long View”
The Polls are open. We’re asking people like you to rate trends and predictions that have the greatest direct impact on your livelihood and future plans?
Today’s top four:
60 – Self-employed people in the U.S. continue to grow at 4 times the rate of salaried workers. (Cetron)
59 – More mid-career professionals will opt for entrepreneurship from downsizing. (Cetron)
56 – Growth of self-managing specialists; input from colleagues, customers & headquarters. (Cetron)
52 – Advancements will be few; opportunities will be within narrow specialties
Register your vote
Journal of 2020 Foresight: You’ve described a multi-step process for strategic exploration of the future. You use script writing or story telling to flesh out four possible futures.
Trailblazer: That’s right. Every one of us filters out information based upon our experiences, thinking habits, and basic personalities. We have to. It’s how we’re “wired.” If we couldn’t selectively filter out all the noise, we wouldn’t be able to concentrate on tasks at hand.
J2020F: So, what’s the problem? Shouldn’t we just always “live in the moment?”
TB: Sure. Everyday we assimilate the ups and downs of daily living. If we didn’t live in the moment, then, we wouldn't find much happiness in the down periods. Accommodation though is another story.
J2020F: What do you mean?
TB: Major disruptions in our lives force us to change our normal habits. We know from “change experts,” that we respond in one of two ways.
J2020F: The so-called valley of despair, and?
TB: Right, the death and dying model of shock, bargaining, denial, anger, depression, and acceptance. Through selective filtering we miss the clues that suggest just how close we’ve come to the edge of the cliff.
The second is what we’re discussing here. A process of anticipation. The first drains all of your energy. The second feels more like an adventure.
J2020F: Change experts tell us the more sudden and the more unexpected the event that forces accommodation, the more devastating and the longer the recovery – before a life lesson can be learned.
TB: People who deny or who can’t see the accommodation warnings come to the cliff walking backwards.
J2020F: People who anticipate learn from their losses in life, and walk to the edge of the rim facing forward?
TB: Once you master the process, you realize many canyons will cross your path. You look for those signs and cross canyons before they become canyons.
J2020F: When you first notice signs of erosion?
TB: That’s right. Great rivers carve canyons. If you knew this little tributary eventually fed the Colorado River, you’d be able to cross it earlier. But, for most people seeing the tributary at the right time is extremely difficult. It’s the old “Johari’s Window” phenomenon.
J2020F: Let’s see if I get it right. A four-square window pane constructed by the combinations of knowing and not knowing, right?
TB: Right. We know what we know; we don’t know what we know; we know what we don’t know, and …
J2020F: We don’t know what we don’t know.
TB: No one is immune. We all have blind spots. The trick is to minimize the size of the “window pane” for our personal and collective blind spots.
J2020F: Hence, the four-box matrix of future stories.
TB: And, the inclusion of many people with diverse perspectives in the scenario writing and story telling. For, facing the unknown while not-knowing-what-we-don’t-know either takes a lot of courage …
J2020F: Or an absurd amount of foolishness.
Got Knowledge?
Copyright ©2002 - 2006 Aarnaes Howard Associates. All rights reserved worldwide.
8:00 AM
Sunday, February 23, 2003
Mobile KnowCos and Talent Brands
Chapter Two: The Ridge
By Steve Howard, CKO
The Knowledge Labs
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Basecamp
Chapter Two: The Ridge
Chapter Three: The Outpost
Chapter Four: The Tribal Territories
"Imagination is more important than knowledge, for knowledge is limited whereas imagination embraces the entire world."
Albert Einstein
The Polls are open. We’re asking people like you to rate trends and predictions that have the greatest direct impact on your livelihood and future plans?
Today’s top two:
69 – The next depression from around 2010 to 2025. (Dent)
67 – A general preference for safety, clean air, privacy, and selective intimacy—a kind of "humanness"—will lead a migration trend from suburbs toward smaller cities, towns, and neighborhoods similar to the last generation's move from the cities to the suburbs. (Dent)
Register your vote
Journal of 2020 Foresight: You said expeditions on the Ridge harness uncertainty and change, so the when the big bang explodes it propels them to their next destination, rather than blows up everything they’ve worked for along the way.
Trailblazer: That’s right, we group the variable, uncertain trends into clusters in order to build a four-box matrix. And then, we use character development and plot structures to tell four stories about how the future may unfold around our journey to our chosen destination.
J2020F: So, in Basecamp Pathfinder helps them clarify their intentions, purpose, and aspirations. Your purpose on the Ridge is to help them understand the dynamics shaping their future by getting them out of their habitual thinking ruts. Is that right?
TB: Exactly.
J2020F: Give us some examples:
TB: We’ve launched several expeditions. In Basecamp, for instance, Lone Eagle realized he needed to heed his calling. He wanted to leave the unfulfilling corporate world and to strike out on his own. Starting from the inside and working out, he wrestled with the decision to make a mid-career change to be in business for himself.
Another expedition of human resources executives sorted uncertain forces along talent development dimensions for their organizations. They sought to understand their own opportunities for personal and professional development.
J2020F: So they shared career concerns with Lone Eagle. Doesn’t their profession rise and fall on the economic health and well being of the organizations employing them?
TB: Yes, and they’re on the hook to manage the lifelong learning investment for their organizations. Organizations, which I might add, expect a return on investment for the time, commitment and resources necessary to develop their workforce.
J2020F: Let’s go back to the Lone Eagle scenarios. Describe the matrix and four-box set of uncertainties.
TB: Many of the uncertain forces clustered into a “mobility axis” and another into a “passion axis.”
J2020F: Mobility, as in the freedom to move or not to move?
TB: That’s right. On one end of the axis is “being-tied-to-a-specific-location.” On the polar opposite end is “living-in-your-ideal-location.”
J2020F: And the passion axis?
TB: From “doing-what-you-love and being paid market value or above” on one extreme, to “doing-what-you-hate or what-you-have-to just to make ends meet” on the other end.
J2020F: So the four possible combinations were:
Tied to Specific Employer-site or Geographic Location / Doing What You Love;
Tied to Specific Employer-site or Location / Making Ends Meet;
Living in Your Ideal Location, Employer-independent / Making Ends Meet; or
Living in Your Ideal Location, Employer-independent / Doing What You Love at Market Value.
TB: Lone Eagle’s quest was to build a “KnowCo,” as he came to describe it. A knowledge company established as an online-enhanced business. A livelihood that allowed him to live anywhere he wanted.
He felt, by living where he wanted and by building a widely recognized brand over time he’d have the best of both worlds. He’d cut down on his travel. He’d spend the majority of his work time in his own office creating “infopreneurial packages” for anyone navigating their second half of life.
As you can imagine, even in great economic times, he chose a high-risk venture.
J2020F: And, how about the talent scenarios, how did they start out?
TB: This one suffered from confusion. Throughout the strategic exploration process, they lost track of their central question. Here’s what they described as their core focal point in the beginning:
What is the future organization's point of view about talent? Will they “appreciate or depreciate” their “knowledge base?”
How will employees of the future view their relationships with organizations?
Where and when (if at all) will development take place?
How do you go about converting talent into corporate assets?
Will the human resource development profession, as it is currently practiced, become obsolete in the near, medium, or long term future?
J2020F: And the two axes?
TB: The horizontal x-axis stretched between two opposites. Between “Technology-driven Speed” and “Mastery.” The vertical y-axis spanned the distance between “Independent Identity” on the top and “Organizational Affiliation” on the bottom.
J2020F: So, they developed four “futures screenplays” defined at the intersections of the two axes:
Independent Identity / Operating at Top Speed
Organizational Affiliation / Operating at Top Speed
Organizational Affiliation / Time for Human Mastery
Independent Identity / Time for Human Mastery
TB: As the stories began to take shape, the Talent Expedition initially renamed their four future worlds:
“Me go-go Fast Scenario”
“Running Together Scenario”
“Welcome Back Kotter / Learning Together Scenario” and
“Absent Minded Professor / Out to Sea and Treading Water Scenario”
J2020F: You said, “Initially.”
TB: Yes, they’ve gone through several iterations. They changed the names, and began validating an assessment instrument that addresses their talent management and career development issues. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.
J2020F: How about the Lone Eagle expedition?
TB: Those scenarios evolved during the strategic exploration process as well. Initially, the uncertain forces clustered into:
“Doing What We Love, Anywhere”
“Doing What We Love, Where We Hate to Live”
“Doing What We Hate to Do, Anywhere” and
“Doing What We Hate, Where We Hate to Live”
Unfortunately, those groupings lead to overlaps.
J2020F: That led to fewer qualitative differences necessary to stretch their thinking?
TB: In our experience, names should signal the scenario story line. If the names are vivid and memorable, the scenarios will have a much better chance of making their way into your decision making and planning processes.
So they regrouped.
J2020F: Without getting too far ahead of yourself, what did they come up with?
TB: This time they addressed the second half of a popular book in the self-help market, “Do What You Love, And the Money Will Follow.” They didn’t want to wait too terribly long before the cash began to flow. So, they applied their scriptwriting skills to these four future storylines:
“Staying Put, Doing What You Love”
“It’s Wired, Doing What You Want – Anywhere, Anytime”
“Struggling Lone Eagle, Overpriced for Local Market” and
“Trapped & Permanently Temporary”
J2020: I gotta tell you. To the uninitiated, this seems like an awful lot of work, is it worth it?
Got Knowledge?
Copyright ©2002 - 2006 Aarnaes Howard Associates. All rights reserved worldwide.
8:21 AM
Thursday, February 20, 2003
Blips on the Radar, or Has the Big Bang Fuse Been Lit?
Chapter Two: The Ridge
By Steve Howard, CKO
The Knowledge Labs
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Basecamp
Chapter Two: The Ridge
Chapter Three: The Outpost
Chapter Four: The Tribal Territories
"This boom should open up your opportunities not just for lucrative jobs or entrepreneurial ventures, but for a real change in lifestyle. This is a great time to sit down with your spouse, family, or friends and really consider where you would want to live. What are the alternatives? How will technology allow us to live in a place we might not have considered? The business, career, and, especially the real-estate opportunities are also likely to be much stronger in the best boomtowns and cities. This could be one of the most important decisions you make in your life, whether you are a baby boomer in your mid-forties, or have a new family and are in your early twenties, or about to retire. Spend the time to find the best place to live and invest. It will be worth your while."
Harry Dent
The Polls are open. We're asking people like you to rate trends and predictions that have the greatest direct impact on your livelihood and future plans?
Today's top three:
80 - 70% of boomer women will outlive their husbands (Russell)
79 - On average baby boom women will be widows over a 15-year period (Russell)
78 - As a generation boomers will spend the rest of their lives trying to look young (Russell)
Register your vote
Journal of 2020 Foresight: You realized from your experience in the '90s that trying to categorize and then to monitor the reliability of 253 predictions proved to be overwhelming.
Trailblazer: I left that important work to the content futurists.
Instead of re-inventing their wheel, I discovered a more valuable role appealed to me -- the role of a process futurist.
J2020F: What's the difference?
TB: Well, in one way, their content fuels the vehicle, but the process delivers us to our destination.
J2020F: So, it's not important to map out the locations of all the possible gas stations in the world, just the ones we're likely to need along the way?
TB: This may be stretching the metaphor, but what we really care about is not hitting a dark and lonely stretch of the highway out in the middle of nowhere with an empty fuel gauge 300 miles from the nearest station.
J2020F: A process futurist determines the destination and plots several paths to it based upon the probabilities of encountering threats and opportunities along the way?
TB: We're most interested in what Lawrence Wilkinson called "long fuse, big bang" problems.
He says, "Whatever you decide to do today will play out with a big bang - often a life or death difference - but it can take years to learn whether your decision was wise or not."
So you're flying blind in the beginning with little or no feedback to assure you that your personal story has a happy ending.
J2020F: You're describing the big bang decisions we struggle with at a crossroads in our life. We want to know how the journey we are about to take will play out in our life, career, and retirement.
TB: We want to know, given the current and uncertain future economic climate, what are we risking when we change course? You won't find out until much, much later if you made a wise decision.
But we can start with the "What-If" questions. What if I:
Change positions in the same organization;
Change organizations in the same field;
Change careers altogether;
Grow in my current job, but moonlight;
Start a business;
Buy a business;
Buy a franchise;
Launch that consulting practice I always dreamed of doing;
Pursue a portfolio career;
Live on my investment portfolio and volunteer my time to worthy causes; or
Simply retire early and free-lance or consult to supplement my income?
J2020F: So, those are the 11 options, right? Now, to that you apply the next round of "What-Ifs" within the big bang context. You may launch a new business and do well initially, only to have the economy tank through no fault of your own.
Will you be able to survive the loss of income for an extended period of time?
Will you be forced to take a job just to make ends meet?
In a severe economic downturn with high unemployment, will you be able to convince a prospective employer to hire you. And so on.
Those are high-risk choices.
TB: You bet. We all enter a crossroads in our lives, each from our own, unique life experience. Even those in the same life stage come to seek a different set of options depending upon their current situation.
J2020F: Pathfinder says in Basecamp he helps people listen to their little voices. Choosing the right path for them depends on their calling, strengths and weaknesses and their current condition. Some will have plenty of time to recover from a setback, but others will risk their life savings.
TB: Some have never married. Some are childless. Some married young and others are divorced. Some are widowed. Some have a full house, others in empty nests.
While some are more fit than ever, others are ill and ailing. Many are in rewarding careers, while still others seek change.
Some are wealthy, but many others are just getting by. Some are mothers just starting or re-starting careers. Others are career women just starting motherhood.
Some are trying to beat the clock, their fertility deadline. Others have many pregnancies behind them and face rising college tuitions.
Some are overachievers just beginning to balance out, while others are laid-back belatedly trying to make some money before it is too late.
J2020F: That's why you start from the inside out, right?
TB: Pathfinder helps them clarify their intentions, purpose, and aspirations.
We help them harness uncertainty and change, so the when the big bang explodes it propels them to their next destination, rather than blows up everything they've worked for along the way.
J2020F: What happens next?
TB: We identify predetermined and uncertain driving forces -- usually from four categories -- social / demographics, political, technology, and economics.
Our goal is to better understand the dynamics shaping our future.
We brainstorm primary driving forces at work in the present, knowing full well that it is the interaction among forces that pose threats and opportunities.
J2020F: The point of brainstorming the list is what?
TB: To look past our every day trials and tribulations that occupy our thoughts and feelings.
The shift in perspective opens our awareness to the hidden long-term forces shaping today and tomorrow.
These are the powerful forces that will usually catch us by surprise.
J2020F: Then what?
TB: We rank the most uncertain, yet critically important trends.
J2020F: Why?
TB: Predetermined forces, like demographic facts, play out in any story about our future. But, not all forces are so easy to predict.
The variable, wildcard forces likely to have a major impact on our decision get ranked, or sorted into clusters, if you will.
J2020F: What do you do with those clusters?
TB: We use a variety of tools to sort them into two dimensions, each set along a single spectrum.
At first they all seem unique.
But, by stepping back and noticing commonalities among them a pattern emerges.
If we can simplify our entire list of related uncertainties into two axes, an X and Y plane -- one horizontal and one vertical -- then we can define a "4-box matrix."
J2020F: Wait a minute. You create a matrix at the intersection of the X and Y planes? The four boxes define four different quadrants?
TB: The common approach is to identify only three possible futures -- best case, worst-case and something in between. Guess what happens?
J2020F: Regression to the mean. Once you've written the in-between script, you ignore the other two, right?
TB: So, this matrix trick, and others, keeps us from falling into that hole in the sidewalk.
We're after four logically plausible, yet qualitatively different screenplays of the future.
J2020F: Then what?
TB: We creatively explore each of the four boxes.
J2020F: Thinking-in-the-box?
TB: The next step is to think out-of-the-box to flesh out future stories within the framework.
We're getting a little ahead of ourselves here, but we use screen writing plot structures to reveal patterns and implications relevant to our decision.
Finally, in the Outpost we pick relevant signposts and indicators to monitor as we move forward to our destination.
J2020F: Signpost and indicators?
TB: Like on an air traffic control's computer screen. Those little blips that show up as the radar line sweeps across the sky. We use them as early warnings signals.
J2020F: Sounds pretty esoteric.
TB: Maybe some examples would help.
Got Knowledge?
Copyright ©2002 - 2006 Aarnaes Howard Associates. All rights reserved worldwide.
12:38 PM
Friday, February 07, 2003
Hannibal’s Prism Reframes our Perspective
Chapter Two: The Ridge
By Steve Howard, CKO
The Knowledge Labs
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Basecamp
Chapter Two: The Ridge
Chapter Three: The Outpost
Chapter Four: The Tribal Territories
"It is a place where men plow planes into skyscrapers, where lunatics send anthrax spores through the mail, where maniacs snatch little girls off sidewalks or from their bedrooms, where snipers casually shoot people pumping gas or loading packages into their cars. It is, alas, a real world, though perhaps one that is not all that different from the world before 9/11, where atrocities also occurred. What makes it seem so different is that everything is a piece (of a new reality) now that we have reconceptualized the world to demonstrate the terror we have seen and felt. It is a world made in the image of our new paradigm, and it is frightening."
Neal Gabler “In Hannibal Country” LA Times Opinion, 11/10/02
The Polls are open. We’re asking people like you to rate trends and predictions that have the greatest direct impact on your livelihood and future plans?
Today’s top three:
86 – Boomers will become speculators to increase their wealth (Russell)
85 – A new industry will be created to appeal to boomer need for experiences (Russell)
83 – In the year 2010 American social consciousness will reawaken (Russell)
Register your vote
Journal of 2020 Foresight: You’ve described strategic exploration as the process of shifting your perspective, if even for a brief moment. Why should I care?
Trailblazer: Take our world before and after the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in New York. No one predicted the attacks. And, yet the signals were there. We now have a new prism through which we view our daily lives. For many of us the glass shifted from being half full to being half empty.
J2020F: So, while people in other parts of the world assimilate threats from “random evil” as part of their “normal” life, New Yorkers and the rest of Americans never had to accommodate threats to their physical safety and security in their daily activities.
TB: Prior to 9/11 advertisers engaged in “fear mongering” to pedal products and services. But, Americans took all that commercial persuasion in stride within a collective positive outlook.
J2020F: So the post 9/11paradigm feeds all of our “data points” through the Hannibal filter. Our daily lives have been disrupted by surprise attacks. We’ve had to accommodate the “capriciousness of fate” in our national grief -- finding no satisfactory explanation for why some survived and some didn't.
TB: In a sense, we joined the rest of the world beyond our national borders where citizens can be murdered routinely by heinous evil "beyond our comprehension."
J2020F: So the point is prior to 9/11 we selectively filtered the known threat of terrorism – “news at eleven” – out of our daily consciousness. None of our dreams, aspirations, goals and plans included a terrorist contingency.
TB: Right. When we intuitively “moved” within the great currents of trends and common sense, we didn’t factor in the terrorist threat as a “wild card” capable of stopping us in our tracks for weeks, months, and years.
J2020F: Understanding what influences our thinking together with thinking both divergently and convergently is the antidote?
TB: Yes, And as we already said, mapping and imaging round out the core skills required for strategic exploration.
J2020F: How does it work?
TB: On three levels. To remove our own collective or individual blinders we need to anticipate dynamic changes in the macro (economy, technology, political, social / demographic) landscape, the organizational (industry, market, competitor) responses, and the micro (personal and professional) opportunities and options.
J2020F: And we really want to discover what are the growing, brand new forces -- or -- current forces loosing their steam, or reversing themselves -- or -- the "wildcards" about to disrupt us in the future, right?
TB: That’s right, as the bumper sticker says, “Change Happens.”
J2020F: And, then happens again. And, then again.
TB: The frequency and velocity will vary according to industry, business cycle, and a host of mitigating forces. We can and should monitor factors more critical to our well-being.
J2020F: What do you mean?
TB: Well for over a decade I tracked the accuracy of the 253 predictions Cetron, Rocha, and Luckins published in an article for “The Futurist” in August 1988, entitled “Into the 21st Century.”
J2020F: What did you discover?
TB: I figured the approach was quite straight forward. Collect research reports, articles, opinions and other relevant information. Categorize and update. And I'd be well ahead of the investment, career, and strategy management games.
Wrong!!!
J2020F: Why?
TB: I soon discovered that the 253 predictions, while framing the future, were interdependent. In the early ‘90s I remember waking up in the middle of the night. My categorization scheme broke down.
J2020F: What do you mean?
TB: How do you categorize the impact of baby boomers (social) on the acceptance of PCs and the internet (technology) as a means of corporate productivity (economic) that also makes it easy to track government expenditures of public resources as a tool for social responsibility and accountability (political)?
J2020F: So, you learned the hard way that the job is way too big unless you use a different process?
TB: Yes. Now with my clients I get them to begin with a decision or plan first.
J2020F: How is that different?
TB: If you try to track all the macro forces – political, technical, social, and economic trends – you fall victim to “analysis paralysis.” By the time you come to a conclusion the window of opportunity has already shut or the threat has nailed you between the eyes.
J2020F: So you frame only the most relevant future events and ignore the infinite combinations of possibilities? How?
TB: In an 8-step process of strategic exploration.
1. State the specific decision to be made
2. Identify the major environmental forces impacting the decision
3. Develop four plausible and qualitatively different possibilities for each force
4. Assemble the alternatives for each force into internally consistent stories
5. Construct both a matrix and a narrative
6. Identify opportunities and scenarios focusing on links and synergies.
7. Rehearse the future: play out the original decision.
8. Pick relevant signposts and indicators to monitor -- translate shifting indicators into specific implications
Instead of looking in from the macro sea of changing trends to your decision, we start on the inside and work out. Instead of viewing earth from the space station orbiting in infinite space, we begin with our feet firmly planted on the ground and look up.
J2020F: So, if you really wanted to launch a socially responsible watchdog organization, you probably don’t need to concern your self with “A New Kind of Science”, in which author Stephen Wolfram predicts an algorithmic key to the universe that can compute quantum physics - or, say, reality TV - in four lines of code.
TB: Wanna bet? Those four lines of code may turn out to be the long fuse, big bang phenomenon of the future.
Got Knowledge?
Copyright ©2002 - 2006 Aarnaes Howard Associates. All rights reserved worldwide.
3:34 PM
Wednesday, February 05, 2003
Anticipating Threats, Favorable, and Unfavorable Opportunities
Chapter Two: The Ridge
By Steve Howard, CKO
The Knowledge Labs
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Basecamp
Chapter Two: The Ridge
Chapter Three: The Outpost
Chapter Four: The Tribal Territories
“The future doesn’t appear on earth all at once the way a stock offering might, or even roll around with the rising sun. Instead, it blossoms in discrete locations, spreads in ponderous waves, and fills the wind with spore-like memes that can settle and bloom without warning.”
Wil McCarthy, “Strange Blood,” Wired, August 2002
The Polls are open. We’re asking people like you to rate trends and predictions that have the greatest direct impact on your livelihood and future plans?
Today’s top three:
99 – Global, multinational corporations operate as stateless entities always searching for the most productive environment in which to operate. (Reich)
93 – Postponement of Retirement while more Midlife Career Changes (Cetron)
92 – People will change careers an average of every 10 years (Cetron)
Register your vote
Journal of 2020 Foresight: At the Ridge, the challenge is to anticipate external influences on the future we want to bring into being. Through the strategic exploration of 100 trends, we can scan the horizon to view the terrain ahead.
On our gondola ride, you said our challenge, before coming off the mountain, is to anticipate threats and opportunities. If we commit to following our passions, we have to figure out how to proceed into the great unknown while creating better opportunities for those individuals and teams who follow them.
Trailblazer: That’s right. Here we size-up the challenges, trials, and tribulations that lie waiting for us around the bend. We have to prepare for our expedition by letting go of our past. Members of previous expeditions described this as the process of laying down excess baggage to make room for new opportunities.
J2020F: Are you saying that it is at the Ridge where we anticipate contingencies with "what ifs" and "thens".?
TB: Exactly.
J2020F: So, by carefully inventorying our assets and liabilities we can pack just enough provisions to fuel the journey. If we don’t, then we overburden our energy, stamina, and persistence. So, the contingency plans help us become better prepared, right?
TB: You can’t take everything but the kitchen sink. At some point you need to commit to your call to adventure. Think of the process you go through when you pack your car for a two-week vacation. You only need enough to get you through the time period. Any more is wasted space.
J2020F: So, if you’ve stopped in to your local AAA, you can describe your destination and your departure point. Then, they’ll give you a map of their recommended routes.
TB: Right. The only difference is you are following someone else’s map of what you should see and do.
J2020F: If we chart our own trip, it helps to use the vantage point of the Ridge to site the landmarks. We can then sketch our own map to better navigate the terrain and to ensure progress towards our vision, right?.
TB: Sure. The idea is to anticipate both threats and opportunities. What will either hinder us or “fast forward” our progress.
J2020F: Give us an idea of what you mean.
TB: Threats are external conditions, people, and forces that appear to act against our intentions and aspirations. They hinder our progress along our journey and my force us to back track over past trails. They may be real or imagined and they typically emerge and dissolve over time.
J2020F: It’s safe to assume then, that threats remain threatening as long as we ignore their presence, have not anticipated how to handle them, or lack the will to confront them.
TB: And, threats, like opportunities, can be discovered during environmental scans of technology, political, economic, and social trends.
J2020F; Back to our 100 Trends.
TB: If threats place our progress on "pause" or "rewind", then opportunities "fast forward" our adventure through time.
J2020F: Like catching a wave about to crash on the shore?
TB: Close. An opportunity is a doorway to measurable success, formed by a set of external conditions controlled beyond our organizations or us. An opportunity opens for a definable time, and then closes, usually forever.
J2020F: Give me some examples.
TB: Opportunities represent themselves as changing markets, new product developments, emerging technologies, personal challenges, severe transitions, losses or gains, beginnings, endings and periods of access to people of power and leverage.
J2020F: How do we know if an opportunity knocks on our door?
TB: Entering a favorable opportunity draws us toward our goals. It illuminates and unfolds a better understanding of our visions, and it serves our highest purposes.
J2020F: As opposed to what?
TB: Unfavorable opportunities, on the other hand, diffuse our energy, confuse our purpose and drain our valuable strength.
J2020F: What you have been describing sounds like a grand puzzle. Somehow, we need to acknowledge that we all have blinders. We may know what we know. And we may know what we don’t know. Also, we’re pleasantly surprised realize that we don’t know what we know. But, the hard part is to accept that we don’t know what we don’t know.
TB: In our work at the Ridge, we call that influence understanding -- the ability to understand what influences your perceptions as you set out on your explorations. Influence understanding is the first of five skills we need to master.
J2020F: And the others?
TB: Divergent thinking -- the thinking skills necessary for discovering more than one right answer. Convergent thinking -- the thinking skills that allow the focused integration of the data and the prioritizing of choices.
J2020F: It would appear that knowing when to practice one over the other is a judgment call.
TB: That’s right.
J2020F: And the others?
TB: Mapping -- the capacity to draw pathways to show you how to get from the present to the future. And, imaging -- the ability to picture in words or drawings or models what you found in your explorations of the future.
J2020F: Earlier you named the process strategic exploration.
TB: That’s right. Everything hinges on the first, influence understanding.
J2020F: Why?
TB: Because if you don't understand how your perceptions of the future are influenced, all the other components are useless.
2020F: And the goal is to be able to better anticipate.
TB: Right. If you think about it, what your soon conclude is that some anticipation can be scientific, but the most important aspect of anticipation is artistic. And, just like the artist, practice and persistence will dramatically improve your abilities. Your improved ability will, in turn, increase your ability in dealing with the new worlds coming.
Got Knowledge?
Copyright ©2002 - 2006 Aarnaes Howard Associates. All rights reserved worldwide.
8:42 PM
Saturday, February 01, 2003
Forward to the Past, or Back to the Future: Where's the Anti-Murphy?
Chapter Two: The Ridge
By Steve Howard, CKO
The Knowledge Labs
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Basecamp
Chapter Two: The Ridge
Chapter Three: The Outpost
Chapter Four: The Tribal Territories
"There are an infinite number of stories that we could tell about the future. Our purpose is to tell those that matter, that lead to better decisions. It happens to us all. We look out into the future, trying our best to make wise decisions, only to find ourselves staring into the teeth of ferocious and widespread uncertainties."
Lawrence Wilkinson
Journal of 2020 Foresight: Given the weather pattern hovering over this part of the Rockies, I'm surprised. There's still an 11-to-14 foot base here at Mammoth Mountain.
While waiting for Trailblazer to meet me, my mind takes me back to the beach in Basecamp. I remember as coastal clouds turned into a dense fog bank, and the last embers of the bonfire turned to ash, we packed our things for the trip home. It was then that Trailblazer handed me a note. It read, "Meet me at the Ridge on January 30th at the base of chair #3 on Mammoth Mountain and we'll continue this discussion."
Today the snow is everywhere. Snow blankets wind scarred dark green pine trees -- forcing branches to bend under the weight. Snow smothers chateau roofs forming icicles hanging over roof edges like dripping daggers.
Fast moving clouds cover then uncover the sun. Wind gusts and swirls sweep loose flakes up into columns of snow smoke.
Magnificently sharp mountain range peaks tease you with the threat of avalanche snow. Grey granite peaks knife into the sky.
Trailblazer: Ah, there you are. I was waiting for you over by the gondola. Are you ready to go?
J2020F: Sure.
TB: Then let's take a ride, isn't this beautiful? We're surrounded by ancient volcano peaks. If you look closely, it's easy to imagine the path of lava flows. Sharp triangle trails at the top, smaller, more round lesser mountains sprawling out in 3 or 4 layers.
J2020F: It's the power of nature, pure and simple. Gazing out towards the distant mountain peaks remind me of how small and insignificant we all are in the grand scheme of things. How tiny your daily problems are in comparison to the awe-inspiring view.
TB: That's why I invited you here.
J2020F: From a ridge this high up, what -- at least 11,000 feet above sea level -- you can see a path between this mountain range and the next and the next.
TB: Right, you can pick it up as it meanders out across the valley floor and then follow it upward to the distant peaks. See how the terrain is dotted with miniature landmarks?
J2020F: Sure. A lake over there. A meadow there. A canyon snakes around across the entire stretch. Using your imagination, it's easy to deduce some of the natural dynamics in play.
TB: Eons of erosion dug channels guiding the runoff from the snow pack down and away from the ridge.
J2020F: And yet, today right where we stand, you can see animal tracks in six inches of freshly fallen snow -- counterpoint to granite permanence.
TB: We call this a strategic view.
J2020F: Why is a strategic view so important?
TB: Most planning for the future involves setting goals, writing them down on paper and improving upon their description are they specific, measurable, achievable, results-oriented, and time-bound?
J2020F: Right, and your point?
TB: Well, remember Murphy's Law?
J2020F: If something can go wrong, it will?
TB: As in "If all goes well we can complete this project under budget and ahead of schedule." Most planning doesn't account for dynamically shifting variables that often threaten or accelerate a plan.
J2020F: So in the process of strategic exploration, you invoke an anti-Murphy's law, or something?
TB: We call strategic exploration the process of shifting your perspective, even for a brief moment.
J2020F: I thought having a perspective was a good thing. Now you are telling me I need to change it? I don't get it.
TB: Focus is a good thing. We cultivate it through selective attention and concentration. On the flip side, habitual focus becomes a handicap if conditions around us change dramatically, but we don?t see the writing on the wall, as it were.
J2020F: As when the PC shocked the mainframe world. Mainframe programmers become obsolesced. The longer they stay in a mainframe computer company, the more their career capital becomes devalued. Then, through a series of mergers and acquisitions, their business unit gets reorganized out of existence. They find themselves out on the street in a shocked daze.
TB: Right. Pity the poor programmers. They kept their heads down, with their nose to the grindstone.
J2020F: Could they have avoided the shock, anger and their plunge into Valley of Despair for nine months?
TB: Sure. If you're asking me if they could have anticipated their career fate. Absolutely. Anticipation is the result of good strategic exploration. With strategic exploration, you can discover the possible futures, and, once you have found out what is possible, you are in position to anticipate it.
J2020F: Because if you don't understand how your perceptions of the future are influenced ...
TB: You risk the threat of becoming blind-sided. Since no one can predict the future, selecting which option to take presents a significant challenge. Making the wrong decision limits our current or future income and lifestyle.
J2020F: Up on this Ridge as you gaze out over the landscape far below you gain a new appreciation for all of the dynamically changing forces.
TB: People forget that what starts out as a simple and straightforward a journey can turn out quite differently. Who said it best, "the map is not the territory."
J2020F: Well, I imagine looking out on a time horizon, is no different. Between now and the year 2020 the strategic terrain and market "weather conditions" will mix in much the same way as these storm fronts intermix with highs and low pressure zones.
TB: Look at those three different cloud fronts crisscross causing rip tide like swirls of water vapor and snow. That one peak, a possible destination disappeared just like that, hidden from our view.
J2020F: And, of course when you climb down from our vantage point, on our journey to reach that peak, with map and compass in hand, those small specks loom large and block our view. So what can you do?
TB: While there are no guarantees, we can anticipate several ways our future story may unfold. We can select signposts, signals, or indicators which, when monitored, foretell which contingency plan to activate.
J2020F: I see. So in Basecamp, a learning expedition maps out a destination. They agree on a compelling vision of the future for them. They survey their past for insight and hindsight to better understand their collective strengths and weaknesses.
TB: That's right. And here at The Ridge, through strategic exploration of 100 trends, they can scan the horizon to view the terrain ahead. Their challenge, before coming off the mountain, is to anticipate threats and opportunities.
J2020F: So, they're better prepared to defeat Murphy's Law while staring into the teeth of ferocious and widespread uncertainties.
TB: And, they have to figure out how to proceed into the great unknown while creating better opportunities for those individuals and teams who follow them.
Got Knowledge?
Copyright ©2002 - 2006 Aarnaes Howard Associates. All rights reserved worldwide.
11:06 AM
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