And Now For Something Completely Different
We have been reminded this year that, where crisis is in play, the future becomes overwhelmingly filled with uncertainties. Leaders remain managing the change and challenge of safety, preserving business value, and surviving the near term. Most I talk to are looking out 6 months to a year. For those companies that have strategy departments or roles, suddenly plans do not make sense. Most such departments do not produce strategic perception; they produce long term plans. A black swan event exposes your current weakness and turns a plan to mush. As a friend and colleague that runs a medical response to COVID-19 astutely mentioned, “this is a really weird pandemic.” The suddenness of this crisis and its impact on our lives brings to light that you cannot predict this kind of event or even what comes next. This is also a reminder that most of us can stand to improve our ability to prepare for the next normal, future challenges and create better capacity to both evolve strategy as well as respond to true crisis. I would not call it predicting or responding to the next normal; it is akin to developing a useful view of potential futures and capabilities needed, so we are prepared to thrive in the next business reality.
Now is when we should be prodigiously consuming data, information, and external perspectives. Essentially, this is the list of deep thinking work we say we would do if all our time were not taken running our businesses or, now, surviving the current crisis. In this often-sobering time, it is both important and can be uplifting to begin dialogue and understanding of how customers, markets and operating environments might change. It is also a time to take care in what you accept as valuable information. Last, by digging deeply into understanding what potential futures may arise, you will gain valuable perspective and capability. There are some excellent questions and many opinions arising. Will “remote first” become the default for more companies? Will pharma and other “critical” equipment manufacturing, and services move onshore. Will government funding; and control in more critical health areas become the norm? Will this be the tipping point for universal access to some health benefits? What will become the balance between stockpiling and quick scaling capability? There are some predictions of emerging themes but, yet, there are reasons why the “old normal” made business sense; reasons why there were face to face working meetings and business travel; why quality, cost efficient manufacturing and professional services have developed in a networked multi-location world.
Most any model of the future is just that, an abstraction. No matter the data, it is a model of a future that is not reality. I learned in running a trade execution SaaS company that prediction is imminently difficult if not impossible. But you should still develop a deeply informed perspective and in turn, the long-term capability of your organization. The value is derived when you create useful models that inform your choices. Without creating a strategic perspective, admittedly imperfect, we still make choices, from an even greater point of abstraction. This is the perfect and critical time to create varying views of the future, potential themes, perhaps competing views. Manufacturing moving onshore vs, manufacturing becoming more dispersed and networked. The key is to develop a perspective of the future that is useful; one that better prepares you for the actual terrain and reduces your choice and capability risk as you arrive in that next normal.