The security blanket of Future Planning | Business Uncertainty series

False construct #3: We gain certainty from planning the future

As homo sapiens we are blessed with a powerful frontal lobe that saw us transcend to the top of the food chain. As Yuval Noah Harari wrote eloquently in his book Sapiens, so much of our success has been down to our ability to envisage the future.

Translated into business, so much of business leadership conversations is based on aligning ourselves to a future state.  We define our strategic direction. We establish goals. We set missions. We rally behind BHAGS. We stay outcome focused. We work out what we need to do, so we can achieve. And we forget how to be.

To just be. In the present.

Over time we lose our muscle memory of listening to what’s going on. We lose our child like wonder. To be curious. And to explore.

The power of being in the now, as championed by Eckhart Tolle, in his seminal book The Power of Now, and picked up by high performance teams like the All Blacks, the Chicago Bulls and US Navy Seals is just as applicable to business.   

In design thinking and a systems-based approach, we tap into our inner child. We are deeply curious about what is. We explore what we don’t know. Continuing the parable of the man and his lost keys, we head into the darkness of the park armed with no answers, just questions. We focus only on the stage we’re in, staying present to the process, not the outcome. 

When we get out of our heads and the noise of trying to minimise future uncertainty, we open ourselves us to seeing all the opportunities that already exist all around us.   This gives us the power to see, as Sun Tzu in the Art of War said 2500 years ago “in the midst of crisis there is opportunity”.

How much of your organisational energy is spent in future thinking exercises versus exploring the possibilities of the present?