The Journal of 2020 Foresight

Reports from the Knowledge Labs about our recent findings, research topics, and interviews with lifestyle leaders who are creating their own futures.

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. Got Knowledge?

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Sunday, June 22, 2003

The Tribal Territories Summary
Chapter Four

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

Chapter Four: The Tribal Territories Foresight Journals

Deep in the heart of the tribal territories, on the outskirts of Greendale at the Double Nickel Ranch, we recalled our most recent rendezvous -- an event harkening back to the Rocky Mountain Fur Trading spirit. Rendezvous based on a French word means "appointed place of meeting." Having gone our separate ways since the previous major gathering, we updated everyone on what the Corps of Re-Discovery learned and the status of The Field Guide.

Two generations – the “quarter” (twentysomethings) and the “double nickel” (boomers) swap yarns. For the “double-nickel” generation, it’s about re-discovering passions buried beneath layers of work and family responsibilities. For the “quarter” generation, it’s about “discovering their distinct talents, passions, and idiosyncrasies” – and enjoying the freedom of not knowing where life will take them for the time being. Both are in a life transition. The “quarter” generation experiences life in the prolonged school to work transition, while the “double nickel” generation comes to grip with their own mortality.

Just follow the trail of smoke and sparks shooting out and up from the campfires. Look up to the stars and your mind wanders to things like multiverses, the big bang, cosmology and astrophysics, string theory – lot’s of stuff the “double nickel-ers” found interesting coming out of the mouths of the “quarter” generation – having been forced to study some of those topics in college. But, ultimately you come to appreciate that you’re just a particle of sand on a beach in the great expanse of time on planet earth.

Most of “my execs” find themselves in midlife transition – but with a long severance package. They can take the time to find meaning in their lives, unlike other victims of downsizing, mergers and acquisitions or outsourcing. Life stories, the ones our members continue to share -- stories of transition and transformation – have always been with us – at least since the time we homo sapiens realized we all had lit fuses leading to the end of our lives.

We each only have one life to lead, and as you make one choice, you rule out another – you can’t have and do everything. It’s good to consider everyone else’s life story for commonalities and opportunities to explore something outside your own base of experience or limited point of view. We need more venues to explore these kinds of discussions, if for no other reason than to better anticipate paradigm shifts.

When we set out to follow our dreams but fall unprepared into the realm of original experience we’re in for an “adventure in the dark forest.” And, if you can’t live outside of that society – as artists, visionaries, leaders and heroes do – you’ll become neurotic. Because, the path of original experience hasn’t been interpreted for you. And, you’ve got to work it out all by yourself over and over again throughout your own life span.

We are not alone. Within the same timeframe at roughly the same age, we become -- and are influenced by -- our generation. History molds generations, as generations mold history. Today, as has been the case since the mid-15th century, our generational personalities -- Prophet (or Idealist), Nomad (or Reactive), Hero (or Civic) or Artist (or Adaptive) – will experience predictable Highs and Unravelings alternating between an Awakening and a Crisis.

Living through an unraveling and transitioning into a crisis period, we’ve got Boomers (prophets or idealists) in their late 40s and 50s, Gen Xers (nomads or reactives) in their mid- 20s to early 40s and Gen Y (hero or civic generation) in their teens and early 20s. Boomers exercise their power in institutions and in the mass market place today. On the plus side, they, like other prophet / idealist generations before them, appeal to principles, human sacrifice and in their last stage of life become praised for their words of wisdom.

Are today’s Boomers reincarnations of previous “boomers” like those in the Transcendental Generation born between 1792 – 1821 during the High, but who in midlife experienced the Civil War -- Benjamin Bonneville (1796 – 1878), Jedediah Smith (1798 – 1831), Jim Bridger (1804 - 1881), Kit Carson (1809 – 1868), John Fremont (1813 - 1890) and Ben Holladay (1819 - 1887)? Or do they more closely resemble members of the “boomeresque” Missionary Generation -- Butch Cassidy (1867 - 1909) and the Sundance Kid (1867 - 1909)?

What about today? To get a snapshot of all of us traveling through an unraveling into a crisis, we can start with current generation categories and break each down – using the Boomers as parents and extending to their parents and then the other way to their children and, in some case, grand children. Next, throw in a little census data, some marketing segmentation with psychographics and you’ll understand what Peter Drucker meant about the future when he said “Demographics is Determinism.”

Although you have your own life cycle and plans, the economy has its life cycle -- and it will affect your life in major ways. Breaking the future down into 5-year cycles is a much more manageable process for most clients, who don’t tend to look past tomorrow. Based upon scenario projections for the next five-year period between 2009 and 2014, make your money and run. That is, acquire wealth and protect it for at least a decade, while you take advantage of buying opportunities in a prolonged recession lasting for the last two of our 5-year time frames.

Even today, communities can be closed to outsiders as we discovered. Some welcome us others turn us away depending upon what we seek in trade and what they have experienced before us. Especially, when speculators drive up real estate prices so high that Gen X and Gen Y members won’t be able to buy a home in the community in which they live. If we were to buy a second home in a resort community we’d be asking some important questions about fit. If we decide to live among them, will we enjoy our experience or will we live to regret it?

Thomas Friedman wrote about the transformations that flattened the world from 1989 to the present. On a level playing field, what used to guarantee a rising standard of living for the United States is no longer exclusively in its control. For boomer families who don’t understand the rules of the new game or fail to apply the fundamentals of the revolutionary wealth system, the current unraveling turning point will certainly play out as a personal crisis over the next three decades.

In Crisis you find both threats and opportunities! But the full impact of revolutionary change -- on individuals and on whole countries and continents -- has yet to be felt. The past half-century has merely been prologue. While the transformation of wealth triggered worldwide disruptions between the agrarian and industrial civilizations, the Tofflers are confident that the knowledge-economy will wrestle control from the industrial economy. The ensuing Crisis will be revolutionary for many. All of us -- individuals, companies, organizations and governments alike, will surf the biggest, wildest and fastest wave into the future that any generation has ever experienced.

Do we know which indicators signal it is time to change our plans? You need to track developments in eight sub-categories around the outer ring of “The Future by Life Design” map – many of which you’ll find listed on the left-hand column under the title, “How to stimulate your own powers of foresight.” Civilizations, societies and cultures provide the context – or the background – against which economic transactions and social relationships dynamically mix. If the dynamic background shifts significantly – say jobs are outsourced, or companies move out of a region, or after two or more decades of raising kids parents live in empty nests, then they will change priorities and will change purchasing habits.

Follow your dreams. While there are hundreds of trends to track, you don’t have to track all of them. You just need to account for those that might impact your plans and decisions and then monitor them know when to activate B, C or D contingency plans. You monitor the implications of both macro and micro trends – the easiest example is how an economic recession negatively impacts your employer’s business performance. And, because of advanced technologies, your job is eliminated and outsourced. Or -- due to the indirect connection to global warming, State Farm in Florida will be raising insurance rates 70% to 95%, depending upon type of housing unit. Insurers are increasing rates or pulling out of markets a 1000 miles away, because they have to “adjust to a new world in which the past behavior of hurricanes is no longer a reliable guide to the future.”

For a growing majority of Baby Boomers looking at the decades in front of them, wrestling with elder care issues today and empty-nests today or tomorrow, there’s a growing sense that now is the right time to figure out how we can do what we love, choose where we want to live, and leave a legacy by truly making a difference. High on our list are communities that offer abundant open space, a village-like atmosphere to maximize quality of life and pleasant human interaction, and shared recreational, educational and cultural facilities. While not everyone can afford the higher end prices we encountered, housing prices will not stay this way forever. After this boom ends, deflation is almost certain to ensue for at least a decade and possibly into the early 2020's. Harry Dent says owners who decide to sell their homes at their maximum value, sometime before late 2008, will be able to buy excellent property at a lower price and lower interest once the deflation era begins.

Over the next five years, we all have an opportunity to realize a significant portion of our dreams. What’s right for you? What do you want to do? Do you want to pursue a hobby or craft? What about a bed and breakfast business you'd like to start? Or do you have a passion for a charitable organization you'd like to support? How about travel to the four corners of the world or studying subjects you never took in college -- or both? Where have you always wanted to live? On an island? In the mountains? In a pied-à-terre downtown, near restaurants, museums and shops? The world is a place full of interesting options for those who plan to fully explore their potential. The adventure starts from within.

A generation is a generation is a generation -- unless, it is the Boomer Generation. Boomers all enter a crossroads in their lives from their own, unique life experience. Even though they may be at the same life stage, when it comes to the next chapter of their adventure they’ll seek a different set of options depending upon their current situations. While the answers are as unique as they are, everyone wants to future-proof what they love, strike it rich if they haven’t already and mine the Mother Lode for the next few decades.

Why settle for anything else? The “Passion and Place” scenarios boil down to doing what you love or hate in the same or different community. They seem simple on the surface, but can be gut wrenching below the surface -- if conditions change. Finding a new, or remaining in, the right quality-of-life community that fits your cherished lifestyle preferences and provides degrees of real estate appreciation for the risk you can afford is easier today. With the convergence of technology and migration patterns, now more than ever somebody with an expertise can work in a resort community, even if the local customer base is microscopic.

Two of the four scenarios for Baby Boomers in their 50s, have location in common, but they differ on the dimension of doing what they love. Residents most likely to be doing what they love, and who plan to stay put for the foreseeable future can be found in the more affluent neighborhoods with the wealthiest families that still provide a high degree of quality of life – but, in some areas, the neighborhoods approach maturity and begin to decline.

There’s a dark side to “Staying Put” too long, especially, if your community matures and begins to decline. Or, your employer relocates to another town or city. If your region hasn’t diversified in the industries it supports, and if a sector like manufacturing finds it too difficult to compete and leaves for less expensive communities then your specialty may no longer be marketable in your hometown. Welcome to the Trapped and Permanently Temporary communities.

While the motivation may be similar to “Trapped and Permanently Temporary” – a layoff or some other event -- Baby Boomers in their 50s, or anyone else for that matter, leave the region for a less expensive and a more self-sufficient lifestyle. If you plan to move, expect a backlash or at least be aware of that outsiders-versus-community-insiders tension. Old timers quickly realize with property values approaching the stratosphere, their children who grew up in their communities will never be able to own a home, should they want to stay. They may take it out on you, so look before you leap.

Of the four futures, this story is similar to the “Staying Put” scenario because both allow Boomers to do what they love, but, it also shares the love of a new quality-of-life community with the Rustic Lone Eagles”. With the ability to operate anywhere there is a" wired" infrastructure, Boomers can move to smaller towns and rural regions, as part of the “penturbia migration.”

Examples abound across the western region of the United States for each of the four Baby Boomer futures: Staying Put, Doing What You Love neighborhoods like Del Mar or Coronado in California. Struggling Lone Eagle towns like Sedona or Bisbee in Arizona or Angel Fire and Taos in New Mexico. Trapped and Permanently Temporary parts of Reno, Nevada or Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Or, some of the better know ski resorts fitting the “Wired(less) and Doing What You Love,” like Breckenridge and Steamboat Springs in Colorado.

Each Baby Boomer future translates into four real estate sub-stories. If you’re looking for a vacation or second home in a resort community, you can compare tradeoffs. Depending upon your preferences and pocketbook, you many choose among neighborhoods in premier, maturing, suburban or exurban resorts.

With the right knowledge products producing multiple streams of residual income, Struggling Lone Eagles overcome their challenge of having to make it in local rural markets. As with the four wireless resort communities Boomers can live four varieties of vacation lifestyles in communities ranging from satellite city neighborhoods to remote off-the-grid rustic retreats.

Of the four major future-proofing Baby Boom scenarios, the “Trapped and Permanently Temporary” story lines take many by surprise. After all, they aren’t something you plan for in a typical 5-year financial or career plan. Unfortunately, these may be the future for too many of the generation’s older brothers and sisters who are forced into retirement too soon.

For years in this scenario Boomers living in these neighborhoods enjoyed the affluently elite American dream. It’s as if they’ve cornered a wealth-generating system. They find a safe haven for high margin income, pay for a high cost of living, accumulate peak real estate appreciation, and live in a secluded, secure and mature community. As communities and neighborhoods in them move slowly though their lifecycles, even the American Dream suburbs mature, become over developed or are over run with smog and congestion. What’s next when you’ve been used to living, loving, working and playing in communities that everyone else can only dream about?

What started out as just four qualitatively different stories about the future evolved into four sets of four community profiles – so, now we have 16 options for evaluating where you want to end up on the grid --between doing what you love or hate and remaining or moving -- is to look for the best fit. When you do, you can take advantage of real estate markets as they move through up, down and up cycles. Based on Dent’s predictions that Gen Y will drive rental markets and Boomers will drive vacation and retirement markets, even in a down turn, we evaluate six types of real estate opportunities like those -- when to buy, how long to hold, and when to sell.

You can target second home destinations and transplant your business. In the knowledge economy, the reverse is true. You don’t have to find your mother lode in a fixed location. It travels with you, first by establishing an alliance network, then traveling to multiple offices, and finally to a new base of operations in a premier resort or retirement community. The location of the mine – the source of your very own Comstock or Mother Lode, is found at the intersection of your passions and your dream location. Through the science of “Knowledge Banking,” you can locate your “Knowledge ATMs” anywhere you want.

For the first time in history, Boomers living wherever they dream can turn their passion and experiences into growing income streams. A knowledge company, a “KnowCo,” produces knowledge products – through the process of “Knowledge Mining and Refining of Knowledge Nuggets.” “Infopreneurials” living where they want can create an online business --“Knowledge Banking” accessed anywhere, anytime through “Knowledge ATMs” by consumers, prosumers and knowledge depositors. Once you create knowledge products from what you love to do and have experienced, the next set of stories helps you to focus on the right set clients, customers or employers who experience the problems you can solve.

The 19 trends identified by the human resource executives that addressed how future organizations would deal with talent sorted into a four- box matrix. Each box told a qualitatively different story about threats and opportunities confronting both executives and the talent they lead and develop.

Agents, Athletes, Associates and Academics straddle the four corner positions in the matrix defined by the intersection of speed and mastery with independence and affiliation. They manage the progression between the introduction of a disruptive innovation and what an organization must do to sustain that innovation over time. First-time learning carried forward produces emerging knowledge. What stands the test of time becomes embedded, core proprietary knowledge required to grow and mature.

Agents who are drawn to the challenge of ushering in a disruptively new innovation find funding or employment in locations near higher quality of life communities and premier destination resorts. We call them the “Breakpoint Inventors.” They typically seek out venture-backed funding. They develop and champion radically new science, innovation, technologies or business models. Other Agents may be “Commercial Innovators” who fill their agent niche at the next stage, closer to the “Athlete” border. They incubate commercial applications by specializing in licensing intellectual property, organizing joint research and development projects or developing their capacity for rapid prototyping. “R&D Laboratories” specialize in product leadership while “Thought Leaders” lean to the more academic pursuits that a think-tank offers.

Many Trapped and Permanently Temporaries long for face-to-face project-based work as a way of affiliating with other people on a more regular basis and as a way to demonstrate their value in a new organization. They miss the teamwork. They seek out ”Athletic” organizations with “Resilient Project Teams,” “Core Business Groups,” “Operationally Excellents,” or “Marketing Athletes” to counterbalance the isolation and extreme independence they are forced to endure now that they are on their own – no matter if they are “Interim Middle Managers”, “Cutters”, “Urban Trapped” or just now “Starting Over.”

Associate organizations require four kinds of talented people – “Loyal Survivalists,” “Agile Tiger Teams,” Internal Change Agents” and “Analytical Specialists” -- who thrive in high affiliation and slower paced cultures. They manage people, technologies, processes, and organizational structures to sustain the innovation they’ve already mastered.

Academics come in four flavors -- talent brands of experts who love their profession and their local location who find occupational homes in university research centers, professional practices, academic institutions and in standards-setting associations. Their identity is tied to their profession. Academics by the very nature of their work make the best candidates for developing a Mobile KnowCo that allows them to live and work anywhere in the world. But, many stay in one place – in or around university towns or urban and suburban centers where they find clients for their services.

You’ll want to find the best fit. Especially if you're experiencing mid-life issues and have begun by choice or chance to activate your five-year plan -- and you realize that you need to work for an employer, or go into business for yourself and you must deliver a product, service, or experience to a more sophisticated customer or client. You’ll want to choose which of the four types of organizations with 16 mix-and-match combinations will be growing over the next five years -- based upon the analysis of current trends and future forces shaping the human capital landscape – that will bring out the best imaginable in you for making a difference.

As any organization grows through a bell-shaped curve -- from start-up, to growth, to maturity and to re-invention or decline – two “tribes” usually manage the political agenda to the exclusion of others. They are the talent clusters whose members represent the 20% who produce 80% of the results. But, the mix of the two tribes changes at each growth transition. In any growth period there is a certain amount of resistance to new ways from the status-quo advocates.

The talent model reveals several ways that Baby Boomer leaders, job-seekers, entrepreneurs or consultants can first diagnose issues that hinder growth and then provide solutions that stimulate success at each organizational lifespan. The path of least resistance for changing talent cultures is from disruptive innovation to emerging knowledge (from the Agent to the Athlete) quadrant; from emerging knowledge to sustained innovation (Athlete to Associate); from sustained innovation to embodied knowledge (Associate to Academic) and finally from embodied knowledge to disruptive innovation (Associate and back to Agent).

If you consider the lifespan of an organization that has any sort of history – say over two generations or 40 years -- you can see which tribes come in and out of favor. You’ll witness it as it evolves and leaps forward in predictable stages from infancy start-up through growth to maturity and decline and from simple to complex over time. The start-up stage sets up the first crisis – The Leadership Crisis. You won’t survive if you don’t change the talent balance. The second, the Autonomy Crisis signals when the organization must shift talent combinations again or it won’t survive the turning point from hyper growth to stable growth. It must negotiate the final two crises, the Control Crisis which resolves the Autonomy Crisis, but eventually triggers the near death Red Tape Crisis that precedes Decline.

The start-up buzz building stage, populated by the two types of agents – Breakpoint Inventors and Commercial Innovators -- is the realm of pure science, buggy technology and prototypes. They’re the ones who thrive on technology-driven speed and independence. Their market niche emerges too slowly for them. In the early stage it is built up around one or more visionaries who see the potential for the new technology and fund the first proofs-of-concept. They evangelize to their trusted circle of friends and opinion makers and entice them to view what they’ve discovered.

Early application breakthroughs delivered by the joint collaboration between the two start-up Agent talent tribes -- “Breakpoint Inventors” and “Commercial Innovators” -- generate the dramatic competitive advantage that visionaries seek. Mass-market conservatives only buy into a new technology after the pragmatists, who in turn only buy new technology when it can give them significant breakthroughs in workflows, have vetted it. Not every start-up makes it to the next stage. The start-up bonks. It can’t get out of the “garage”; it hits the closed garage door. Even those that manage to find their market and hit their cash flow milestones can still bonk when the fiercely independent “chief” fails to relinquish control and sets up the “Leadership Crisis.”

One of the dirty little secrets is that once the enterprise becomes an enterprise – the Agent founder with the vision and unlimited faith needs to step aside. After “swimming upstream” all that time against the naysayers – receiving 99 “no’s” for every 1 “yes” – the founder frequently needs to get out of the way for the enterprise to bridge the chasm from the start-up to emerging growth stage. Just the right blend of the two talent “tribes” -- Athletes and Agents --has to be optimized if the enterprise is to successfully meet the challenges of survival, stabilization and rapid growth.

Marketing structure, repeatable processes and robust high volume ramp-ups dominate the rapid growth stage. A new set of tribal talent combinations capable of learning from their mistakes and improving their go-to-market processes grabs the baton from the Agents for the next leg of the race. Emerging knowledge that Athletes learn by developing "the formula" reduces the amount of the random experimenting required in each real world learning cycle.

Athletic organizations in early to growth stages can’t afford to staff up with more bodies. They recruit experts to eliminate the extra financial burden of benefits, but Athletes guard their organization’s core competencies while quickly managing increasing degrees of complexity. “Core Business Function” Athletes develop the tools and manage the process of multiple new product introductions. They have to optimize the availability of internal and external team members – rolling people in and off of projects -- as the critical path for each product dictates.

Loose organic states evolve into tighter functional organizations. Functional structures evolve into looser divisional structures. Divisions tighten into matrix organizations that loosen into network organizations. The bridge to sustained growth takes the organization to a stage that top managers find extremely difficult. To succeed they have to switch from directing to delegating and waiting. It’s only natural that those Athletic tribal team members who ushered in the tightening functional structures, as the solution to organic chaos, would resist this “bridge.”

A loyal, affiliated talent culture is needed for an organizational brand to mature and survive. Through their behaviors Associates maintain that reputation. They develop a trust mark that keeps bringing long-term customers back again and again. “Agile Tiger Teams”, “Loyal Survivalists” and” Analytical Specialists” gain in political stature. The optimal mix favors a growing Associate and Athlete talent blend, while the Agent tribal members feel devalued by the shift in emphasis.

The resulting divisional structure eventually outlasts its usefulness when it triggers the “Control Crisis” that Academics help bridge by tightening and centralizing operations in a complicated matrix structure featuring data-driven methods and systems. As more functional departments proliferate the Agents disappear, not fitting into cultures built to reward affiliation and mastery. And, the days of the maverick, do-what-ever-it-takes team loyalty -- highly rewarded for fire-fighting heroics become numbered. At this stage of development most of the focus by the organization is on inside operations and not enough on customers – their care and feeding. It’s as if the customers – frequently in large numbers – are taken for granted. And that sets up yet another opportunity to bonk.

The prescription for decline, usually purchased during advanced stages of the “Mature Matrix” disease, is to bring in a new management discipline and the talent that can re-capture breakthrough product innovations while outsourcing non-core competencies. If the organization continues to extend what they’ve always done, they fall victim to what Joel Barker calls paradigm blindness. An over-extended strength becomes a fatal flaw. The organization can’t see what is necessary to pull out of its decline. And the longer it takes for leaders of the organization to recognize that they are on the path to disaster, the more disruptive the solution becomes.

Mature organizations have vested interests in the way things were. While not overtly describing themselves as status quo advocates, many long-time Associates and Academics resist disruptive changes required to “jump paths” out of a declining trajectory. It’s a classic pattern. What brought you to the dance, practiced too much precludes you from learning the new steps that the audience now craves. To break out of Red Tape Crisis requires the acquisition of or the return of new dance partners -- the last two “red” Agent innovator tribes -- “Thought Leaders” and the Product Leader “R&D Laboratories” who produce new niche breakthrough products. They’re the masters of collaboration tools and they participate in all sorts of discovery and innovation through their worldwide web-like networks.

It’s one thing to force the “jump to a winning reinvention path” through a major restructuring of people, processes, technologies and organization rearrangement. It’s quite another to develop the competency in-house to do it over and over again as needed. It requires the right mix of internal change agents and knowledge managers to reinvent the enterprise and breathe new life into old procedures and processes relevant as the newer proprietary best practices.

This is all about finding the best fit for you in the same or different geographical location. You can target one of four types of organizations. Or one or two phases in an organization’s growth that fit you best in a way that increases your career equity and marketability. If you’re a new executive in your first one hundred days, you’ll want to match your leadership style to the needs of the organization. You have four options depending upon if you conclude you have the time to revitalize or renew or need to take more direct action to restructure or realign. For larger organizations you’ll want to develop a reinvention capacity before you need it so you can cause your major competitor to react to you rather than the other way around.

Armed with the knowledge that whatever has worked in the previous phase of an organization’s growth is exactly 180 degrees opposite of what is required for success in the next phase, you can sell your value proposition confidently. Using the bell-shaped curve again for a moment there is a shorthand way of sizing up the needs of a potential employer, client or customer from a distance. You can take an educated guess by evaluating whether the organization is about to enter a cyclical expansion or contraction period. You’ll then be able to determine how well they are meeting the challenge of moving back and forth between loosening and tightening of controls and between divergent and convergent management practices.

The rules of the game have dramatically changed. Finding your sweet spot -- the best fit for you based upon the divergent or convergent requirements for a particular phase of organizational growth, the economic or business cycle it operates in and your talents and abilities -- is one thing. A whole other trend towards relentless commoditization now practiced globally is quite another. The significant challenge facing the unique blend of talent tribes tasked with reinventing their corporation is – reinventing it as what? Where can they find a new niche capable of generating the kinds of margins and growth opportunities required to sustain and grow the mature business? The answer lies in the interplay between the commoditization and customization – as has been happening since prosuming hunters and gatherers traded for what they needed and then cultivated crops and mined metals out of the round earth.

Buffalo Bill Cody sensed his life straddled a “customized – commoditized” economic era. His Wild West show toured for three decades throughout the United States and Europe once he realized how to stage tall tales and the mythology of the western experience. One of the ironies was his troupe of entertainers relied on the railroads and other turn of the century industrial inventions to travel efficiently from one venue to the next. The industrial revolution put the West out of business. And, yet he sensed that his audiences hungered for the experience that could be no more.

Just like physical commodities and manufactured goods, skills and work experiences become obsolete and commoditized too – especially for the “Urban Trapped,” “The Cutters,” those “Starting Over,” and “Interim Middle Managers.” Pine and Gilmore’s model explains the cause for the “Trapped and Permanently Temporary” scenario. In severe cases entire communities, just like the 550 mining ghost towns in the Sierras find themselves unable to compete on the world stage. They’re trapped in a negative economic spiral that feeds upon itself -- the interplay of undifferentiated, market determined and irrelevant skills in the region’s workforce. In metropolitan areas you find the “Urban Trapped” living in the undesirable and rundown neighborhoods. Their rural counterparts, “Rustic Eagles,” live off the grid on country back roads.

In the future even experiences will become a commodity when customized uniquely to the customer who will pay a premium to the most differentiated competitor who can transform -- provide the highest form of relevance -- that customer through a metamorphosis. It may be from one life stage to another. It may be event-triggered or an adult development maturation process. A coach or mentor assists the person who changes or matures, like taking an amateur tennis player to the next level -- on the professional tour. The “customers” develop into a more fully functioning and lasting version of themselves.

The ability to charge premium prices and thus enjoy higher profits is a result of providing a product or service that is highly differentiated and is the most relevant to the needs of their customer. But, you have to begin with where you are in the customization – commoditization food chain. The product reinvention process begins with a product that is developed, linked, modularized and finally renewed. It passes through mass production, continuous improvement and into mass customization to give customers the perception that it has been personalized for them.

If you don’t want your business to become commoditized by your competitor, you must close the customer satisfaction gaps with the most relevant offerings as perceived by your best customers. Mass-customization closes the customer satisfaction gap. Customer satisfaction becomes the industry standard. If you don’t provide it, you don’t make it as a viable enterprise. But meeting that standard only allows you to charge what the market will bear – a commodity price. Highly personalized offerings move the customer from sacrifice, to surprise to suspense – and with each move you can charge more.

Removing customer sacrifice opens the door to customization and higher margins in much the same way that mass customization is achieved through the interplay between dynamic and stable product and process states. If you become the Reinvention Chef – or Chief -- challenged with mobilizing a reinvention team in a service organization facing a major decline -- how do you reinvent service into experience? You develop, link, modularize and then renew as you did with mass-customization, but this time customers enjoy and pay more for exploring, experimenting, gratifying and discovering experiences.

How does the reinvention model apply to the customization of services into staged experiences? Through the interplay of dynamic or stable performances and scripts, it closely resembles the way a company can mass customize a product, but in this model performance replaces product and scripts replace process change. Customers – audiences – are treated to “four kinds of staged experiences”-- Winging It, Canned Scripts, Situational Variations and Practiced Bits.

Every economic era has four things in common: A point of origination or creating value from something new; an execution component or generating value by getting something done; an improvement process or increasing value by correcting something; and application or producing value from how something is used. The more entrenched or widespread the former economic era is or became, the more difficult it is for the old dogs to learn new tricks. Each new wave ushers in a whole new paradigm – or changed background on a grand scale.

Today the third progression of economic value – as an era – is in full swing. Unlike during the agrarian and the product economies, in the service economy intangible services are customized and delivered. One of the biggest differences with the service economy is that there are no products to be inventoried. Instead, the method of supply for service providers is to deliver on demand to clients who crave benefits instead of just features. Services are intangibles. The offering is no longer a material or a product. The experience economy, to which we are transitioning, is all about staging memorable personal experiences revealed to customers over the duration of an event.

In the transformation economy more effective individuals are guided through transformations. While personal experiences are revealed over the time of an event, the “elicitor of transformations” guides the aspirant through the transformation sustained over time. Event-driven experiences last momentarily, but a transformation is the real deal. A relapse in a transformational relationship triggers stronger resolve and the application of persevering connects deeper with each individual.

Unless you earn your living as a coach, the promise of the transformation economy still lies over the horizon for you. It’s far better to focus your reinvention efforts on commoditizing your competition’s services. How? You can use one or more of the four categories of themes -- entertainment, education, escapism or esthetic realms to develop an engaging, memorable experience.

When we delve deeper into the experience economy we find that by appealing to our senses, goods become props. How do reinvention teams collaborate to engineer engaging experiences? The goal is to stage wholly new experiences to commoditize the competition. So you need to brainstorm and one way to get you out of the box is to consider all the different ways you could charge admission. What could you do differently? Can you eradicate a practice you already have -- giving things away for free as an incentive to sell more products and services – as Netscape did in its infancy to commoditize Microsoft’s operating system? Think through how new experience elements can be added to your product or service to increase demand. Or which goods or services will command higher prices?

Businesses will succeed, prosper and ride the last great economic boom by targeting wealthy Baby Boomers and by offering greater customization. The best way to build a high margin and profitable business is to reduce customer sacrifice by personalizing your offerings to wealthy customers. The numbers of peak earning boomers who occupy leadership positions in corporations are collectively at a time in their career when they invest in timeshares, vacation and second homes.

Has the mass migration of empty nesters begun? What’s in store for the Boomer extended family in this post 9/11 World? If you are shopping around for the ideal resort location where you can invest, change careers, retire, start or continue a new business, now is time for you to research the economy of your chosen geographical area, placing top priority of your time and effort on your first choice.

You might want to take advantage of the rising demand for rental property in urban and suburban areas after late 2008 and for retirement home purchases following the migration pattern towards exurbs and small towns, many of which will continue to hold most of their value through the decade-long downturn. In preparation for your next chapter, is it time to cash out or hold on, move and rent out your paid-off home? With so many things to consider, how do you go about making the right decisions that you won’t regret? Start with broad regions – tropical, in the Western or Southern U.S. – then, mark out your prime geographical target area and zoom in on detailed maps of various sections within it.

During the research process expect to experience the extremes – from knowing very little about the three regions at the top of your list to becoming swamped with too much information. It’s easy to miss the forest for the trees Identify factors about a place to live that are important to you. List and discuss with your mate, family and friends the things you liked or disliked about the various places you have thus far lived. Visit the Sperling Best Places Website and consider the Ten Best Places lists. They’ll help you as you make two lists: one of your likes and the other of the dislikes.

The next step is to consider the factors that are the most important to you, and then decide for each factor what kind of information do you need to collect at a distance and later in person. By gathering in order of priority, you can make a quality decision even if you run out of time. Practice the 80/20 Rule. Focus first on the 20% that you rate the highest. Then, before you visit on a vacation, for instance, dissect the community. Your goal is to know all there is to know about the top three regions and communities of people and organizations found within them.

You’ve completed a listing of all your likes and dislikes to identify trade-offs for finding your potential ideal locations. You’ve gathered intelligence about those potentials and narrowed your list of considerations. You will investigate your top three geographical areas to aid in your decision-making by conducting a field survey. Eventually you will approach the decision-maker -- potential employer, customer, client or non-profit NGO -- with a proposal based upon what you discovered.

Breaking into new communities is a process similar to infiltrating tribal clans. Outsiders will be kept at a distance until someone decides to sponsor them and to initiate a chain of introductions. And, usually those introductions follow a path of common interests. What we’re really talking about is an invisible web of people in a tightly knit community. At some point, if you build your network seeking referrals and introductions from one person to the next, you’ll find enough key connections. You'll find that over time some of the initial people you meet may not provide you with what you think you are looking for, but as you progress they may prove to be invaluable later on.

It is time to develop your approach once you've discovered which interests you have in common with each of your individual targets, and what problems each one faces that your skills, talents and experience can help solve. In short, you’re zeroing in on an opportunity that represents the best fit for you. We’re at the point in this whole process of finding gainful employment or at least one or more income streams where you find yourself face-to-face with the one problem that remain: how do you get in to see each target.

You've uncovered something you can do for the target, a problem you can help solve, some need the target knows about and doesn't consider a problem yet -- which you nevertheless can meet. It might be: cost reduction, sales increase, growth, new applications of their services or products, bringing in an entirely new approach, increased prestige, efficiency, etc. or some opportunity you can create that your target has never thought of. Of course that something starts with your strongest and most enjoyable skills.

As you present your proposal in the UnInterview you won’t know everything, because you are on the outside looking in. You will encounter new information about the situation and challenges that you hadn’t anticipated. But all is not lost. Probe. Ask intelligent questions. Uncover what they’ve already tried, but discarded as unworkable solutions. Your target decision-maker at this stage will want to see your mind in operation.

While not common, the following may occur on the spot so be prepared. Your target will want you even more and will be thinking in terms of the top salary he can afford. But, the top might not be adequate for you so your target might start informal negotiations to lower your expectations. What should you do?

The most enjoyable job for you is one you create in the quality-of-life community you’ve chosen and now call home. You must do all the heavy lifting required to translate your passions and most enjoyable skills into a compelling ideal description, to identify emerging trends, needs and economic opportunities, and then to craft a proposal. What if there isn’t any job available in the resort community you’ve targeted – or for that matter in the second or third region you’re interested in? You may have to create it. How do you do that? The entire process can be summed up with the answers to six simple questions.

Whether you want or need to create a position or just want to gain the upper hand on your competition, pay attention to the career needs of the people in your survey. Find ways to circle back with progress reports and information – and better yet – inside business intelligence they might find valuable.

In the UnInterview, you have to translate your skills and accomplishments into their dissatisfactions, their priorities, their values, and their jargon as their implicit needs surface within their concerns or problems. You can figure out what their challenges may be ahead of time by following six rules of thumb. One of the easiest ways of learning the jargon is to complete a survey of knowledge-gathering interviews, because the last rule of thumb is all about translation – especially if you are changing careers or industry niches.

Your survey should yield the types of challenges you most enjoy and you’d love to sink your teeth into in the resort location of your dreams. Convincing your target decision-maker that you’re the one to deliver the results may require a little SPIN. By shifting the conversation away from the costs and your fees or the salary you command, you are better able to negotiate a better deal as a function of the value you bring.

We’ve covered a lot of territory since we started this journey -- and this journal recording it -- barely seven months after our whole world was turned upside down on September 11, 2001. It’s only fitting that we end it with more direct links to context, concepts, resources, tips and tools to help you find the right combination as you take your life out for an authentic SPIN.

Find new life strategies for a flattening world you won’t find anywhere else – answers to the kinds of questions likely to wake you up at night. How do you: Become a master of your own fate? Locate your possibilities for growth and change? Discover what is missing and forge new directions for an engaging new life? Find new passion and purpose? Convert a job change or downsizing into previously unheard of opportunities? Redirect your life to leave the kind of inspiring legacy you want? Reinvent your life and renew your relationships with those most important to you?

Since beginning-less time people traveled to the ends of the earth seeking the foresight to know where life will take them. Today with time running out, 78 million Baby Boomers ask themselves in the wee hours of the night: Who have I become? What will my life add up to? Do I want to be remembered as the person I have been up to now? Is it too late to put more meaning in my life? Where will I be and what will I be doing in the next five years? Will economic cycles support or defeat my plans? Will I be forced to live a lifestyle I didn’t choose or work in a job I hate? Will my energy, vitality and health slowly drain away? What about you? As you map out the rest of your journey, which direction will your life take? What kind of legacy do you want to leave?

Got Knowledge?
Copyright ©2002 - 2006 Aarnaes Howard Associates. All rights reserved worldwide.

9:20 AM

Friday, June 20, 2003

The Outpost Summary

Chapter Three

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

Chapter Three: The Outpost Foresight Journals

Much of what Americans value most today -- yankee ingenuity and good old-fashioned know-how – we owe to our unique pioneering spirit. The Lewis and Clark Expedition is one of America’s great sagas. It touches the American spirit. It appeals to the adventurer and explorer in all of us… Just as its mission was to acquire knowledge two hundred years ago, we too can fill in the blanks of the uncharted territories. We meet Lone Eagle in his outpost to get a glimpse of some of the blanks over the next two decades from within Cabo San Lucas’ tourist cell network.

In a tropical paradise less than 1000 miles from the U.S. Mexican border, we enjoy the relaxed atmosphere, great food and drink – where the land ends and the fun begins – where you can golf, fish, snorkel, swim or dive, kayak, surf or sail. From the days of the original beachfront resort – the Hotel Hacienda Beach Resort, in a sleepy little fishing village --number of hotels rooms available has exploded – almost doubled in the last 5 years. But, does it fit the guidelines for investing in the so-called portfolio of tangible and intangible assets? The word on the street estimates is will take 15 years before Cabo hits world-class resort development status.

Over the next two decades from 2003 to 2020, just in terms of an economic climate, we anticipate a correction, boom, bubble, burst, bust, correction, and that long bear / depression. Which translates into more urgency to make the most of the next 5 or 6 years and then figure out how to hang on for a decade. The next 5 or 6-year boom can open up your opportunities – before it’s too late -- not just for lucrative jobs or entrepreneurial ventures, but for a real change in lifestyle. How will technology allow us to live in a place we might not have considered? Will a 30-year timeshare turn out to be a good investment?

Many of California's suburbs have shown classical late maturity indicators – a different set of growth signals that come with a higher cost of living, more real estate development, growing traffic congestion and a growing number of less healthful smog days. On top of that, as the weeks and months go by more and more employers downsize their operations. As part of cost cutting programs in reaction to the state’s business climate and their industry consolidation forces, they’re moving to other more economical geographic locations.

You can see the pattern begin to materialize. Mobility is a key factor that defines a neighborhood, since life stage changes often cause people to move. Life stage changes like: leaving the nest, graduating from college, getting married, having children, being promoted, emptying the nest, and retiring. People will also move when their neighborhood no longer provides a good match in terms of affordability and needs. People with similar cultural backgrounds, needs, and perspectives naturally gravitate toward each other. People choose to live in neighborhoods that offer affordable advantages and compatible lifestyles. With a little research and intelligence gathering you can use this information to your advantage.

Learning expeditions examine whether or not a new town or area fits -- the birds of a feather feature. You can determine if a town is attracting people like you. You can tell if the people who live there are ones you'd enjoy as neighbors. As they gather information to make their own decisions, they share what they learn with each other. As current and future expedition members investigate features about an area, using the knowledge base saves them time. Because of its community of tribes feature – the network of people – it also speeds up the process of making contacts and getting introductions. From a real estate investment standpoint, you can find out if it is attracting the trend setting lifestyles of the more affluent. If it is then, the area fits your investment criteria, as well.

Learning expeditions have been identifying new communities for “Doing What They Love” by taking advantage of “Birds of a Feather” (BOF), the working title for the knowledge base construction. Whether it’s somewhere in the Caribbean, -- the Turks and Caicos Islands – or almost anywhere else in the world – you can take advantage of the 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon with the tropical resort team, or with “It’s Wired, Do What You Love Anywhere” team or the innovation-growth team, or the Idaho team, or the New Eco-topia team, or the 34 to 45 Age Group team, or the Elite Suburb team, or the Country Squires team, or any other of the dozen expeditions underway. You have the highest probability beginning in Dana Point, California, or Austin, Texas, or Parker, Colorado.

Connecting the dots. This new destination got its name from the local Indians who called it “Healing Water “ for the thermal springs that became a popular spa in the 1800s. The water reaches 153 degrees Fahrenheit and heats some of the town’s buildings. “It’s located near the Continental Divide in the San Juan National Forest enjoys abundant recreational activity supported by the melting snow flowing into summer lakes. For ski enthusiasts, a 23-mile trek brings you to Wolf Creek Ski Area on US 160 at the top of apply named Wolf Creek Pass. Year round recreational opportunities satisfy lovers of fishing, hiking, bicycling, rafting, hot air ballooning, skiing, ice-skating and snowmobiling. “ But, does it include any of the 6 trend-setting neighborhood profiles needed to invest in its real estate?

If we compare the progression of real estate appreciation from innovation, early growth, mid-growth, to late-growth and maturity to findings by the team profiling the state of Colorado do “sweet-spot patterns” emerge? You bet, Agri-Business and Big Sky Families frequent innovation towns with either a trend-setting New Eco-topia or God’s Country neighborhood. Moving up the curve to the resort ski towns both trend-setting neighborhoods show up together. Durango and Bounder include trend-setter neighborhoods, but diverge the most from the others. Boulder begins to look very similar to Reno, Nevada – while in different states, they both represent resort towns in late growth or early maturity.

From the beginning of the 1800s when Lewis and Clark explored and charted the West, a broad migration pattern headed as far as it could go -- to California.
But, between 1995 and 2000, according to the 2000 U.S. Census Data, for the first time ever more people moved out of California than migrated into California. Why? Jobs. Cost-of-living. Slower-paced lifestyle. And a variety of other wants and needs unique to each person. Many asked themselves basic questions. What preferences do we have given the current stage in our own individual lifespan? What do we enjoy about our neighborhood and area given its lifecycle? And, if we choose to work for an organization or to consult to an organization – what problems at its current lifespan do we enjoy solving? By overlapping those three lifecycles, anyone can zero in on opportunities to do what they love in a business, social, and quality of life climate that they’ll thrive in.

Of course, shifting economic cycles, bursting bubbles and political events help or hinder our ability to capitalize on those opportunities. Which is the point for spending time in The Outpost – to gather more information, get logistics worked out, and to fine-tune both personal and collective strategies. Think of it as a field location – a place where expeditions can explore various scenarios, monitor leading indicators, and figure out how to stretch limited personal resources to gain what they want. If you were on holiday, then your strategy is the whole itinerary of your vacation. The initiative may be the route you take highlighted on the map. And the tactics depend on what you hear and experience along the way about the road ahead? After a few days into your vacation journey, you can tell more intuitively how well you are doing. You can guess which shortcuts to take and which side trips to avoid. You sense how far you can go without refueling, stopping for food and water breaks. You feel more comfortable loading and unloading your vehicle at each hotel.

The lucrative fur industry and trade with the Orient drove the Europeans and North Americans to converge along the West Coast. Even before Lewis and Clark began their journey to map the Northwest Passage in 1804, Europeans had settled and colonized California. In 1768 Spain, spurred on by King Charles sense that other countries wanted California for their own, colonize the region. He sent Gaspar de Portola on expedition from Mexico to San Diego. Alexander Mackenzie became the first European north of Mexico to reach the Pacific Ocean on an overland route, beating Meriwether Lewis and William Clark who arrived at the coast in 1805. To the Europeans – the Portuguese, English and Spanish we add the two North Americans – Canada and the America.

Throughout history we can identify five economic offerings – commodities, goods, and services – the last two -- experiences, and transformations gaining strength today and tomorrow. Hudson’s Bay Company, one of the oldest, still active companies in the world, was almost 200 years old when Canada was created in 1867, roughly 20 years after the California Gold Rush. What began as a simple fur-trading enterprise evolved into a trading and exploration company that reached to the west coast of Canada and the United States, south to Oregon, north to the Arctic and east to Ungava Bay, with agents in Chile, Hawaii, California, and Siberia; a land development company with vast holdings in the prairie provinces; a merchandising, natural resources and real estate development company and, today, Canada's oldest corporation and one of its largest retailers. For the next half century or so Company officers explored and traded vigorously throughout the west and north and pushed south in a wide area from the sources of the Missouri River to San Francisco Bay.

When news leaked out, one of history’s largest and turbulent migrations ignited – the California gold rush. In 1849 the gold fever spread to ships crews, farmers, and everyone else who dreamed of abandoning their mundane life in pursuit of their own El Dorado. Commodities are materials extracted from the natural world: animal, mineral, vegetable. People raise them on the ground, dig for them under the ground, or grow them in the ground. After slaughtering, mining, or harvesting the commodity, companies generally process or refine it to yield certain characteristics and then store it in bulk before transporting to market. By definition, commodities are fungible – they are what they are. The risk is that when commodity extraction declines in economic value, profits move elsewhere to distribution and production.

Immigrants and miners flocked to the rugged Sierras seduced by tales of fortunes made during the California gold rush. The discovery of the Comstock Lode increased traffic and depleted the Tahoe Basin's natural resources to a dangerously low level. If it weren’t for the decline in the Comstock Lode, Tahoe’s forests -- the Eldorado, Tahoe and Toiyabe National Forests -- would have been destroyed during the 30 years following the Confederate War as its lumber industry strained to fuel and support the network of mines constructed under Virginia City. The region has had a hundred year love - hate relationship between the environment and development, so much so, that in 1968 the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency was established, ensuring environmentally responsible development for years to come.

Not only is the “greater Lake Tahoe region” a picturesque setting, but there's quite a bit of western history - both California and Nevada history. The whole period of the western frontier lasted just nine decades - from the beginning of the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1803 to Wounded Knee in 1890. Larry McMurty says what drove early pioneers and settlers, especially emigrants, was the intensity and depth of their hunger for land: American land, surveyed legal acreage that would relieve them of nomadism (and of the disenfranchisement of peasant Europe) and let everybody know that they were not shiftless people. Of course, to the Native Americans already living in the area, nomadism with its free access to the natural resources and hunting territories was at the core of their identity and belief system.

The second group of frontier heroes were pony express riders, stagecoach drivers, wagon train leaders, army scouts - the trailblazers who pointed the way to those who provided the communications and transportation for the wave after wave of new emigrants pouring into the western states. The St. Louis “Basecamp” was the last trace of civilization and the networking hub to exchange intelligence about what lay before the trappers, explorers, and settlers as they established “Outposts” between the “Gateway” and the California coast - throughout the established “Tribal Territories.” And it became the area for retirement for the first wave of frontiersmen as the second generation escaped to new adventures.

It isn't difficult to see the attraction that the two “Y” parks hold over today's visitors, yesterday's explorers, and the original people who hunted and lived within their natural beauty. The government set aside the two territories as national parks around the same time. Mark Twain's overland stage passed near Yellowstone in route from Missouri to Carson City, where he prospected for silver near Yosemite. The early river-based adventures in 1804 and 1811 - led by Lewis & Clark, William Price Hunt, Andrew Henry and Manuel Lisa -- paved the way. And, their online journals tell their stories as each unfolded in a much different time.

While credit for discovering the South Pass belonged to Wilson Hunt, instead of John Fremont, its discovery accelerated the mass overland migration West. Mark Twain described his overland experience in a great swinging and swaying stage with three fellow passengers. It all changed in one short decade, from a butt-busting battle of endurance for the buffest - a challenge for the most fit passenger to endure over a rock-riddled 1900-mile terrain -- to a smooth, rolling luxury hotel a decade later - “when perhaps not more than ten men in America, all told, expected to live to see a railroad follow that route to the Pacific.” And, the arrival of the Iron Horse accelerated the beginning of the end of the Native Americans' centuries-old way of life.

Looking at the 1513 - 1776 European colonization, the Eastern Native American territory in the pre-revolutionary colonization period, and the North American Native American Tribe maps while reading the expedition journals it's hard not to conclude that we Americans just pushed the native people off their land. It went from bad to worse as the first generation explorers discovered the routes connecting the rivers to trapping areas and eventually opening and documenting overland trails fueled by trade and hunting game - living within nature, ever vigilant to the weather, the wild animals, and the original people. Without reading the journals and only looking at the old maps, it's as if the territories were empty. And, now on today's maps the tribal names remain as landmarks - or even as towns - but the humans were forced onto worthless reservations.

A decade after and Hunt's adventures and Henry's expeditions, roughly from 1820 to 1830,and on behalf of a competing fur company, Jedediah Smith was the first to open the coastal trade route from California to Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River. Instead of maintaining a permanent trading post, like in John Astor's business model, Smith convinced William Ashley to bring a caravan of supplies from St. Louis and to meet the trappers at Henry's Fork on the Green River. Not only was Smith the first American to traverse California's rugged Sierra Nevada Mountains, he was the first to cross the enormous Great Basin Desert and return east, overland from California.

It wasn't Jedediah Smith or John C. Fremont, the better-known trailblazers, who discovered the critically important route through the Sierra Nevada Mountains in 1832. Hundreds of thousands of pioneers (two years after the 1830 Pre-Emption Act gave settlers the right to purchase 160 acres of public land) would follow Joe Walker’s footsteps to the golden state. And, nearly a half-century later, the transcontinental railroad seeking the best route west-would lay their tracks directly on top of Joe Walker's trail to California, and set in motion a chain of events that culminated with a dancing horse, the demise of Sitting Bull and the end of the Wild West in 1890.

In 1843, the Great Migration, a party of one thousand pioneers heads west from Independence, Missouri, on the Oregon Trail, guided by Dr. Marcus Whitman, who is returning to his mission on the Columbia River. Forming a train of more than one hundred wagons, and trailing a herd of 5,000 cattle, the pioneers travel to the South Pass. Once through the pass, they cross the Green River Valley to newly established Fort Bridger, then turn north to Fort Hall on the Snake River, which leads them to Whitman's Mission. Mark Twain, on the other hand, turns south and follows Walkers trail into Carson City. He then roams the region where Lake Tahoe defines the California and Nevada border, just before Nevada border shears off 45 degrees southeast.

Get rich schemes and tall tales – both consumed and sustained Mark Twain. Shuttling as much as he did between Carson City and Virginia City, it was San Francisco that captured his imagination – but it was Mono Lake that almost killed him – and his curiosity. In Aurora, after another adventure turned to dust, Samuel Clemens started writing articles for the Territorial Enterprise Newspaper. At a career crossroads, he came to grips with his ”Trapped and Permanently Temporary” situation after listed mining as one more on a long list of failed occupations. Like many other times, he left Aurora penniless and had to walk all the way from Aurora to Virginia City.

Boom. Bust. Boom. From lost cement mines and gold fever to Mammoth Mountains and snowboard fever. From speculators and promoters to the real McCoy who turned a lifelong passion and a Model T into an enduring recreational paradise for all the right reasons over seven decades. While the area trembles from time to time and threatens to blow up in some distant future, dynamic forces representing special interests debate the near future. More speculation? Or more compassionate conservationism? What would Dave do?

Cycles. They’re all around us. Underlying trends, largely unnoticed, carry us along in one direction for long periods of time until something new comes along – like an earthquake or volcanic eruption. Hitching our hopes and dreams to the prevailing current of time and events flowing around us is easier on us than the opposite – charging upstream against the current like salmon. The trick is to monitor the flow from time to time. Take a seismic reading. Playing out “long fuse, big bang” decisions in scenario stories – rehearsing the future, as it were – is one way to anticipate threats and opportunities before they impact our goals. Monitoring indicators along the way is the best way to tell us when events and cycle may have shifted – and when is the best time to activate “Plan B.”

Fierce self-reliance. Enduring hardships. Making do. Living with the pain and suffering. With adventure and the danger lurking around every corner. Speeding down the highway, passing town after town it's sometimes difficult to fully imagine what it must have been like for the Native American tribes and early settlers in the region. On a trip like this one, it's impossible to stop and enjoy everything, and next to impossible to fully appreciate this area's rich history - from Bishop to Independence, to Lone Pine and Big Pine, Red Mountain, Death Valley, Mojave Desert, Needles and finally to Laughlin.

At the Grand Canyon, it's not hard to view five of the different life zones found in the Northern Hemisphere, right here in one place. While you can search the four corners of the world, you won't find any other place that vividly lays out such a vast expanse of time before your very eyes. It is truly breath taking when you reflect on just the layers of rocks demarking the Earth's history dating as far back as 2 billion years ago and to a more recent era nearly 250 million years ago. The Kolb brothers explored the Canyon like so many other Native Americans, Spanish conquistadors and mountain men before them.

Novelist Tony Hillerman loves to roam this area-- known to the early emigrants from the east as the Great American Desert -- for a source of inspiration. He travels “the vast empty space, Indian reservations, mountain ranges, nameless canyons, old volcanoes and rough country where it is easy to get lost.” It’s the same general area where Cochise and his Apaches came through. Where Geronimo roamed. Where the Civil War played out after the Mexican American War and where Kit Carson called home - to the dismay of the Navajos.

Arizona was not as quickly populated as the other Western territories because of fear of the Apache and Navajo. The settlers stayed back, waiting, hesitating, wondering whether the empty, farmable, homesteadable land was finally safe. Most emigrants wanted to shed their nomadic way of life in return for surveyed legal acreage of American land. First the Native Americans objected but, then so did the Mexicans. Their disagreement ended in a war. Oh, and the Union fought with the Confederates.Kit Carson practiced the scorched earth policy of General Sherman against the Navajo Nation. And, I guess you could say things weren’t peachy for many decades, if ever.

Victory in the Mexican-American War brought a surge in patriotism with the acquisition new southwestern lands. Manifest Destiny became THE divinely-inspired mission to expand itself and its system of government from ocean to ocean and to the western frontier. One aspect of this doctrine was its principle to bring the ideals of democratic self-government to any peoples capable of it. In practice, however, this often meant excluding Native Americans. But, for eager settlers it translated into a broad desire to acquire new lands, since land could represent potential income, wealth, self-sufficiency, and freedom.

The experience of exploring Mesa Verde was like being transported into a different world, a different time. The centuries of inhabiting this area begins to slowly sink in – a time span lasting three or four times longer than the United States has been in existence. However, in the 12th or 13th century, over a period of one or two generations, the Anasazi vanished from this mesa. Because they left no written records, their story is incomplete. Their pueblos of Arizona and western New Mexico and those of the upper Rio Grande drainage greeted the Spanish expeditions into the Southwest in the 16th century. What began as a small trickle grew into a flood as several million Europeans and their descendents forced their ways upon the indigenous people of the New World over the centuries to come.

So much of the West owes its expansion to the railroad, and Durango, Colorado is no exception. Spanish conquistadores explored Colorado for riches, but instead they found a spectacular reddish-brown landscape they described as colorado - or color red. Most of the Colorado Territory came with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 at the cost of 4 cents per acre - the land east of the Rockies. Zebulon Pike in 1806, explored the territory while Lewis and Clark made their way to the Pacific Coast at the Columbia River, explored Colorado to find the headwaters of the Red and Arkansas Rivers for two years. Pike's secret mission was to figure out how well the Spanish could defend their claims if push came to shove in the Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas general areas. But, it wasn't until August 5, 1881 when the railroad finally came to Durango's mining and smeltering center in the heydays of the gold and silver booms that the town took off.

Frederick Pitkin became a leading advocate among owners of wealthy mining interests who wanted to add the San Juan area -- one fourth of the Ute reservation -- to Colorado Territory.The Colorado War successfully removed the pesky Native American tribes -- the Cheyenne and the Arapahoe -- roaming to the east of the Rocky Mountains in the newly formed Colorado Territory. Next came the task of removing the Utes led by Chief Ouray in a series of treaties hammered out by Felix Brunot. After seven days of discussions, the chiefs agreed to accept the government's offer of twenty-five thousand dollars a year for the four million acres. As a bonus, Ouray was to receive a salary of one thousand dollars a year for ten years, or so long as he shall remain head chief of the Utes and at peace with the United States.

A relative roamed the Parker and Castle Rock region on his way back to Missouri after years working his claim on Lynx Creek near present day Prescott, Arizona. In a 1871 report on mining, he’s described as “… a fine specimen of a Western Pioneer, one of the men who have always kept in advance of railroads, and who doesn’t feel well unless separated from civilization by hundreds of miles of Indian country.” In letters he wrote back home to Missouri he describes the struggle between guarding against Indian attacks, robbers and the long distance he has to travel for supplies.

Making our way through the Colorado Ski Resort Country we stop in Pitkin County – at Aspen. As a governor Frederick Pitkin – or more specifically – his media campaign manager, William B. Vickers capitalized on Nathan Meeker’s printed stories about the Indian Agent’s failure to convert Ute Savages into model white citizens. In no time at all, Vickers embellished these and other stories into “The Utes Must Go” campaign based on paranoia. When push came to shove and Meeker was killed, the Utes like the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa and Jicarilla were removed from the state – only their names remained on maps and as town names

Leaving Aspen, Colorado we make our way past Glenwood Springs and on to I-70 again heading towards an overnight stay in Ridgefield, Utah. A local told us to stop at Green River – site of mountain men rendezvous -- our last chance to find gas for 100 miles. There we relived exploits of Father Escalente, Jedediah Smith, Jim Bridgers, Peter Skene Ogden, and John Wesley Powell. The scenery sparked a longing for sabbaticals and adventure tourism.

The Utah Territory, created with the Treaty of Guadalupe, became home of the Washoe Bunch – a non-Mormon faction in what later became the Nevada Territory and the State of Nevada. Brigham Young, the first governor was forced to resign by the U.S. Federal Government. With the arrival of the Transcontinental Railroad more new settlers arrived. .The trains also attracted the local Robin Hood outlaw, Butch Cassidy. To protect payrolls and government payments to the local tribes on reservations, the Buffalo Soldiers provided protection.

For 100 years, between 1776 and 1876, the southern Utah region surrounding Zion National Park slowly evolved through the fourth of four stages of human history. The early Euro-American explorers paved the way for the Mormon settlements. But life wasn’t easy because of “catastrophic flooding by the river (especially in the Great Flood of 1861-1862), little arable land, and poor soils made agriculture in the upper Virgin River a risky venture. But the settlers didn’t give up. For almost 40 years Mormons farmed the canyon until it was protected in 1909 and converted into a national park.

After covering some 3000 odd miles across five Western states in temperatures ranging from freezing to115 degrees of sweltering heat and at elevations ranging from sea level to 12,183 feet – we pause in the New York, New York Hotel and Casino to share the lessons we learned before saying good bye going our separate ways.

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Copyright ©2002 - 2005 Aarnaes Howard Associates. All rights reserved worldwide.

1:15 PM

Thursday, June 19, 2003

Knowledge Creation, Innovation and Organizational Learning

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

“If we apply knowledge to tasks we already know how to do, we call it productivity. If we apply knowledge to tasks that are new and different, we call it innovation.”

Peter Drucker

J2020F: You’ve said the future belongs to companies that can create competitive breakpoints by drawing on the talent and commitment of their people.

TB: That’s right. It’s much better to be in an organization forcing other competitors to react to a new breakpoint, than to being blindsided in a sudden radical change.

J2020F: We’ve covered some internal assignments (innovation and efficiency) and in our last conversation some externally focused assignments that would prepare talent in a company. So are these development roles only for top executives?

TB: Not at all. Top, middle manager, and front line leaders all have a vital role to play in mobilizing for radical change. Remember, we’re describing an organization competence -- one capable of triggering breakpoints at a later date.

J2020F: Walk us through the opportunities.

TB: Sustained excellence requires nothing less than the capability to create breakpoints by developing and positioning managers. Those on the front line can improve and innovate. Those in the middle can develop new business from strategic options, and those at the top can change the corporate direction when they sense a major turning point in the forces of change.

J2020F: And, we already talked about how intrapreneurs and improvement team leaders drive the engine of continuous change that allows a company to take continuous and spontaneous advantage of strong industry trends.

TB: Right. They are on the frontline of the intelligence, improvement, innovation, and networking capabilities. Since few companies have all of these properly in place, those that do create breakpoints by continuously outperforming the competition.

J2020F: You describe a vital role for middle managers – developing new business from strategic options.

TB: They manage the company's portfolio of strategic options that is so crucial to the creation of breakpoints when industry trends are uncertain. Middle managers have to bridge the gap between the vision of top management and the uncertain reality of the marketplace.

J2020F: So, working together with frontline managers, they decide which options to pursue?

TB: Yes, and with top management, they decide which options to convert into a full-scale corporate commitment -- and when. With timely implementation, strategic options lead to outpacing of the competition.

J2020F: What about top management’s role?

TB: Top management has to provide the strategic goal and shape the corporate culture within which the frontline and middle managers can pursue continuous and sporadic change.

J2020F: To deal with major trend reversals in the business environment that make existing bottom-up change counterproductive, top management has to realign the organization from time to time, right?

TB: That’s right. A new business direction may be needed to trigger a competitive breakpoint, together with a reallocation of resources, redirection of effort, and possibly a redistribution of the value created.

J2020F: So, in addition to learning by experience, managers can learn to anticipate breakpoints.

TB: Yes, by identifying the forces of change, assessing the resistance, and building scenarios based on a limited number of ways in which the balance between these forces might change.

J2020F: And this organizational learning – the best of hindsight and foresight—better equips them?

TB: Yes. Remember, what we’re doing is closing the competence gap over time.

J2020F: How do you assess the competence gap?

TB: An audit of existing resources and competencies, relative to the key anticipated success factors is needed to estimate the size of the competence gap.

J2020F: So, you size up both the stock of resources and competencies and the organizational capability available to develop them?

TB: We’re analyzing the tangible and intangible resources together with the functional competencies.

J2020F: Which tangible resources?

TB: Human skills, finance, supplies, technology, and information.

J2020F: Which talent quadrants does an organization need to have in place? Most if not all of the Agents and Athletes left long ago.

TB: You need to have 4 unique blends in place to master the internal innovation and cost reduction initiatives, while at the same time to cultivate the external partnerships necessary to fill competence gaps.

J2020F: These must be the remaining four – ASSOCIATE-Agents, ATHLETE-Academics, AGENT-Associates, and the ACADEMIC-Athletes.

TB: That’s correct. The ASSOCIATE-Agents – with less organizational affiliation needs and faster mastery skills than the other associate talent clusters – serve as change agents. They reduce resistance to skunk works, fundamental innovation, re-invention initiatives and continuous innovation implementations.

J2020F: How about the ATHLETE-Academics?

TB: With a unique blend of less affiliation and less extreme speed, they champion both the internal efficiency and cost reduction initiatives, as well as, manage some of the external relationships. They’re the experts at operational excellence – streamlining processes, eliminating inefficiencies, incrementally improving the application of new emerging knowledge, and outsourcing the non-essentials.

J2020F: How do the AGENT-Associates differ from their opposite talent sub-quadrant, the ASSOCIATE-Agents?

TB: You’ve asked a great question. As, you’ll recall, moving along the knowledge or innovation dimensions produces the most amount of resistance.

J2020F: From Agent to Associate and back – along the disruptive to sustained innovation dimension, and from Athlete to Academic – along the emerging to embodied knowledge dimensions, right?

TB: Right. And, yet in order to create a breakpoint you have to manage the innovation and knowledge dimensions significantly better than anybody else in your market or industry. Very few organizations, for instance, have figured out how to simultaneously master incremental improvement and fundamental innovation.

J2020F: But, those who do make everyone else march to their drumbeat? That’s what the developmental assignments and organizational learning is all about – figuring out ways to minimize resistance along these dimensions with these unique talent, right?

TB: If it were easy, everybody would be doing it. But, back to your question. The change agents (ASSOCIATE-Agents) lower the resistance to the product breakthroughs from fundamental and incremental product innovations that AGENT-Associates produce. AGENT-Associates borrow ideas and approaches from the extreme agent’s (AGENT-Agents) inventions, but focus on applied R&D in a more commercial laboratory setting.

J2020F: So, they’re advocating a new s-curve just as the current high growth s-curve begins to capture more of the mass market – say at the 50% turning point.

TB: Exactly. It’s all about timing. Remember what Dent says. The time to complete the innovation phase is equal to the growth phase, which is equal to the maturity phase. So, you’d better be in the second innovation phase while in the first growth phase, or you’ll miss the reinvention path after maturity and decline, instead.

J2020F: But, Joel Barker says when you do that, you’re competing with a highly successful product that grows more successful day-by-day. You can’t get the mind share you need, and more importantly the resources for an untested new idea.

TB: That’s what makes these talent combinations so unique and so valuable. They can trigger breakpoints that leapfrog the competition.

J2020F: Now, what about the fourth blend, the ACADEMIC-Athletes?

TB: They’re faster paced and more affiliated to an organization than the extreme academics. Not only do they focus on the emerging knowledge as content, but they develop the process for capturing, transferring, and supporting the innovation process, as we’ll describe a little later.

J2020F: What about the intangible resources and the functional competencies?

TB: We’d audit customer loyalty, corporate image, employee motivation, supplier and stakeholder relationships. For functional competencies: R&D, technology know-how, purchasing, production, marketing distribution, service.

J2020F: You mentioned organizational capabilities. What are they?

TB: They are:

Environmental scanning (which affects access to information);

Management of stakeholder relationships (which affects access to resources); and

Management of internal learning (which determines ability to develop competencies).

J2020F: So, over time they can create competitive breakpoints by drawing on a limited number of organizational capabilities, each appropriate for capitalizing on a different configuration of change forces and resistance?

TB: Yes. The key to creating breakpoints is an organization that can capitalize on the change patterns available for creating a discontinuity. Intel comes to mind in the tech arena.

J2020F: Let’s say a management team’s developed that capability in their organization. How do they execute a breakpoint strategy?

TB: The main steps involved in mobilizing for radical change are: Selecting an implementation style from the following: committee, cultural, collaborative, or commander.

J2020F: And once you do, what happens next?

TB: Motivating key stakeholders for the change, triggering the organizational leap, effectively dealing with status quo advocates, and aligning with multiple change forces.

J2020F: We already covered the rapid, decisive style of the commander needed to implement restructuring.

TB: By contrast, the all-encompassing, delegating, cultural style fits revitalization. Any attempt to use the commander style on a revitalization path, or the cultural style for restructuring will doom the intervention before it starts.

J2020F: And we also said, the committee and collaborative styles are more versatile and more frequently found in a variety of settings.

TB: Ideally, the committee style is more suited to a path of resistance, whereas the collaborative style is more suited to renewal.

J2020F: So, let’s say we’ve got our plans in place to proactively build the capability we need to trigger a breakpoint. How do we go about it?

TB: The first test of implementation style is building the organizational energy needed to implement radical change, especially later on in the change process when the initial motivation may have dissipated.

J2020F: We need some way to get people to recognize the need for change?

TB: Communication and education can be used to make an analytical appeal for recognition of the strength of the change forces and the threat of a breakpoint.

J2020F: I imagine this is especially important if your starting point is in organizations with closed attitudes to change.

TB: True. The intervention paths for dealing with strong resistance call for variations in this motivating theme; more communication when the forces of change are strong and more education about the need to change when the forces of change are weak.

J2020F: So, begin with the analytical appeal. How do you develop the emotional motivation to change?

TB: Facilitation, participation, and delegation to encourage a response to the tension between where the company is and where it should be to deal with the discontinuity. Emotional ownership of the response generates commitment to its implementation.

J2020F: Doesn’t this come most naturally in organizations with low resistance, where the collaborative and cultural styles can be used?

TB: Yes, but the wave of motivation and excitement created by successful change during the initial phases of the change process can be dashed on the rocks of submerged resistance. So, just because nobody rocked the boat in the beginning, doesn’t mean you’ll have easy sailing.

J2020F: So, by organizational learning together with development assignments requiring the practice of the appropriate leadership behavior, an organization can build its capability?

TB: So far, we’ve been addressing reactive responses. But proactive change capabilities, or organizational behavior patterns, can give the company the opportunity of creating a competitive breakpoint.

J2020F: You’re talking about an organized method for anticipating the forces of change.

TB: That’s right. We’re describing the need for a knowledge creation function – an information and intelligence capability to gather and evaluate the information for sensing the forces of change.

J2020F: Spend a little more time on this point. Aren’t there different approaches emerging today that align with resistance, revitalization, renewal, and restructuring?

TB: Yes. Remember, Academics are the keepers of embodied knowledge. They’re the status quo advocates resisting fundamental and unproven innovation. They favor committees since they have a vested interested in the old game.

J2020F: So they favor tangible, explicit information and data. They emphasize existing knowledge.

TB: Typically, in old game strategies, the knowledge has been embedded in well-established policies and procedures. Unfortunately, over time, all knowledge becomes a commodity. What had been accessed by only a few in benchmarked databases becomes broadly accessible and readily applied.

J2020F: How so?

TB: Obviously the rates of obsolescence differ by industries and professions, but Academics acquire that knowledge directly from suppliers, ex-employees, publications, professional organizations, meetings and trade associations.

J2020F: And easily over the Internet?

TB: Even more so. Remember the saying that information wants to be free?

J2020F: What about in terms of revitalization?

TB: Here, the emphasis is more on the process of knowledge creation, rather than on existing knowledge content.

J2020F: What’s the difference?

TB: Well, for old game organizations the focus is on minimizing risk by finding out what they already have and then holding on tight before it’s too late. In the second instance, the focus is on efficiently making what has been learned available to others.

J2020F: The first would reside in some sort of an information system – a data warehouse or a rules-based system?

TB: Yes. The assumption is that data leads to information that leads to knowledge. In the second case, the intrapreneurs and the improvement teams generate new competencies.

J2020F: They generate new knowledge from either a fundamental innovation or an efficiency process that could be valuable to others. Or, is it the knowledge that comes out of the integration of a merger?

TB: On the renewal track with step-wise changes limited to certain parts of the organization, the knowledge focus shifts to finding new uses for existing knowledge.

J2020F: So, these initiatives are launched to search for new knowledge being developed throughout the organization, as well as the existing knowledge held by individuals and groups.

TB: Right. The main goal is to transfer and share experiences and emerging best practices throughout the organization to achieve some cost advantages capturing the byproducts of innovation or cost cutting task forces – or special partnerships and alliances.

J2020F: How so?

TB: By avoiding the costs associated with the redundancies and inefficiencies of knowledge creation.

J2020F: What about for breakpoint situations. What’s the knowledge approach for triggering breakpoints?

TB: Really a combination of the earlier approaches – both new knowledge content and new knowledge processes – but tied to fundamental innovation.

J2020F: An information and intelligence capability to gather and evaluate the information for sensing the forces of change?

TB: Rather than extracting or data mining, the focus is on how technology can facilitate the cross-fertilization of ideas required for spontaneous and structured innovation. It performs an enabling function.

J2020F: Knowledge creation through collaboration and communication?

TB: Yes. Support for both a disruptively innovative capability and the process of fundamental innovation.

J2020F: Please elaborate.

TB: The capability develops from the alignment of innovation skills, the knowledge technology support, the appropriate management behaviors, and innovation metrics.

J2020F: What about the process?

TB: Innovation as a process is all about building a portfolio of ideas. All the half-baked idea fragments circulating in a virtual water-cooler waiting to be combined with someone else’s. Those that pass a screening, advance to experiment status to be evaluated.

J2020F: And then what?

TB: The small percentages that pass become new disruptive ventures.

J2020F: So, you’re describing a knowledge bank. Thousands of ideas feed into hundreds of experiments, into tens of ventures and a couple of disruptively innovative businesses?

TB: The on-going fundamental innovation process is enabled by monitoring and scanning systems to trigger new thinking.

J2020F: What do you mean?

TB: Monitoring only covers known driving forces influencing the organization's future. But, the knowledge system needs to address four issues:

Establishing formal and informal systems;

Targeting relevant information;

Processing and evaluating the data; and

Basing actions and decisions upon the conclusions.

J2020F: Pretty straight forward.

TB: Straightforward in concept, perhaps, but difficult to manage.

J2020F: Why?

TB: While it can be operated by one person the scope is usually too much for even a single component within a unit. Decentralized operations make control difficult and produce gaps or overlaps in info.

J2020F: How do organizations resolve the issue?

TB: Well, remember computers can’t innovate. Only people can. So we rely on the human element. Gatekeepers, who monitor change outside of formal system frameworks, supply missing information resources to colleagues from a variety of sources.

J2020F: Such as?

TB: External media: public press, competitors' publications, investment analysts reports, and research companies reports. Internal reports: technology and market analyses. Feedback: vendors, customers, trade shows. Networking: Exchanging ideas within and outside the organization

J2020F: What about scanning systems?

TB: Scanning is an early warning system which detects cues and signals of new trends of probable importance to the organization. Using both systems alternative future scenarios can be developed.

J2020F: The knowledge system has to be capable of supporting the scenario building process?

TB: Scenarios identify what environmental factors to monitor over time. When the environment shifts, you can recognize in what direction it is going in time to course correct profitably.

J2020F: So, like the two learning expeditions we’ve profiled, breakpoint-triggering organizations use knowledge creation systems to enable scenario scanning?

TB: Yes. They follow the same process.

J2020F: You mean:

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?

TB: The one and the same. Steps 7 and 8 continue in the Outpost.

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Copyright ©2002 - 2006 Aarnaes Howard Associates. All rights reserved worldwide.

6:10 AM