Transcript Futuring and Visioning: Preparing for the Future

Stephen M. Millett, Ph.D.
Founder and Managing Member
Futuring Associates LLC
December 2007
Copyright 2007 Futuring Associates LLC (All rights reserved)
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If “the future” cannot be predicted, it can
be anticipated with varying degrees of
uncertainty
Futuring and visioning are different
perspectives, and they must be done
together
Trends should be identified, tracked, and
integrated into alternative futures with
potential disruptive events and flexible
responses
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All predictions and forecasts are conditional (if…),
and certainty is based upon known variables,
constant relationships among the variables, system
stability, timeframe, and lack of unexpected
events.
Nobody has data from the future – all forecasts are
conjectures, even hypotheses, subject to validation
or revision by further information…and
Anticipating the future is a continuous process:
there are no immutable forecasts or immutable
futures, just more and better information.
“Forecasts” should be broadly defined to include
qualitative descriptions, not just specific events
and numbers.
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The future will be a combination of continuity and
change – but the mix can vary greatly.
Thinking about the future leads to anticipating and
preparing for future conditions – there are benefits
beyond the accuracy of forecasts (team-building,
strategy-making, empowerment, and adaptability)
Futuring requires familiarity with many trends,
solid logic, modeling and simulations, planning,
preparation, and flexibility (a rationalist, if not
positivist, approach requiring both qualitative and
quantitative methods)
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Anticipating the future improves the odds
of making “good” futures happen – to be a
proactive winner rather than a victim of the
future
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The past: an historian, who already knows what
happened, can reconstruct (to varying degrees of
completeness depending upon surviving evidence)
how something occurred – the reconstructed linear
path looks almost deterministic (only signal, no
noise)
The present: we think we know what is going on,
but we never have complete information; we know
that the present was produced by the past and will
affect the future, but with many possibilities (signal
buried in lots of noise)
The future: a combination of long-term trends,
short-term actions, and unforeseen and disruptive
events (black and white swans)
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“Futuring is a systematic process of thinking about
the future in order to frame reasonable
expectations, to identify emerging opportunities
and threats to the company of organization, and to
anticipate actions that will promote desired
outcomes….One thinks through the problem from
the macroscopic, external environment to the
microscopic factors of a company or
organization…”
“Visioning is the opposite of futuring: it is a logical
process that progresses from the micro- to the
macro-levels.”
Source: Stephen M. Millett, “Futuring and visioning: complementary approaches
to strategic decision making,” Strategy & Leadership, Vol. 34, No. 3, 2006,
pp. 43-50 (quotes on pp. 43, 45).
Exterior-Interior approach of Futuring
FUTURING
Global and National Trends
Consumer/Market Trends
Specific Opportunities
Plans and Actions
Goals, Strategies, and Investments
Competencies and Technologies
Corporate Culture and Assets
VISIONING
Interior-Exterior Approach of Visioning
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External trends move faster than internal
conditions
The primary barriers to internal changes
(deviations or innovations) are corporate
culture and fixed assets (sunk capital).
There will always be a misalignment of
external environments and internal
conditions – the question is how long and
how wide the misalignment becomes.
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Use expert judgment to identify the most
important trends to monitor – but use
scanning as peripheral vision (75%/25%)
Also use expert judgment to try to identify
possible disruptive events
Perform consistent trend tracking and
analysis as a type of pattern recognition
Generate scenarios for alternative futures,
derive robust strategies, anticipate
contingencies, and simulate changes
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What do you do about multiple trends? Do they
positively or negatively impact each other? You
need to integrate trends into net assessments.
Scenarios provide a way to integrate trends into
alternative descriptions of the future
Scenarios also allow you to introduce disruptive
events to see how they might change the scenarios
You should generate “futuring” scenarios first, then
identify what is the most preferred scenario and
what needs to occur – this provides a framework
for “visioning” leading to plans and actions.
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Type I: the background (or pattern) is well
known – we are looking for and changes and
new elements
Type II: the background means little or
nothing – we are looking for a specific signal
Type III: we do not know the background or
the signal – we are gathering and plotting
data looking for a pattern
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The Recentness Effect: what appears important today is
assumed to be important tomorrow – being overly
influence by today’s news (linear projections)
Bias: being either too optimistic or too pessimistic or
assuming that what one wants is what will happen (the
sins of wishful thinking, self-interest, or advocacy)
Type 2 Errors, or Sins of Omission: not including
factors that emerge as very important in the future
Disruptive Events, or “Black Swan”: high consequence,
low probability events that are difficult if not impossible
to predict
Ignorance about trends and true conditions today – lack
of adequate and correct information
Miscalculation: identifying the right variables, but
incorrectly defining or misestimating values/ranges
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Energy: sources, prices, and efficiencies
(especially oil, diesel, coal, and alternative
sources for electricity)
Carbon dioxide management and global
climate change
Systems management innovations in
information and communication
technologies (ICT)
Expectations for real-time transactions and
transparency
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Consumer value and spending
Sustained economic growth
Increasing global trade and competition
Availability of human talent
New partnerships between private and
public sectors, especially for high budget
infrastructure
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Acts of terrorism with long-term
consequences
A stupendous accident with great collateral
damage (both physical and psychological)
Very sudden, very high spike in global oil
prices
Political and economic upheaval in China
Severe limitations on carbon emissions
A pandemic that takes people out of the
system
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Do occasional futuring studies to provide guidance
for long-term strategies, plans, and investments
[Principle A]
Develop a point of view about the future and share
it with your customers (thought leadership)
[Principles A and B]
Combine futuring with visioning (don’t do just one
or the other) – futuring and visioning workshops
should occur at least once a year and lead to
operational plans [Principles B and C]
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Set up a monitoring and scanning system
with continual distribution of information
[Principle C]
Revise forecasts and make changes as new
information and conditions warrant
[Principles A and C]
Develop robust strategies based on both
futuring and visioning and be prepared to
be adaptable [Principal C]
Stephen M. Millett, Ph.D.
Founder and Managing Member,
Futuring Associates LLC
3673 Tillbury Ave.
Columbus, Ohio 43220
USA
(614) 457-6632
[email protected]
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Founder and Managing Member, Futuring
Associates LLC, 2007Researcher, manager, and futurist at Battelle,
Columbus, Ohio, 1979-2006
Member at Large, State Board of Education, Ohio,
2003Founding member of the Association of
Professional Futurists and professional member of
the World Futures Society
Author or co-author of four books and 28 journal
articles; inventor listed on one patent
Officer, US Air Force, 1971-1979
Ph.D., history, The Ohio State University, 1972