One thing’s for sure about these days: things are getting more turbulent. Things transmit at light speed via the internet, and tastes and trends can change in a day. Products and businesses rarely stay “on top” for more than a year. Even natural features like icebergs, who’ve been around for millenia, are sloughing pieces off in dramatic fashion.
And, yet, many businesses and people are hanging on with white knuckles to the antiquated idea that the key to success is to predict and control the future. My friends, that is such an industrial era idea. And we are not in the industrial era anymore. The information era, that we’re in today, is characterized by rapid change, new trends coming out of nowhere, and instability. Predicting and controlling the future is futile.
So, what to do instead?
Stage 1: Trying to Predict the Future:
I’m not saying you should completely give up. “Big Data” is a huge trend that is giving us more access to information about business, but also about ourselves. Tools like FitBit and Jawbone’s UP give us access to vast information about our health habits, that help us understand ourselves better. Similarly, companies are able to access vast data about our consumption habits, social media habits, etc. that help them understand us and better predict the future.
But, in CPG, we spent vast amounts of time trying to predict how much ice cream people would buy, down to the store, day and flavor. At some point, our human abilities break down. The error inherent in our predictions gets multiplied as we get more detailed so that, at the store level, how “right” can we really be?
Stage 2: Considering Alternative Scenarios:
More sophisticated companies (and individuals) do some scenario planning. Companies might ask questions like, “If global warming does raise the temperature of our climate, what impact might that have on our agriculture business: and how do we prepare for that possibility?” Individuals might ponder, “I’ve got a big deliverable at work next month. If that deliverable slips a few weeks, what might that do to my plan to plant my garden? What can I do if that happens?”
But: considering alternative scenarios assumes you can at least come up with a few specific scenarios that are likely. What if the question isn’t, “What happens if global warming raises the temperature?, but “What happens when global warming makes our weather more unpredictable and increases the chances of an unanticipated natural disaster, like Hurricane Sandy?” What if, on a personal level, it isn’t about the curveballs that you’re able to predict, but the ones you’re not?
Stage 3: Resilience & Experimentation:
I believe it’s time to design our businesses, and ourselves, to be resilient rather than perfect. This means that, rather than designing an extremely efficient manufacturing line that can only do one thing (and therefore is useless when tastes change), we design one to be flexible and adaptable to many different products. It means rather than predicting sales volume to the minute detail, we figure out a self-reinforcing system that helps us react quickly to changes in volume. For instance, we could use a monitoring system on shelf that helps us tell when the shelf is empty, and sends a message straight to the distribution system to send new product.
On a personal level, it means that rather than learning how to develop the perfect eating, exercising and recharging routine, it means accepting that we will never be perfect, and instead, learning to be OK with “good enough” and getting back to your goals after setbacks. Be the supple sapling that will bend in the wind, and snap back to its tall position when the wind stops.
As it gets harder and harder to predict the future, it also means that experimentation will become more and more important. As the system grows more complex, it will become more and more efficient just to try out some ideas, and see what works, than to invest immense time and money into understanding the system enough to get the “perfect” answer. We will have to learn to fail in a non-catastrophic way so we can fail early and often and learn forward.
As a wise professor told me once, “A failure is not a mistake.” I would extend that to say, “To not have a failure is a mistake.“