Scouting the Future
by Joel A. Barker
The key skill of a leader…
…is to get your people to follow you to a place they would not go by themselves. Where is that “place”? By and large, that place is located in the future. Finding that place and leading your team to it is the leader’s most important responsibility.
Now, here’s the dilemma. If you are unsure of what is ahead, if you are afraid of the unintended consequences awaiting you, you will lead slowly. And that can put you at a competitive disadvantage. But what if there were a way to identify those consequences before they happened? What if you could gain the necessary information about the future so you could lead faster?
Let me offer an historical example to illustrate: The American wagon trains of the 19th century and the role of the wagon master
The wagon master’s job was to lead pioneers through dangerous territory to a safe and fertile area. He also had to bring the pioneers to their destination within a set timeframe.
Before a good wagon master rolled the wagons, he sent out scouts to see what was over the horizon. Rapid exploration by scouts provided crucial information that allowed the wagon master to make quicker decisions with higher confidence and move the wagons forward at a faster pace.
What kind of impact do you think it had on the rest of wagon train knowing their leader was scouting their future before making critical decisions that affected their well-being? Everyone’s confidence was improved.
What are the attributes of scouting?
- Speed: Scouts have to ride out, make their observations, and come back quickly. If they linger too long, their information loses value.
- Qualitative, not quantitative, information gathering: Because scouts must be fast, they can’t take the time to measure and analyze and record lots of details. Instead, they return with observations, impressions and images that are qualified by their past experience.
- Many directions: To get a broad a view of what’s over the horizon, scouts have to scatter in many directions. Without a broad spectrum of exploration, they may miss the best pathways.
- Decision-enhancing information: The work of the scouts is used by the wagon master to enhance his decisions. No matter what the scouts report, it is still the leader’s job to take in the information and choose the wisest course of action.
With the scout’s input, the wagon master can make decisions that reach much farther out into the future, and those decisions can be made with much higher confidence.
21st Century Scouting
Twenty-first century leaders need their own scouts. But instead of searching the geography of place, your scouts need to search the geography of time. The most important frontier for you is the next five to 10 years.
To scout the future more effectively, you and your scouts need to learn a new kind of thinking. I call it “cascade thinking.” What do I mean by that? In my work, I have found that the most important implications of any change are rarely those that spring immediately from the initiating event, be it an innovation, an emerging trend, the introduction of a competitor’s product, a strategic objective.
Instead, the most important implications are usually found several orders out from the initiating event. That is, they are the implications of the implications of the implications of the initial event which cascade out in all directions. This is where unintended consequences lurk.
And, yet, as I have worked with major organizations, both for profit and not-for-profit, I have found almost no serious effort to systematically identify these cascades.
I have led these explorations using a variation of the cascade I developed called The Implications Wheel®. Using this process, I have found that you must go out at least three orders of implications to find the big surprises. Going out three orders also guarantees that you are scouting far enough into the future. Using this process always works.
Why does it work? For one very simple reason: this is the way the world works. This is truly how things unfold.
To ignore this pattern of thinking is to invite unintended consequences. To think in ways that are not consistent with this pattern is to rebuke the natural order of the world – and is to be just plain irresponsible as a leader
By using this new pattern of cascade thinking, organizations can increase the likelihood that they will identify the “unintended consequences” of a new idea before they begin to implement the new idea. That gives the leader the “lay of the land” well before he or she rolls the wagons.
What should be topics for this kind of exploration? Here is a short list:
- Emerging trends
- Innovations, both your own and your competitors
- Policy changes, both internal and external
- New laws
- Strategic objectives and goals
- Significant events
By scouting the future of these kinds of issues, leaders will be able to see over the “time horizon,” gain insights into the pattern of implications in front of them, and have a much clearer understanding of the complexities that lie ahead.
This new pattern of thinking, which helps you to generate the cascade of consequences, is going to be the major distinction between successful and the unsuccessful organizations over the next 10 years. Because those who take the time to think this way will be able to move more rapidly into the future with greater confidence. And that will make all the difference.