The Paradox of Wisdom & Future Planning
In my many trips around the sun, I have learned that life rejoices in the paradoxical.
While there are many examples of life playing the game of paradox with us, there are two that occupy my thinking, especially — the paradox of Wisdom that guides us in the present and Planning that guides us in the future.
WISDOM
The wisest of insights are often wonderfully paradoxical…
To receive more love, give more love.
We can dream of a future world only when we can see the reality of Now.
There is only one uniquely you… and you are only one among billions of others interconnected in one consciousness.
“We are human only in contact, and conviviality, with what is not human”. — David Abrams, ecologist and author
All of our knowledge is of the past and all of our decisions are about the future.
“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”
PLANNING
“The hallmark of wisdom is asking — What effects will the decision I make today have on future generations? On the health of the planet?”
The reason we do planning is to give guidance to decision-making today about a future that is unknown. And, without a doubt, the true measure of success of any leader is their impact on the future.
I have found, from years of growing businesses and advising some of the most iconic brands and successful enterprises, that effective planning for the future is amazingly paradoxical.
A BAKER’S DOZEN:
1. To plan the future, leverage the past
Discover the energy that originated the enterprise and channel it to inspire, guide future thinking, and leverage it in new ways for the future. Compost the past failures to grow new successes. Learn from past resiliency and regeneration to shape a new version of resiliency and regeneration for the future.
2. “Plans are nothing, planning is everything”
This is a famous quote from one of the great military planners of the 20th Century, General Dwight D. Eisenhower. The real value comes not from the paper plans but from people working together, struggling with their concepts, excitedly building on one another’s ideas, and creating alignment on what to do in the future. Once they have embodied and own the future plans, they internalize a new belief system, a mental model, that guides actions and results. The paper or power points of planning just become archival reminders.
3. The faster you have to innovate and go to market today, the further in the future you have to imagine
You need the longer-term context to know where the short-term innovations will fit. You don’t have time to make it up as you go along. Tech companies and fast-to-market product companies often have longer-term tech visions and 10-to-25-year product books. They imagine the future market needs/desires first and figure out the actual technology and systems needed later. This flips things from product-to-market thinking (“here are my products, where can I sell them?”) to market-to-product planning (“what will be the markets of the future, and what products or services do I need to provide?”).
4. The more you need to stand out in your field or industry, the more you need to draw ideas from outside your field
Innovations are often combinatory. The best innovators often draw learning and insights from outside their field/industry and combine them with the expertise they have within to create totally new products and services. In their planning, they need to continually scan the other fields, learn from outside sources, take learning journeys and invite in others who know the secrets they don’t.
5. To know what to do today, look at how tomorrow is shaping up
The best planning teams include an exploration, in their process, of the realities and possibilities of the Zeitgeist (the spirit of the times). They study not just the current trends and realities but also the emerging and possible new realities. They can’t necessarily predict everything about the future but they can rehearse for it, playing with early indicators to shape future scenarios. You can only see the real value of your place and niche in the world by seeing the whole system as it is, as it is emerging, and as it might be.
6. NOT knowing fully who you are is critical to planning who you fully can become
In a past article, “Why NOT knowing yourself makes you a better leader”, I made the point that as individuals we are made on a grander scale than how we often frame ourselves. The same is true for enterprises. What we know about ourselves is about the past. While this can be valuable, it can also keep us from leaping into something new and often more exciting. In enterprise planning, we need to open the lens and see ourselves and the organization in a new light of unexpected possibilities. We need to uncover the hidden potential that sometimes only someone from the outside can see. As a guide to hundreds of successful organization transformations, I have learned that opening this lens of future self and organizational discovery is essential to future success.
7. You can’t touch the future but you can make it tangible
The future is a vast untouchable concept but I have found the great leaders I have known build well-selected, tangible elements of the future (prototypes, models, vision maps, mock-ups, graphic pictures, imaginative videos). The more they let their people experience this approximate future in a visceral way, the stronger the future comes alive for them. Their people can then plan and make decisions about the future in a more exciting, imaginative, and real way.
8. In a complex world, cold data must be made warm
“Warm data”, a term coined by Gregory Bateson, describes the relationships of the informational parts of a complex system. We live in systems (organizations, industries, global commerce) so to plan for success in these systems we need to be able to describe the interrelationships, not just manipulate the cold data. We do this by patterning the data and connecting the parts. We often weave these into stories and narratives (a constellation of stories) that inform, inspire, and evoke actions that create impact in the future. A great strategic plan is simply a great story of how to move into a new future. The more our planning guidance is connected and relationally “warm”, the greater the likelihood we will produce hot results.
9. To create value and enrich life for yourself, do it for others
Focus planning on how you will create value for others (customers, employees, stakeholders) and greater value will accrue to you and your organization. Planning needs to be focused on enriching life and on making a positive regenerative impact. Behind true value creation and enriching life is a dedication of passion and purpose. Increasingly attracting customers, employees, and investors for the future, demands organizations leverage their passions and plans to deliver on their promise of purpose and impact. Making the world a better place for both current and future generations is no longer nice to have, it is essential.
10. Resiliency planning isn’t about recovery, it is about planning to leap higher
We will always have setbacks and tough challenges. In our planning we have to practice handling these bumps, often eliminating old ways and products or even previous customers ahead of time. Then after proactively shedding the old, we need to go through a mind shift and initiate a new world order for our organizations. I describe this in more detail in two articles “Crisis Resiliency and You” and “A Better Way to Grow: the ever regenerative, people-centered enterprise”.
11. Wise future planners are always beginners
We are all beginners in the world of the future, none of us have lived there before. Embracing humility and keeping a beginner's mindset allows us to be open to the unknown. Creativity is not possible if we think we know it all. Creativity thrives in an environment of uncertainty. Invite uncertainty, the unknown, and even the uncomfortable into the planning room. Explore with fresh eyes and discover what hasn’t been seen before.
12. To build total-system effectiveness in the long term, plan to sacrifice division/functional efficiency in the short term
This is not always an easy thing for leaders and organizations to accept.
Business in the Twentieth Century was relentlessly focused on functional efficiency, but this is a new era and the focus has to change. Planning needs to guide a shift from function and division efficiency to total enterprise effectiveness (value creation) and impact (delivering on enterprise purpose).
This often means departments or divisions within the enterprise will have to give up some immediate individual efficiencies in the short term in order to work together, build relationships and create combinatory innovations across the organization for longer-term results.
Complementary point — For decades, the business Holy Grail was “Scale Up” for growth and profit. Planning for longer-term total enterprise effectiveness and impact requires we add three other S’s to Scale-up — Synergy (1+ 2+ 3= 12); Scope (the Power of Diversity); System (Leverage of the whole integrated enterprise). New era plans need to include all four S’s to ensure full, longe term effectiveness and impact.
13. Make transformational plans, knowing full well that most transformations fail
Any future vision or plan worth its salt must register some kind of leap change or even transformation, otherwise why not just keep doing what you are doing and forget the new plans. So why do 75% of transformational plans fail? Because they are really just “fix it” or selected replacement program plans, not transformational at all, and because they hit countering resistance from the status quo.
Advice: Don’t just make programmatic changes “IN” the organization, instead design your plans to ultimately make change “OF” the enterprise system (business model, brand building, operating processes, product and services, markets, culture, etc.) Plan for Status Quo resistance…Begin by planning for “it doesn’t fit my model” resistance and by working with non-resistant innovators (the “pre-pleased”). Invest in innovators and early adopters, make them a focus of attention and support (even pull selected resources from the status quo to fuel the new way) and help them create many, fast small wins that roll up to big impact (“Think Big-Start Small, Build Fast”). The innovator/early-adopter group will make a new way “cool”, rewarding and the way to success. This attracts converts and new believers from the previous doubters and those invested in the old ways. Part ways with true laggards, you will probably never convert them because the new just doesn’t fit their core belief system.
Trying to force change by fiat too often motivates “resistors’’ to put up bigger walls of resistance and even invites sabotage of the fragile new sprouts of change (one of the key reasons for transformational failure). Remember all creativity requires an element of constraint to help it focus and open new avenues for creating. View the inevitable pull of the status quo as a design constraint and get creative in planning for and responding to resistance.
Final Suggestion:
Go on a hunt for the paradoxical clues in wisdom and future planning. In fact, look for paradoxes in all aspects of life. Make your list of paradox favorites and share them with others.
You might discover, as I have, that the more I engage the truth of paradox, the closer I get to understanding the mystery of life on this third rock from the sun.
Article by Dan Beam
Illustrations by Drew Beam
