The Future is Your “Now What?”

Elaine Newman

CEO & Founder, Global Learning

I believe Futurism is the “now what?” for Diversity and Inclusion. (D &I)  

After 20 plus years of working with organizations on planning and executing their diversity strategies, we are beginning to see that inclusion has become a primary pillar to many organization’s working cultures.

And I keep hearing a similar statement from those leaders who have fully embraced the concepts of D&I, but are looking to maximize the effectiveness of or expand upon their existing diversity strategies.

Leaders are asking “Now what? “

While I have always been someone to look ahead and plan for tomorrow, it wasn’t until I read Bill Jensen’s Future Strong that I discovered the link between future preparedness, leadership and diversity. His research on the Future of Work reveals five critical choices that make people Future Strong.

Let me connect these choices back to how it links to how leaders might think of Diversity Futurism…

Diversity is a laundry list of demographics that we consider in what makes us unique: race, family, location, faith, ability, gender, shared passion, etc. While making many choices in life, we must consider these demographics to ensure we are making the best possible decision. Large or small, we are faced with choices on a daily basis that will carry an effect on our future. Our decisions, even in the workplace, are generally made based on our own personalized diverse set of considerations.

For example: in order to live tomorrow, I must eat today. So yes, I must choose to eat. But now let’s add another layer: what do I choose to eat, and why do I choose it?

There are multiple factors that come into play in why I may choose one type of food over another:

• What food tastes the best to me?
• Which food will help me live longer?
• Which food is within my price range?
• Which food will also benefit my family?
• Which food might take too much time, and stop me from getting to work on time?

Give or a take a few, these are sample of typical considerations and represent a multitude of other choices each of us make every day at work . Toss in smart-technology and the internet, and we have created a hyper-connected society that is pushing people to their maximum capacity

I’ll ask you to put on your managerial hat for a second.

Imagine you have a workforce of 30 people, and you can almost guarantee that each of those 30 people have a large list of decisions they have to make a daily basis, with a diverse set of personalize considerations, all while being hyper-connected to their decisions, considerations, and endless information.

As a manager who has embraced diversity and inclusion, you know you must understand each of those 30 people’s individual value, choices, and considerations in order to ensure organizational effectiveness. Easy, right? Let me help you get started.

Here are some suggestions:

• Consider approaching inclusivity with a futurist lens. Identify the desired future for each of your individual team members. If they do not have this clear vision for themselves, encourage them to really think about it, and start to build a personalized plan. People feel included when they know that their own personal goals are being considered when decisions are being made.

• Identify how their current working situation will help them attain their desired future. When our daily work is aligned with our personal goals, the quality and care for the end result increases.

• Identify any changes that can be made to their work day that align organizational needs with an individual’s desired future. 
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Forget Lean and Agile – It’s Time to be Anticipatory

 

We are all good at reacting and responding, putting out fires, and crisis management. In addition, organizations large and small have learned how to be lean and agile, and how to best execute a strategy at a high level.

However, despite these skills, General Motors still declared bankruptcy, Blockbuster closed its last store, and Blackberry quickly moved from leading to bleeding. And let’s not forget Hewlett-Packard, Sony, Dell, and a host of other companies who failed to thrive despite its leaders and workers being constantly busy.

To thrive in this new age of hyper-change and growing uncertainty, it is now an imperative to learn a new competency—how to accurately anticipate the future. 

That may seem impossible, but it’s not. The future is there for you to see when you know where and how to look for it. And when you and your employees master this skill, you’ll be able to create what I call an “anticipatory organization.” 

Based on three decades of research and applying the principles I’ve developed to organizations worldwide, I have developed a way of separating what I call Hard Trends from Soft Trends. Over the years I’ve written about this extensively in books and articles.

A Hard Trend is a projection based on measurable, tangible, and fully predictable facts, events, or objects. It’s something that will happen: a future fact that cannot be changed. In contrast, a Soft Trend is a projection based on statistics that have the appearance of being tangible, fully predictable facts. It’s something that might happen: a future maybe. Soft Trends can be changed, which means they provide a powerful vehicle to influence the future and can be capitalized on.

This distinction completely changes how individuals and organizations view and plan for the future. Understanding the difference between Hard and Soft Trends allows us to know which parts of the future we can be right about. When you learn how to analyze trends in this way, you can accurately predict future disruptions, identify and solve problems before they happen, and practice what I call “everyday innovation.” This enables you to solve challenges and problems faster and see opportunities that were impossible just a few years before. In other words, you become anticipatory rather than reactionary.

Employees of an anticipatory organization understand that those who can see the future most accurately will have the biggest advantage. They know that you cannot change the past, but you can shape the future based on the actions you take in the present. As such, they actively embrace the fact that many future disruptions, problems, and game-changing opportunities are predictable and represent unprecedented ways to gain advantage. They know that it’s better to solve predictable problems before they happen, and that future problems often represent the biggest opportunities. Above all else, they are confident and empowered by having a shared view of the future based on Hard Trends and what I call the “science of certainty.”

What is the science of certainty? Once you can separate Hard Trends from Soft Trends—once you can differentiate between the things you know will happen from the things that might happen—you can accurately define the certainties going forward. For example, we know that the iPhone 7, 8, and 9 will all have faster processing chips than those before them. We know that after 3G and 4G will come 5G and 6G in a predictable way. And we know that we are putting more and more in the cloud—that we’re not going to discontinue using cloud computing.

Those are technical examples. Here are some non-technical ones: We know that Baby Boomers are not going to get younger. We know that governments are going to continue, all over the world, to issue future regulations. We know the cycles of nature, such as after winter comes summer.

In other words, there is so much we can see that it’s absolutely possible to create certainties using the Hard Trend/Soft Trend model I’ve developed. 

Why is this so important to business? Because strategy based on certainty (on Hard Trends) has low risk, while strategy based on uncertainty (on Soft Trends) has high risk. Also, when you have certainty, you have the confidence to say “yes,” to move forward, to hire, to start businesses. When you have uncertainty, it’s like a giant roadblock. You’re stuck and you don’t move forward. 

To succeed in business these days, simply being lean and agile is no longer enough. You and your team need to harness the ability to anticipate the future. In fact, I see this as being the most important missing competency that we’ve seen for decades. So learn how to anticipate today, before your competitors do.

DANIEL BURRUS is considered one of the world’s leading technology forecasters and innovation experts, and is the founder and CEO of , a research and consulting firm that monitors global advancements in technology driven trends to help clients understand how technological, social and business forces are converging to create enormous untapped opportunities. He is the author of six books including The New York Times best seller Flash Foresight.

 Posted by:Daniel Burrus