20 Questions for Business Leaders Part 3

The entire history of management ideas can be seen as a series of answers to a few pragmatic queries.

by Art Kleiner and Nancy A. Nichols

https://www.strategy-business.com/feature/20-Questions-for-Business-Leaders?gko=e2585&utm_source=itw&utm_medium=20180222&utm_campaign=resp

HOW DO WE PREPARE FOR UNCERTAINTY?

Watch out for megatrends.

All of business is affected by great sweeping forces: demographic and social change, shifts in global economic power, rapid urbanization, climate change and resource scarcity, and technological breakthroughs.

Alvin and Heidi Toffler, Future Shock, 1970

John Naisbitt, Megatrends, 1982

PwC, “How to Seize Opportunities When Megatrends Collide,” s+b, 2015

Anticipate black swans.

You can’t predict or avoid impossible calamities, but you can develop your company’s ability to cope. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Black Swan, 2007

 Invent your own certainties.

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.” Alan Kay, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, 1971

Pay attention to the way you pay attention.

“How can I know what I think until I see what I say?”

Karl Weick, Sensemaking in Organizations, 1995

Imagine multiple scenarios.

Explore several possible futures to raise your awareness of the present and help you make better decisions by distinguishing predetermined events from critical uncertainties.

Royal Dutch Shell Group (home to Pierre Wack, Ted Newland, Arie de Geus, Peter Schwartz, and other business thinkers), 1971; “The Man Who Saw the Future,” s+b, 2003