The future doesn't just happen. It is up to you

There is only one scenario in which the future happens to you - the one in which you take no action.

The future is, quite literally, what you make it. It isn't some weird place, separate from us and our decisions. It is entirely the result of our collective response - our actions taken - to the present and our anticipation of our own needs and those of others in the context of now and next.

By its nature the future contains anything that is possible. If it's possible, it can happen.

Some of those possibilities are beyond our control (The emergence of a pandemic is a good example - and even in these it is our response that allows us to control our experience of them).

However - most possible outcomes are the result of our responses. We are imagining and deciding the future we intend to live in.

I am not dismissing the structural frameworks that limit the choices of many people now. I am saying the collective choices we make now are deciding how those frameworks get to impact the lives of people in the future.

In the future, our needs will be the same. The context in which we experience them will vary.

It is in our understanding of those needs in the emerging contexts of the future that we are able to shape the future we intend.

We can allocate our resources to probe for them, make sense of them and serve them.

This is the promise of the Responsive Organisation: It is not simply to test and learn all possible futures - it is to provide the mindset and ways of working to create the future you can imagine and intend. That is, one:

• Informed by insight,
• Ignited by imagination
• Centred on the human experience
• Constrained by the resources and goals of the organisation.

If it's a future you intend to have a future, it should also be constrained by making a positive response to the needs of people and planet.

• Your North Star Amid The Ambiguity of the Next Two Years: Learn, Learn, Learn.
• How To Respond To Context Shocks
• Learned Personal Antifragility
• Being Change - The Responsive Organisation Needs Responsive People
• The New Better of Work - The best of distributed teams and office life
• People Audits - When your people aren't coping
• Urgent Digital Transformation
• Accelerated Trend to Automation

Avoiding the holes in your future

"Planning involves conjectures about the future and hypothetical cases. They are so busy with actual cases that they are reluctant to take on theoretical ones."

Henry Kissinger was talking about US Government policy makers when he wrote the above - in his doctoral thesis. The insight is equally valid for businesses today.

When 'planning' what is often conducted is an exercise in reactive tactic making - trying to solve the problems facing you right now, usually in the order they appear to be impacting. It is planning in the rear-view mirror.

The result is a drag on future capability, with resource allocation skewed toward problems that have already happened versus preparation to take advantage of emerging opportunity.

Kissinger advises you must create the time to lift your eyes and look as far ahead as you can see.

Words like 'hypothetical' and 'theoretical' are too often dismissed in the daily challenge of dealing with what's right in front of you (by which we usually mean, what is immediately behind us).

So for those who are still more concerned about their to-do list (let's call it our 'should've already done list'), here's a real-world example from the world of advanced motorcycle riding: The further ahead you look, the faster you can go.

Looking further ahead when riding allows you to:

a) Identify risks, and plan to deal with them
b) Get a long view of the road ahead and plan your best position not just for the first bend you can see, but for a series of twists and turns.

The opposite leads to 'target fixation'. This is a known phenomena beyond motorcycling.

From Wikipedia: Target fixation is an attentional phenomenon observed in humans in which an individual becomes so focused on an observed object (be it a target or hazard) that they inadvertently increase their risk of colliding with the object.

Simply: You End Up Going Where You Look.

If you focus too much on the pothole in front of you, you are more likely to end up riding straight into it.

Look away from the danger and towards your opportunities and you are better able to make a plan to avoid the hole in your future.

That's planning.