Future Savvy: Quality in Foresight

Sep 24 2008

Future Savvy

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Foresight is important. It is a key condition of success in most human activities. Dismayed, to say the least, in the standard of much of what passes for future thinking, I’ve written the book “Future Savvy” to help readers-consumers work out whether a prediction is likely to be valuable or not (before the end of the forecast period! ) It’s a project I very much view as ongoing learning, and I welcome any feedback, thoughts, experiences, and refinements.

Book Synopsis: Nobody can predict the future, but some forecasts are clearly better than others. Foresight is important—all decisions we make today will play out in the future. So wouldn’t it be useful to be able to tell a good forecast from a bad one? And even more so in these uncertain times.

“Future Savvy,” shows readers how to discern quality in future thinking, with examples and case studies of interest to business and policy/government decision-makers. It views expert foresight as a crucial resource, but it puts sharp tools in the hands of forecast users.

Thinking clearly about the future—about complex change—is hard to do. There’s no shortage of predictions available to business, policy or government institutions wanting to know more about the future. In fact it’s ridiculously easy to get predictions on any topic: we’re bombarded with projections every day—in newspapers and business magazines, and from government agencies, think tanks, consultant reports, stock market guides, and so on.

What’s hard is knowing when they are right.

Which of the endless sea of sources is valid? How do you know which predictions to take seriously, which to be wary of, and which to throw out entirely? Which ones do you let guide your decisions?

Future Savvy says ordinary people can judge that. Dismayed, to say the least by what passes as future thinking, the book holds up a mirror to the forecasting field—often over-quantified, or bound up in technobabble or wishful thinking—and offers a one-stop everyday reference that helps foresight consumers critically evaluate what analysts, consultants, brokers, and other gurus and talking heads are saying about tomorrow.

In sifting through predictive material, among the many thing readers of Future Savvy will be able to do are:

Distinguish between future-aligning and future-influencing forecasts; those that seek to anticipate situations and those that seek to change them
Know when data-driven forecasting is an appropriate approach and when it is not
Understand how frictional forces in the economy and society delay and shape technology-driven change.
See through a forecast to the motivations behind it and make allowances for the effect of perceptual biases
Understand the role of systemic forces, and judge when a scenario-based approach is valid

The book synthesizes economic and social perspective, information-assessment skills, and foresight tools into a single template that allows managers to apply rigorous and systematic “forecast filtering” to the predictions they face.

Future Savvy is a bright, approachable, non-technical read, with descriptive examples and case studies. It is designed to be the business or policy manager’s handy reference in their ongoing daily judgment about what the media, consultants, investment brokers, industry analysts and other self-appointed gurus and talking heads are saying about the future.

The better leaders’ view of the future, the better their decisions—and successes—will be. Future Savvy empowers them to use forecasts wisely and so improve their judgment in anticipating opportunities, avoiding threats, and managing uncertainty.

Chapter Summary:

Acknowledgements

Introduction: (Download here Future_Savvy_intro) [Excerpted from "Future Savvy" by Adam Gordon. Copyright (c) 2009. Published by AMACOM Books, a division of American Management Association, New York, NY. Used with permission. All rights reserved. http://www.amacombooks.org. Visitors to this site are granted permission to download or print out one (1) copy of the AMACOM content from the website for personal use only and agree not to reproduce, retransmit, distribute, disseminate, sell, publish, broadcast or circulate this material without prior written permission of the copyright owner (AMA).]

Chapter 1: Recognizing Forecast Intentions

Deals with considerations of how forecasts come about, who makes them, and with what intention. Those who research and produce forecasts, those who invest in understanding trends and drivers of change, and those (including the media) who bring the forecasts and their implications to our attention, inevitably have reasons for doing so – to benefit from the knowledge by seizing opportunities or avoiding threats or by affecting outcomes in the world. Understanding a forecast’s “return on investment” gives us an important vantage point in assessing the merits of a forecast.

Chapter 2: The Quality of Information

Shows how a forecast communicates information between forecaster and reader subject to the same standards of accuracy, truth-telling, and bias-control by which one would judge any communication. Forecasts can be very different in methods and goals, but all forecasts lay claim to factual truth, particularly truth in the data, and the argument deals with the various ways in which data can be less solid than it looks, even with the best intentions.

Chapter 3: Interpretation and Bias

Considers how data – whether good or bad in itself – can be interpreted or misinterpreted in forecasting, that is, the “political” aspects of forecasting. Just as there is no value-free look at history, so too there is no value-free look to the future and asking the right questions allows us be ready to mentally rebalance forecasts that are presented.

Chapter 4: Paradigms and Perception

Investigates how predictive statements are exposed to a broader form of interpretive bias that has to do with the forecaster’s mental model or “paradigm,” and the “zeitgeist” (spirit of the times) when the forecast is made. This chapter investigates situations where forecast failure is caused by failure to escape society’s current mental models – which often do not hold through the forecast period.

Chapter 5: The Utility Principle

Considers economic and market forces, and the role of consumers, in promoting or resisting the future. Without reigning in creative thinking, some simple economic filters inevitably apply direction or timing realism to futurist flights of fancy.

Chapter 6: Drivers, Blockers, and Trends

Consider drivers and blockers of change, and how viewing these dynamics improves forecast assessment. It identifies the roles of Drivers, Enablers, Friction, and Blockers acting on events to cause change or resist it, and problems in dumbly projecting current trends.

Chapter 7: The Limits of Quantitative Analysis

Discusses the role of statistical analysis and quantitative modeling in predicting the future – where this is possible and useful and where it is not, and why not.

Chapter 8: The Systems Perspective

Investigates “system effects,” which occur whenever different elements or variables that may appear isolated are in fact linked together, such that changes in one element cause changes in others. Anticipating future behavior of any variable hinges on identifying the broader systemic elements influencing it and failing to do this is a big part of what causes forecasts to fail.

Chapter 9: Living with Alternative Futures

Investigates non-predictive ways of approaching change – where the tone is more about managing uncertainty than predicting the future. It acknowledges unfathomable complexity of most future questions and provides perspectives that raise chances of success in an inherently unpredictable future.

Chapter 10: Forecast Filtering in Action

Illustrates the processes of the book by applying them in case studies to real-world sample forecasts that decision makers in business and policy areas might find themselves interacting with. This demonstrates how real everyday predictive material may be probed and critically evaluated, following the principles developed in previous chapters.

Chapter 11: A Forecast Filtering Checklist

This is a cross-cutting manager’s foresight filtering checklist which summarizes the principles of the book in one convenient, thematic list. Keep this with you when reading any forecast material!

Online Stockists

Future Savvy is in most major bookstores, and available from these online book outlets: