Strategic Foresight – Understanding the Negative Future – Nu Leadership Series
“It’s not how long you live that counts, but what you do in your life that’s important. You have to learn to deal with the storms of life.”
Rev. Richard Brown Jr.
Do we really want to meddle in the future? Some people don’t want to consider it. Clearly, the future is a highway with different lanes, but do humans have the ability to accept unhappy endings? In general, my position is that humans are incapable of accepting unhappy endings. In fact, futurist Edward Cornish argues that it’s easier for people to keep a long-term perspective when they have a clear vision. Futurists use many techniques to anticipate the future. For example, strategic foresight can provide a way for organizations to strategically analyze short-, medium-, and long-term planning. Therefore, it is a look into the future. This concept is easily seen on the big screen. Hollywood blockbusters are the timeline of happy endings. People want to believe that all stories have positive endings. This concept stems from childhood innocence as Americans. Unfortunately, the future may include unpleasant results.
However, life does not always provide a good story. For example, globalization can provide many job opportunities, but the result is not always positive. Indeed, the future prediction for the full-time worker is bleak. It is obvious that technology and outsourcing are now making the part-time worker a reality of today, not tomorrow. In fact, Charles Handy theorized that unemployed or spare workers will create their own new job in the future. Therefore, individuals will control their own destiny and become entrepreneurs. However, this goes against our American culture. Grandma taught us to “go work at a good company and get a good job with benefits.”
In fact, Bruce Sterling, author of tomorrow now, further argues that simple, predictable and solvent jobs will go to poorly educated and unprepared people or intelligent machines. However, the high-paying jobs will go to highly educated, teachable, and creative people. In the future, good jobs will be the pinnacle of human difficulties. Technology and understanding of complex systems will require a well grounded person. However, futurist James Canton argues that America’s youth, our future workers, will be unprepared in math/science and may be excluded from future opportunities.
According to many observations, organizations and people do not want to hear negative scenarios for future generations. This reality reaffirms that people do not want to think negatively about their future. Therefore, they often operate in denial or ignore the future. Clearly, organizational leaders need to develop a strategy to deal with negative consequences. Many people don’t have the patience to look beyond short-term gains. Therefore, effective leaders need to know how to deal with the possibilities of negative futures.
References:
Canton, J. (2006). The extreme future. New York: Duton.
Cornwall, E. (2002). Futuring: The Exploration of the Future. Bethesda, MD: World Future Society.
Practical, C. (1997). The age of paradox. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
Sterling, B. (2002). Tomorrow Now. New York: Random House Publishers.
© 2008 by Daryl D. Green