Quite a few years back, I listened to a recording of a Tom Peters seminar where he quoted one of the development team of the Apple Newton [without which we may well have never got smart phones, i-pads and related tablets] as saying “The future was predictable but no one predicted it”.
Future can’t be predicted at the level of knowing the next winning set of lottery numbers but you can tip the balance in your favour – if you think about the future and look at what is going on in the world!
Here are my tips on how to do it:
1. Expand your horizons
Spend some of your time thinking about the future on a longer time frame than you do now. Ideally, you should be thinking about what is likely to happen in the next 5-10 years not next week.
2. Look at what is going on in the world
I use a framework I called ASPIRE & INSPIRE – which looks at
- Social
- Political
- Innovation
- Regulatory and
- Economic
drivers of change.
You’ve probably seen similar ones and may even have used them before. The key to success however is not to do what most people do – work out from your business because your view will be coloured by who and what you are. You need to work from the outside in, asking:
How each driver could affect your industry or sector, does it affect you disproportionately and how well placed are you to respond.
3. Listen to your customers – especially the awkward ones
Look at what your most demanding customers are doing – are any of them using your products and services in unusual ways, are they asking for features which others aren’t. Then ask yourself whether these are likely to become trends.
4. Scenario Plan
Often, there are relatively few options on the way an issue will pan out – you can plan for all of these. If you can plan for an outcome which your competitors have ignored and that’s what happens; you will have an advantage over them. Most businesses don’t plan for change so you stand a pretty good chance of being ahead of the game whatever the outcome.
5. Make your own future
The late, great management thinker Peter Drucker said that the best way to predict the future was to create it. So put some effort into being different, creative and innovative – can you produce interesting and exciting products and services before the competition have realised the need?
and finally
If you are not doing any of these then you are predicting your own future – you will be overtaken by events or the competition and go the way of famous names like, Woolworths, Slazenger and TWA – don’t forget that even Marks and Spencer and Harley Davidson both nearly got caught out by taking their eye off the ball.
But
None of this will be any use unless you take action – so get on with it!