Ten lessons from the Future!

In our first article we made the point that life is changing faster and more profoundly than at any other time in history. We live with radical change every day.

So how do managers cope in a world that is increasingly chaotic?

It’s all about understanding what the future is likely to bring – and having the right attitude.

To help answer that question, we’re going to share with you the FutureWorld’s “Ten Lessons from the Future.” These make up the conclusion to the global best-selling business book by FutureWorld International CEO, Wolfgang Grulke. It’s already been printed in several different languages around the world, including Spanish and German and, of course, English.

Lesson One: Information and ideas fuel the economy!

In our modern world, pure information has become a commodity. Anyone can “google” anything and get facts. So it’s no longer what you know, but what you do with that knowledge that matters. Great ideas, and the ability to apply information, are the real skill of the future.

So open up the information in your organisation! Put behind you the old fashioned principle of “need to know” and ask instead why any particular piece of information should not be generally available. Remember, information today has very little value in itself. But released, it can become the spark for new ideas and new business directions! And even once you give information away, you still have it!

Lesson Two: Biotech is the 2nd information revolution!

We’ve lived through the PC revolution and the IT revolution. The next great revolution will be driven by biotechnology – and it will create an economy more profound than the digital age.

Biotech will affect every aspect of our lives – starting with life itself! Professor Peter Rose, head of Biotech at Rhodes University, says it straight: ”The first children that will live to be 150 years old have already been born!”

There’s even one Cambridge scientist who are arguing that theoretically, we could live for 4 000 years or more! Whatever the number, the reason for longer life stems from changes in health science brought about largely by advances in biotechnology. Sciences like stem-cell technology promise the end to a whole range of diseases that currently ravage mankind, from Alzheimer’s to brain tumours.

And biotech will permeate other critical aspects of life such as food production, manufacturing and more. We are moving into an era where small and complex technologies are replacing the big and simple technologies of the Industrial economy.

Lesson Three: It’s the ‘personal’ age!

Social changes back in the late sixties and seventies created the culture of the individual. The result is the most powerful, interconnected and informed generation of consumers the world has ever seen. Never before has the individual had so much personal power and such freedom to choose.

Power has moved from the centre to the individual, through technologies such as the Internet. And now the process is moving to every other aspect of life, through the “network effect”. Make yourself part of it.

Lesson Four: Leadership can be widely shared!

Think of how leadership changes in a flock of birds on the wing. In the same way, different parts of organisations of the future will be lead by different people as needs change. Flexible, fractal organisations recognise that old-style management hierarchy is becoming less applicable, as the skills, attitude and ideas of tomorrow reside in younger and younger heads!

Tomorrow’s organisations will be complex and dynamic – and true leaders will be willing to share their authority and decision-making.

Lesson Five: Fractal/non-linear behaviour is the norm!

Wherever you look in the new economy, you see what for many older managers seems to be chaos! But understand the new rules and you’ll realise that chaos is not something to fear or resist – it’s just biology in action!

That implies embracing risk. It’s becoming increasingly less relevant to build your future on the successes of the past. Don’t be afraid to be intuitive – the worst thing you can do it nothing. Build an organisational culture that welcomes and embraces risk.

Lesson six: The ‘unknown’ is the field of all possibilities!

We all think we want certainty in our lives and our businesses. But certainty leaves little room for innovation and personal freedom. Accepting uncertainty and even chaos as a natural phenomenon opens your mind to change and new possibilities. Uncertainty presents the moment of real freedom!

Deepak Chopra says “you must first be chaos before you can be a dancing star!” Embracing the unknown is the only way to open your mind and your business to a changing and flexible world.

Lesson seven: Eat yourself, become your own worst nightmare!

Right now, there’s a bunch of young people out there, looking at you and your organisation and saying: They’re fat and lazy – we’ve got a better idea and we can taken them!”. Every successful organisation builds up layers of bureaucracy that turn the organisation inwards, rather than focusing outwards on the company.

Rather than find your business cannibalized by people you didn’t even think were competitors, create your own business terrorists! Review all your products to identify how you can “eat yourself” before someone else does.

The worst time to act is when you have no choice and your options are limited. Act while you can, and use today’s successes to fund the transition.

Lesson eight: You can no longer learn from experience!

The faster things change, the less relevant experience becomes. You must learn from the future!

Experience has high value in stable, unchanging markets – hardly the world we live in today. We have to force ourselves to think of, and live in, the future. What will our customers want in the future? How will societies look? How will people live? How can we design our business today to succeed in the future?

Not easy questions, but vital ones. It’s no use just extrapolating from what we know and from where we are today. If you work at it, you can create what Shell calls “memories of the future” for your business; so that when change happens, you’ve already prepared for it.

Lesson nine: Don’t compete!

Sounds like a strange lesson! But we’re living in the most competitive marketplace the world has even known. Find white space opportunities in which you have no competitors. Establishing a strong market presence in new, innovative markets is by far the cheapest way of winning market share.

And finally…

Lesson Ten: It’s one world, one mind, one time!

The new global economy is about openness. That includes sourcing your best raw materials, products – and even people – without having to worry about the once-intimidating constraints of national boundaries, borders and time zones.

A digital skin now united almost all mankind with one internal clock that runs 24×7x52. Customer expectations don’t stop over weekend or after hours. Instant response is becoming the norm of your customer’s expectations. Beat to your customers’ drum or perish!

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What process can be used to implement these Ten Lessons within companies, and to achieve radical innovation? It’s not easy – but there are many, many case studies of companies that have succeeded. Look out or the next issue for answers to these and other questions.

Email FutureWorld on enquiries@futureworld.co.za, or visit www.futureworld.co.za

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