Why Predict the Future?
by Paul Lemberg
Published on this site: April 10th, 2006 - See
more articles from this month
Do you ever try to predict the future? Are you usually right,
or wrong? If so, then read on.
Can you predict the future of your industry? Can you predict
the future of your business? No one can say with certainty
what will happen next week much less one year from now. And
five years? Not a chance.
Yogi Berra reportedly said, "It's hard to make predictions,
especially about the future."
Everyone agrees. Predicting the future is hard. It is so hard
that a fifty percent success rate is considered extraordinary
for a professional futurist. In other words, the professionals
are wrong at least half of the time.
And yet businesses try to predict the future all of the time.
In fact, there are three basic business tools which require
future predictions:
- Future Revenues : At the most primitive level businesses
predict future revenues. For better or worse "estimated
future revenues" figures govern many of our proposed
business decisions. These estimated figures are often wrong
but we nonetheless establish spending patterns for years
to come based upon this guesswork.
- Industry Scenarios : One level up from revenue
predictions is the prediction of industry scenarios in which
we try and guess what are competitors are likely to do in
the future.
- Strategic Planning : The most complex level of
predictions takes place in strategic planning. Most high-performing
businesses set annual and long-term objectives and develop
plans to meet those objectives. Resource planning, financial
planning, market planning, sales planning and project planning
all depend upon how well businesses predict the future in
their strategic plans.
One of the problems with these business tools is that businesses
end up developing "planned reactions" to guessed-about
future events instead of creating their own plans. A second
problem is that businesses usually measure the success of
these "planned reactions" based upon whether or
not they produce the predicted results.
Now here's the rub: All of those estimates of future revenues,
industry scenarios and strategic plans are based upon predictions
which are more than likely wrong. By measuring success against
faulty predictions how can a business do anything but fail to achieve its goals?
Why should you predict the future if it is such a losing game?
Well, I have a saying: "The best way to predict the future
is to invent it."
Instead of using future estimates, predictions and plans to
be reactive to the future be proactive about the future by
creating your own. To move your business Faster than the Speed
of Change T declare the direction in which you want your business to go-invent your own future. Pick a direction and
set plans in action to take advantage of and profit from that
direction.
You may end up exactly where you said you were going. Then
again, you may not. Along the way you may shift completely-your
northward heading now facing east and your west now facing
south. But you will get somewhere and that somewhere will
probably be much farther along and much closer to your declared direction than if you had no direction and only "reaction
plans."
Declarations, predictions, and, yes, even strategic plans
have a way of focusing our attention and mobilizing our efforts
far more effectively than random action, or worse still, just
plodding along with no sense of the future. A boldly conceived
and declared future energizes everyone in your enterprise.
We never fail to be excited and inspired by what art historian
Kenneth Clark called "the shock of the new." And,
by inventing the future you may alter the competitive landscape
ands bring into being changes so great that they didn't exist
before.
You see, the future is really whatever we say it is going
to be. Once we decide what is possible, become inspired by
the possible, commit our resources, time and energy to achieving
specific objectives, we can turn future possibilities into reality.
Better than even money says you'll be wrong if you predict
the future. I say, you'll be right if you invent your own
future.
Business Coach http://paullemberg.com,
Paul Lemberg is the President of Quantum Growth Coaching,
the world's only fully systemized business coaching
http://quantumgrowthcoaching.com
program helping entrepreneurs to rapidly create More Profits
and More LifeT. Guaranteed
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