Using FORESIGHT to grow your business. Balancing between the TELESCOPE and the MICROSCOPE !

What is “foresight” in business decision making? In simple words : trying to understand what the future will look like, and making a decision to be part of it! There is great power in seeing opportunities ahead and start building for them today.

And that is difficult. No one on this earth has a crystal ball. There is no time travel. And most of the so called visionaries and futurists are probably full of BS. But when done right, some current trends will “evolve” into something new tomorrow and will be sustainable. Getting a grip on that brings a wealth of information. It is worth the effort, however difficult it might be.

 

 

NECESSITY

Business is getting increasingly dominated by metrics, measurements,  data-driven decision making. The pressure is on, and you have to have an ability to “look around the corner” to stay ahead of competition.

 

MACRO versus MICRO

Foresight is obviously only one part of the equation. I’d like to compare foresight to the use of a telescope. It gives businesses a chance to take a peak into the future, to imagine and believe what their future business or categories “might” look like, and what role they can play to make that happen (as Gandhi said: “be the change you want to see in the world”). On the other hand, a business needs to look through the microscope, to see the finer details of the business today, deal with the growth, the issues, the opportunities.

BALANCE

If you can balance the telescope and the microscope you will be in the league of  winners…

Those who only look at the current state of events and forget the use of the telescope might not see the world around them change -that’s dangerous! Your business might do well today but with the lack of adaptation to changing circumstances, it might as well lose its value or worse, its reason for being.

Those who are only looking into the future will never strike relevance with consumers today.

Question is: are you investing in your telescope? Do you know what it brings to the business? If you are waiting for foresight to fall in your lap, think again. Better to think of ways of integrating foresight into business planning, marketing, strategy today -to get it ready tomorrow.

BELIEF

Make no mistake, using foresight in decision making is about making (best) bets, is about “believing” in what might happen and the role your business can play in those future events. Uncertainty will always be part of the game. To former Donald Rumsfeld’s famous words:  “As we know, there are known knowns; these are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”(it’s ok; you have to read it 3x to get the point -LoL)

I think most businesses look at “today” -and in pressuring economic times, even more. Result: the number of “unknown unknows” is high. Therefore, it is of value to think about how you can bring better “foresight” into play …

HOW?

1. review your business setup

You need to have a thirst for data, and the resources to embed the data into your business. If not, you’ll be getting a lot of interesting information that will be shelved because there is no “system” of processing and elevating it properly.

2. Pause and think

At least once a year you need to devote dedicate time around interpreting the long term, predictive and trend information you have. This thinking does not sit with marketing. It involves all the key players in the company, from different disciplines. Once all information is clear, decide: is it relevant enough to action? do you need deeper follow up? will it change plans? do you want to take a bet on it?

3. Stay focused

Companies that win have a clear, consistent, unified view on the consumer and on what information is needed to knock them in a different direction. Consistency is key.

4- Go after the right data

There is of course no one-size fit all in this. Every industry and every company needs a different approach. My suggestion? Trial and error. Go wide in the beginning. Look at a lot of sources of information, and follow a simple triage system: relevant or not relevant. Then stick with the chosen ones.

There are a couple of big areas to go after:

• what are the big consumer shifts in the categories I play in, and the bigger consumer areas I’m strategically interested in
• what does future technology in my industry look like
• what is the long term evolution of my competition
• what’s going on on macro-economic level and what does the future hold for my specific country or set of countries

5- Closing the loop

Foresight, and strategies following that, should not be “hanging in thin air”. There obviously needs to be a strong integration in the business to make sure foresight HELPS the business on ongoing basis. Linking strategic implication to operational practicalities is key.

“Strategic foresight, the next frontier”: watch a short video on this:

Thank you for reading this blog post! Comments? Thoughts? Let’s engage on twitter: @kurtfrenier

Tagged as: advice, business, critical success factor, Forbes, foresight, implementation, marketing, right to succeed, strategy