preparedmind

The Covid Roller Coaster

August 27, 2021 by Bill Welter Leave a Comment

Wow!

2019 – Everything is (kind of) going accord to plan.

2020 – The world went Covid-crazy.

2021 Q1 and Q2 – “Let’s find the new normal.”

2021 Q3 – Oops! The new normal has been put on hold.

So, here are three opening thoughts to a series we are starting at MindPrep. You can get the full newsletters HERE.

It’s a Wicked World – deal with it

No, this is not a commentary on morality. It’s a commentary on working in a world without precedent. First, some simple explanations.

“Kind” environments have repeating patterns and feedback is accurate and rapid. Therefore, decision making can often improve with added experience. You can learn “the rules of the game” and become an expert by developing expert intuition. Examples of people in this environment range from chess masters to golf professionals to suburban firefighters to business strategists before 2020.

“Wicked” environments exist where the rules of the game are unclear, feedback is spotty at best, and patterns are lacking or not obvious. Expertise-based thinking may be helpful or, more likely, may lead you astray because it is based on a past that is no longer relevant and will likely not return.

Planning and decision making in this environment is anything but routine and intuition must be challenged. This is the environment we are living in right now with the pandemic. The “new normal” is and will be very wicked.

It’s time to think like an explorer.

Throughout history explorers prepared for expeditions by understanding, as best they could, the conditions they were about to face and then went about improving the equipment they would use.

Early explorers to the South Pole knew that they needed warm clothing and lightweight (but strong) sleds, so they focused a lot of their efforts on improving their equipment. Sometimes explorers opted for maximum flexibility because they didn’t know how the conditions would change over time. Blankets can be used for warmth; they can also be used for shade.

The explorers’ reality is a world of known and unknown; and it calls for elegant flexibility.

Consider the most flexible equipment at your disposal – the ability to think and imagine new ways and new things.

Mistakes will be made. Pick yourself up and dust yourself off.

We’ve spent decades fine tuning our careers and business models. Efficiency was paramount and rewarded. We gave lip service to “innovation,” but punished experiments that didn’t provide rapid ROI.

But now its time to think and act using less time than you want. Wicked worlds keep morphing and doing so in novel ways.

For those of you who know me, you know that I’ve been running workshops for decades built on a simple cycle of Sense, Make Sense, Decide, and Act. I refer to this cycle as the Sense-Response Cycle (SRC) and admonish attendees to “keep up with the pace of change or become irrelevant.” But what was fast in 2019 is normal today. We have to run this cycle uncomfortably fast.

Don’t let perfect get in the way of good-enough progress. All of us will make mistakes. It’s the reality of a wicked world. Deal with them and keep moving. We don’t have time to feel sorry for ourselves.

Remember, the future favors a prepared mind. And preparing your mind is a never-ending responsibility. You can get our recent MindPrep Newsletters HERE.

The next couple of newsletters will focus on understanding the future and ways of dealing with it.

Act and Intercept Your (Unknown) Future

December 13, 2020 by Bill Welter Leave a Comment

This is a continuation of our posts about preparing for the future. It offers three questions about executing the decisions you will make to meet your future.

Today is yesterday’s future. What did you learn?

Let me be blunt — we, collectively, are terrible at executing projects. Lots of reasons, lots of excuses, but not a lot of well executed projects. And one of our big shortcomings is our unwillingness to learn from the results of the programs and projects we launch to get to the future.

We plan, we execute, we make mistakes, and then when the project if “finally finished” we drop it and get on to the next. No organizational learning takes place.

Sound familiar? I think it might. I’ve been involved with organizations for over fifty years and I have yet to hear any leader brag that projects in their unit/company/team are always on time, on budget and deliver full-scope, quality outcomes. Never.

Why is this so important? Because the pattern will persist.

If we want a better future we need to get better at today’s decision, actions, and projects. We need to learn from our successes and failure and then DO something.

Do you have the capabilities you need?

Here’s a question: Will the capabilities that got you and your team to today get you to tomorrow?

Here’s the answer: NO

Sure, some of today’s capabilities will be needed and will be useful. But others will be obsolete. And still others will be needed, but absent.

Develop your vision of the future and work backwards. What must you be able to do to make the future real?

And note that knowledge, although important, is not enough. For example, I know a lot about sinus surgery; but you would not want me operating on your nose. You may know a lot about how other companies have used “big data,” but that does not mean you are capable of important data-based decisions.

If we want a better future we need to build capabilities that will be needed to get us there. Learning should be future-oriented.

What took you so long to act?

All of us have four overarching responsibilities as we try to intercept our future.

We need to sense the signals of tomorrow. We need to make sense of these signals. We need to decide on a course of action. And we need to act on these decisions. These four responsibilities depict a cycle, as shown in the graphic above.

This cycle, the Sense-Response Cycle, has to run at least as fast as your industry is evolving. If not, you become irrelevant. And that means that each responsibility has to be performed at the pace of industry evolution. Bottom line? You have to be good at executing each of the responsibilities.

Look at your weaknesses and get better. Either that, or become irrelevant. It’s your choice.

Coming in 2021

The Future is Coming: Don’t be Taken by Surprise — A new course coming in 2021

We will launch a pilot in January. Like our recently competed pilot, The Pragmatic Strategist, this course will be a high-tech / high-touch hybrid of reading, videos, group discussions (via Zoom) and workbook exercises. I’ll announce the topics and details soon.

Reach out if you want to get on our list for the pilot or if you’d like a copy of our recent whitepaper describing the context and focus of the course. The pilot is not free, but the discount is significant.

Decide and Meet Your (Unknown) Future

December 6, 2020 by Bill Welter Leave a Comment

This is a continuation of our posts about preparing for the future. It offers three questions about decisions you will make to meet your future.

What does the future of present decisions look like?

The late management sage, Peter Drucker, wrote “Strategic planning does not deal with future decisions, It deals with the futurity of present decisions.” What you do today will play out, for better or worse, in the future.

For example, the decades of past decisions companies have made focused on efficiency left many organizations too fragile to absorb disruptions to supply chain or too weak to prevent damage from a cyber-attack. Effectiveness suffered because of efficiency-focus decisions.

Or consider the problems associated with the student loan “industry.” For good and bad reasons young people made decisions to accept student loans. The “futurity” of those past decisions are haunting many of them today.

Take a look at a personal or organizational impending decision and think about the chain of intended and unintended consequences and the consequences of those consequences. How smart might your decision look in three to five years?

What are you afraid of?

Fear is demonstrated in our personal and organizational attitudes about risk.

Risk is a reality of organizational life and many organizations are risk-adverse to the point of paralysis. C-level execs are afraid of damaging stock price. Managers are afraid of making a mistake and damaging their career prospects. Or, they hear the call for more risk-taking, but realize that their bonus depends on short-term goal achievement, not long-term success.

The future is a scary place. As we look into the future we see many unknown and unknowable scenarios. So we tread lightly and move slowly.

And that’s when entrepreneurs make a move and surprise industry giants. Today we worry that Amazon is going to totally dominate the retail world or upset the pharmacy dominance of Walgreens and CVS. I’m old enough to remember when they were nothing more than an upstart online bookseller.

What are you afraid of? What should you be afraid of?

Who owns your future?

The obvious answer to the question is “You, of course.” But be honest. Nobody or no thing owns you, but they might own your future. Have you unwittingly “mortgaged” your future to the point where someone else really owns it?

Are you in a job that’s taking you into a dead-end future?

Has your organization focused too much on past success and its future is really owned by an upstart competitor?

Is your future owned by your credit card?

What decisions do you need to make today to “buy back” your future or the future of your organization?

Seeing, thinking and deciding are fine, but only action will get you to the future. Unfortunately, in my 50+ years of work I’ve never come across an organization that bragged that their projects were always on-time, on-budget, and produced full-scope, quality outcomes. I’ll post another “episode” of the Sense-Response Cycle in a few days. Stay tuned.

Coming in 2021

We will launch a pilot course in January focused on helping managers and professionals be better prepared for their future. Like our recently competed pilot, The Pragmatic Strategist, this course will be a high-tech / high-touch hybrid of reading, videos, group discussions (via Zoom) and workbook exercises.

Reach out if you want to get on our list for the pilot. It’s not free, but the discount is significant. I’ll announce the topics and format soon.

Make Sense of Your (Unknown) Future

November 28, 2020 by Bill Welter 2 Comments

This is a continuation of our November 22nd post and it offers three questions about making sense of the signals you’ve seen.

Who sees a different future than you, and why?

Some of us look to the future and see opportunity. Others see doom and gloom. The issue is not about who is right and who is wrong. Rather, the issue is found in why we differ. We often need to have a conversation (a “real” debate) and dig into underlying assumptions and models of the future. Facts are facts — interpretations differ.

Who sees a different future than you and why?

Can you see multiple futures?

The clues that we sense on the edge of our mental radar screen can be interpreted in a number of ways because we interpret these clues in the context of our history, existing knowledge and personal desires. Some clues lead us to a probable or possible future. But there is another future we should consider.

President Kennedy looked at the clues about the Soviet and U.S. space capabilities in the early 1960s and stated a preferred future. And we started chasing that future all the way to the moon. Clues are not destiny. They are just clues.

What do you know about the future? What do you suspect? What do you want?

What don’t you know that you should?

Winston Churchill was concerned with, and responsible for, the future of England during the Second World War. He was constantly searching for clues about the future of the war and England’s survival. But as mentioned above, clues have to be incorporated with existing knowledge as you attempt to make sense of what you are seeing.

He was concerned that people would assume he had knowledge that he might not have. Consequently, he often started strategy meetings with a very basic question — “What don’t I know that I should.”

Make this personal. What don’t you know about your future that you should?

Once you’ve sensed the clues of the future and made sense of them you need to decide on a course of action. Otherwise nothing moves you toward the future with some sense of control. I’ll post another “episode” of the Sense-Response Cycle in a few days. Stay tuned.

Coming in 2021

We will launch a pilot course in January focused on helping managers and professionals be better prepared for their future. Like our recently competed pilot, The Pragmatic Strategist, this course will be a hybrid of reading, videos, group discussions (via Zoom) and workbook exercises.

Sense Your (Unknown) Future

November 22, 2020 by Bill Welter Leave a Comment

Apply the Sense-Response Cycle to the Future

This is a continuation of our November 18th post and it offers one comment and two questions about preparing for the future by sensing the signals of your future.

Look for the future before it finds you

If you wait passively for the future you will become a victim of competitor intention and the vagaries of nature and the ecosystem in which you operate.

Spend time and energy looking for trends that are irreversible and significant. For example, some people saw housing, mortgage, and risk-shifting trends and made money in the 2008 financial meltdown. Others “went along for the ride” and lost everything.

Look for clues. For example, Gen Z (oldest about 23 years old) don’t like mutual funds but love Robinhood. I wonder what financial service firms will have to do in the coming years. Clues are out there, but you have to look for them.

Does your future already exist somewhere else?

Sometimes we can sense the future by getting our of our geocentric bubble and thinking globally.

For example, we can see some of the future of banking by looking at smartphone use for finance in Africa.

We, collectively, missed the impact of Covid-19 but could have seen it by paying more attention to China. Or, we could have seen clues for handling pandemics by looking to Africa and how they handled Ebola and SARS.

What is your DEW Line looking for?

Here’s a bit of a history lesson for my younger readers. During the Cold War the relations between the United Stated and the Soviet Union were, shall we say, not good. We had aircraft capable of carrying nuclear bombs and so did the Soviets.

So, starting in 1954 we constructed a line of radar stations along our northern border and in Canada that were pointed north. Why? Because the shortest distance between the two countries was over the North Pole. We wanted as much warning as possible if “they” were going to bomb us.

The radar stations were not pointed east or west or south. They were pointed toward perceived “danger.”

So, think about you and your organization and consider the dangers in your future. That will give you an indication of what you should watch for. (You probably already do this if you get an annual physical. Most of those tests are to give you an early earning of health problems.) Now, do the same thing for your job and your organization.

Once you’ve sensed the clues of the future you need to make sense of them. I’ll post another “episode” of the Sense-Response Cycle in a few days. Stay tuned.

Coming in 2021

We will launch a pilot course in January focused on helping managers and professionals be better prepared for their future. Like our recently competed pilot, The Pragmatic Strategist, this course will be a hybrid of reading, videos, group discussions (via Zoom) and workbook exercises.

Prepare for Your (Unknown) Future

November 18, 2020 by Bill Welter Leave a Comment

A Dozen Comments and Questions

All of us are reeling from the impact of Covid-19 on our industry, business, and lives. This pandemic is an event that none of us were prepared for (although it was predicted) and hope to never face again.

However, Covid-19 is only the latest (although nastiest) surprise we have faced and certainly not the last we will face. The future keeps sneaking-up on us and we often find ourselves unprepared.

Think not? Consider the following examples of “unpreparedness.”

Was the U.S. auto industry prepared for the Japanese auto companies and their emphasis on quality?
Was Motorola prepared for Nokia and was Nokia prepared for Apple?
Were the department stores prepared for Amazon?
Were newspapers prepared for social media?

We, collectively, need to be better prepared for our sometimes-unknown, but often-ignored, futures.

I’ll examine the four parts of the cycle shown above in the coming week. By the way, the “D.E.W Line” is an artifact of the cold war. Stay tuned, I’ll explain.

We will launch a pilot course in January focused on helping managers and professionals be better prepared for their future. Like our recently competed pilot, The Pragmatic Strategist, this course will be a hybrid of reading, videos, group discussions (via Zoom) and workbook exercises.

preparedmind

The Covid Roller Coaster

Wow!

It’s a Wicked World – deal with it

It’s time to think like an explorer.

Mistakes will be made. Pick yourself up and dust yourself off.

Next

Act and Intercept Your (Unknown) Future