The Imperfect Plan: Uncertainty Shouldn’t Prevent Leaders From Future Casting

Summary: The future has always been unknown, and it’s never prevented you from planning where your business is headed. Why should today be any different? Embrace the fact that not everything is under your control, then use it as an opportunity to deliberately plan for the unexpected and the expected.

With the world in a continuous state of flux, the traditional approaches to long-term planning can feel like nothing more than exercises in futility. Not many business leaders are feeling on track with their five-year business plans. If they do, the plans certainly don’t resemble anything close to what they began as or how the leaders envisioned the future at that time. But that doesn’t mean you give up planning altogether. In fact, it makes future casting even more important. But what is future casting?

The future casting process isn’t about getting everything exactly right, especially not the first time around. It’s more about weighing the likelihood of potential outcomes and then planning your response should any of those outcomes transpire. You’re putting yourself in a much better position to remain flexible while still keeping an eye on where the business should be headed. So that business plan you began with? It’s okay to let it evolve or pivot as circumstances change.

One of the ways to think about the future of business, which is something I discuss in my book, “Inside the Competitor’s Mindset: How to Predict Their Next Move and Position Yourself for Success,” is to approach long-term (or short-term) planning from a different headspace. If you were to introduce a new product, for instance, how will the competition react? How will the government or your supply chain partners react? What moves will all the other players make if you were to introduce a new product, enter a new country, acquire a new company, shift into a new industry, or make any number of possible business changes?

Looking at any situation from a different perspective allows you to play out and simulate different sets of choices and interactions to determine which approach will shape a better future for your business. It’s a form of war gaming, but for the business setting, where you’re trying to derive more predictive insights to improve organizational agility. It’s an analytical technique that can help you gain competitive insights that will be of great benefit to shaping business strategy. Learn your competition’s moves so well that you can begin to predict what choices they might make.

The unsettling thing about future planning is that not everything is under your control. Let’s say there’s a recession by the end of 2023 that lasts through 2024. What will that mean in terms of employee retention? What does that mean in terms of your opportunities as a company? What opportunities can you provide to your employees? Consider the same questions should another event affect your industry. For instance, what if the government defaults on its debt? What about the continued evolution of artificial intelligence? What risks do certain scenarios pose for your company?

This type of scenario planning allows you to focus on and plan for things that might happen in the business environment external to your company. If a recession does come to pass, people will undoubtedly be laid off. Will your company be part of that? Or will your company use the situation to secure new talent? How do those choices depend on how competitors and others respond to the market conditions?

Preparing for the Potential Challenge of Change

Change is never easy. Even when planned, some level of resistance is inevitable. Your company is moving into unknown territory, so it’s essential to be mindful of how you prepare for the potential challenges ahead. While there are many approaches to the future casting process, a few strategies can help you set your company up for success throughout 2023 and beyond. The following are often the best places to start:

1. Change your mindset.

No matter how hard you try, the future will never be in your control. That much is hard to deny. But instead of taking the stance of “I’ll deal with it when it happens” or “I’ll just roll with the punches,” move into a more proactive mindset. Strategy under uncertainty is an achievable approach. So, set aside some time to deliberately engage with your team to think about and discuss the future. The onus isn’t just on you to plan for the future. You have a team for a reason. Use them to the best of their abilities, which leads us to the next strategy…

2. Build a support network.

Future casting is a group exercise — or at least it should be. One person forecasting the future won’t be as accurate as two, four, or more. Either bring together your leadership team or build a team of people from throughout your organization that can offer multiple perspectives, opinions, and ideas. More voices will inevitably allow you to see a variety of alternatives. Just make sure to provide everyone the opportunity to come up with their own projections. Otherwise, sessions can quickly lead to groupthink, which isn’t much better than future casting on your own. It also helps you avoid defaulting to what you’d normally do as a company, which isn’t the goal of future casting. You want to arrive at new tactics that ensure greater agility and resilience should things go sideways.

3. Schedule short future casting sessions.

Having conversations about scenario planning or war gaming predictions doesn’t require a three-day off-site excursion. Devote between 30 and 45 minutes every time your leadership team has conversations about the future of the industry (which you should have at regular intervals). Ask each member to arrive at the session with a scenario, whether it’s another pandemic, economic recession, continuing interest rate hikes, market disruptions, and so on. Whichever scenario you choose, approach the situation not only from your company’s perspective but also from that of a competitor, regulator, supply chain partner, or other entity. How would you approach that specific challenge from a different mindset? It allows for a bit more objectivity, and the regularity acts as a forcing mechanism to be deliberate with your planning. You’re leaving much less to chance.

The future has always been unknown, and it’s never prevented you from planning where your business is headed. Why should today be any different? It’s just riddled with a bit more uncertainty. Embrace the fact that not everything is under your control, then use it as an opportunity to deliberately plan for the unexpected and the expected. This will put your business in a much better position to react in a more proactive fashion. The true benefits of long-term planning in business only come about when you start planning from multiple viewpoints.

Written by Dr. John Horn.

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