The new axis in world diplomacy and global leadership flexes its muscles next week on Hainan Island – the southernmost tip of China – with the BRICS summit on April 14 in Sanya, and the Boao Forum the following day.

BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) is already something of a “G5” of non-Western nations. Next week its leaders (China’s Hu Jintao, Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff, Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev, India’s Manmohan Singh, and South Africa’s Jacob Zuma) will set themselves to discuss their joint concerns in international affairs, economics, development, trade, security, etc.

More than anything, the event signals growing intention to coordinate views and act in closer alignment, and press towards future empowerment and responsibility of non-Western world leaders. Political clout has always gone with economic clout, and in this respect the future can be depended on to “rhyme” with the past.

BRICS countries already account for 40% of global population and 20% of global GDP – and they are the nations expected to grow most rapidly in GDP terms in the next decade and beyond, and to provide primary succor to neighbors in their regions.

Hainan 2011 is the third summit of the BRIC countries. The acronym BRIC was coined by Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) in 2001 in a chicken-and-egg prophesy: causing Russia, China, Brazil and India to see their interests as potentially aligned, and politically worth aligning. South Africa was accepted into the group in February.

Without stopping for breath, the diplomatic caravan moves 125 miles overnight up the coast of Hainan Island to Boao, where President Hu will give the keynote address the next day at the annual Boao Forum for Asia (BFA).

Boao is an undisguised knock-off of the World Economic Forum in Davos (with skiing replaced by snorkeling perhaps): a high-level gathering for policy and business influencers, with a similar nudge-and-influence mandate, here with an Asian focus. In attendence, in addition the the BRICS representatives, will be by Korea’s Kim Hwang-Sik, Spain’s Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Ukrainian’s Mikola Azarov, and New Zealand’s Bill English.

As the 24-hour news caravan moves on from Cairo to Libya in search of the next news fix, I’m reminded how poorly the media caravanserai thinks about the future: in this case, what real changes (if any) the fall of Mubarak may cause in Egypt, or in the political and business environment in the Middle East, or the world at large, going forward.

That a 30-year despot was toppled by people-power is without doubt a good outcome story for those with broadly democratic and civil-liberties biases. But the breathless pundits have been quick to call the Tahrir Square events “the ‘Berlin Wall’ of the Arab world.”

Is it? The Tahrir Square revolt tells us there is economic hardship and rumbling social discontent in Egypt, and that the populace is emboldened, but it doesn’t tell us much about the future.

Yes Egypt is the bellweather of the region. And yes, it has gone through a cataclysmic moment. But the future is all about momentum. Can we expect momentum? Is there reason to anticipate follow through? Can we expect the “fast-forward” button from now, or is it going to be the pause button that defines outcomes?

The fall of the Berlin Wall fall was symbolic: the symbol of Eastern bloc demise – a crack in the national prison that held back human aspiration. But it was also more than a symbol. In reality, on the ground, the political will that sustained the Wall was gone by 1989. Tricky as it was, and still is, the then West German government had a stake in and a will towards reintegrating the East. The situation went into fast-forward mode.

Egyptian protesters have dislodged a few boulders, and shaken a few certainties. But what is the political will in Egypt and among its Western allies going forward? That’s what will tell us about the future.

Head chopped off

The army is in charge, but the army is more closely allied with the ruling elite than the common protesters. The elite has had its head chopped off, but it can easily grow a new one. The issue it will highlight – as we have already seen – is stability, raising the specter of (a) chaos or (b) Islamists, or both, to stoke the military and cow the population.

Genuine chaos is in fact a high likelihood. Whenever the glue of power melts, and power (over the future) is up for grabs, agencies and interests will contend for it, seeking to win absolutely while the chips are in the aire, or to be in the best pre-pax position when they fall. A merry-go-round of tottering regimes, interspersed by chaos, or even a Lebanon-style multifaceted civil war between army, ruling elite, Islamists, warlords, students, etc., is surely a more-than-possible scenario.

The deeper story, as many have pointed out, is the economic, infrastructural, and civil weakness that defines Egypt, whoever takes over. It has a young and growing population, a stalled economy with chronic high unemployment, inequitable wealth distribution, poor local and regional governance, and corruption.

This is why it should not be believed that any party or interest can deliver a new future. Without considerable change at the grassroots, democratic fanfare, would be just that — fanfare.

So if the political will in Egypt is both fractured and hamstrung, what about outside interested parties and the West?

Friendly dictator

What will be future-defining is whether the US and its allies drop the “friendly dictator” policy — propping up corrupt despots because they are externally benign (and better than the Islamic alternative.) If they keep this up, the outcome for Egypt and the region is a fractured “pause” situation, no matter what blather about democracy, elections, human rights, new constitutions, makes the airwaves, from Hillary Clinton down.

But if, by some albeit unlikely turn of events, the external political towards Egypt was reshaped to transcend self-interest and neglect; and starts to support quiet, consistent, financial and non-financial development of the mechanisms and institutions of civil governance, backed by education and micro-loan economic stimulus – then the future is on the move and business managers should start realigning their thinking towards stable long-term growth for the region.

The leaks created predictable dismay at the State Department and beyond, along with gritted-teeth promises to bring perpetrators to justice, and there is enough outrage and embarrassment in high places that this kind of action will no doubt go forward.

But, from a foresight perspective, it’s just “noise.” It is not the future. There can be no muzzling in the digital world. Just like we nod and smile when China tries to keep a finger in the Internet dyke, we should nod and smile at these diplomatic machinations to hold back the electronic tide.

A long time coming

This kind of upset has been a long time coming for the diplomatic community. Over the last 20 years, most industries and organizations have been forced to adapt to a world where instant copying and distribution of digital content means that electronic information is soon, if not instantly, freely available in the public domain. That is, an electronic document is effectively a public document no matter what anyone says or does.

Some have learned the hard way. Media companies slow to imbibe this new reality, from Encyclopedia Brittanica to Blockbuster, have gone to the wall. The music industry has fought a long fight against unsanctioned electronic redistribution, a fight it must ultimately lose. Police departments have found out that any time “policing” is going on, someone with a cell-phone is videoing it (digitizing it), and next thing that’s in the public domain too.

So now its US (and global) diplomacy’s turn to learn the digital lesson: if it’s digital, it’s in the public domain — already, or soon.

There are of course good arguments for secrecy. The sensitive baby-steps of international agreements need privacy protection. Leaking information may embarrass partners, scupper deals, put lives at risk, or compromise counter-terrorism. This is all true.

But to wag fingers over this is like EMI saying: “creator incentive is compromised by copyright violation.” True, but there go mp3s, zooming around the Internet.

Far from the public gaze

As already evident, first response of the authorities will be to try to shore up the system. The Secret internet Protocol distribution (SIPDIS) electronic archive will disappear or be ushered behind much higher security, access clearances will be hiked, and tougher followup and penalties for official secrets violations will be enacted —to make it safe for diplomats to go back in the water. That is, back to the 19th Century gentlemanly art of a quiet word here, a confidential nudge there, far from the public gaze.

But electronic information cannot be contained, and to think that it can is to live stupid. We inhabit a world where the electronic machinations of diplomacy and national interest can be sent anonymously to a drop box at any time. If the forces of national interest close down the current actors and Web sites, others will open (broadly supported by the quality news media.) Digital capabilities cannot be withdrawn and the thought of an anonymous electronic drop box cannot be unthought.

The writing is on the wall, and it says: “This Writing is On Everyone’s Wall.”

So we should anticipate that the public going forward will have a much greater visibility into the diplomatic process no matter what diplomats want or think is best.

The issue for senior government leaders is to choose their response path. Do they, as expected, act furiously to preserve the past; or do they embrace the future of their sector and perhaps even exploit the possibilities in it? Not everything should be made public, that’s what “top secret” is for. But for the rest, bringing the public into a high-quality, two-way sense of what is being done in its name could bear fruit of real political grounding for diplomatic initiatives, therein greater legitimacy.

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“The world around us is changing in ways that may have profound effects on the emergency management enterprise. Collectively, we must begin to think more broadly and over a longer timeframe if we are to understand these changes and their potential impacts. To this end, FEMA has launched a Strategic Foresight initiative (SFI), the objective of which is straightforward: to seek to understand how the world around us is changing and how those changes may affect the future of emergency management and our community…

“The SFI can serve as one important tool in the development of both strategy and plans. By understanding the potential future environment, organizations will better understand and anticipate risk while ensuring opportunities can be fully capitalized. For example, the SFI may identify new or increasing capability requirements as well as emerging capabilities that do not exist today. Such identifications could support decisions about future investments as well as planning activities and exercises. In a more indirect manner, the SFI can help establish a research agenda for the emergency management field by highlighting areas of emerging relevance and the key questions that remain unanswered.”

[On March 1, 2003, FEMA became part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.]

I was lucky enough to be asked to do the opening address at the conference, and even luckier in that this Web site: South Africa – The Good News summarized some of what I and others said:

“Adam Gordon, Foresight Project Director and author of “Future Savvy” gave us some pointers:

1. Beware of sector experts, they are deeply entrenched in the present.
2. The consumer and choice is the determinant, not technology.
3. Change is about overestimating followed by underestimating.
4. Trends are patterns in the data, behind the trend are enablers and drivers, but frictional forces exist and in front of the trend are turners and blockers.
5. Trend extrapolation is limited, don’t fall foul of the turkey syndrome.
6. There is well behaved and badly behaved change. Both can be predictable and unpredictable. The potential of sudden shifts always lurks.
7. Scenario planning wraps up the key uncertainties over which we have no control.

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“The ‘BIG’ question he asks is ‘when do we influence the future and when do we adapt?’ There are big predictable forces out there (like population growth / the diminishing availability of oil etc), and there are big unpredictable forces out there (ja, well no fine!). Importantly, we can design our ability to influence and we can design the way we adapt. It is critical that we are able to do both.

“But managing the future is more than just about scenario planning, it is also about the implementation of the plan. It is about developing a methodology that prioritises, engages with stakeholders, and enables proactive actions on the ground.

So how?

Some important considerations (from various speakers):

1. Often we know what causes the problem (poverty, crime, HIV) but we don’t know what to do about it.
2. Often the logic that gives rise to the problem is not the logic that will solve the problem.
3. Mostly the problem does not contain the makings of the solution.
4. Solutions in one area can exacerbate problems in another.
5. The current situation has momentum, change to the system should happen concurrently not suddenly.

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“What is critical is the foresight process, it must be well-informed so that the implementation strategies that follow have buy-in, are doable, are relevant and far-reaching. There is a very real danger of visions being disconnected, unachievable and, at the end of the day, a pipe-dream.”

Dr Elizabeth Dostal talked of a stakeholder democracy in which she promoted the design of a matrix that recognised different stakeholder levels on the vertical axis and different environmental dimensions on the horizontal axis. A multi-level, multi-dimensional model.

“Imagine” she said, “putting four Nobel Peace laureates together and asking them what the causes of global conflict are. One may argue poverty, another ideology, another resources, and another greed. In no time, they would all be in different silo’s defending their view, in one sense they are all right, but in another sense they have not looked at the whole picture. A multi-level, multi-dimensional model would reveal this, the gaps in their logic, and the opportunities for agreement.”

In a fascinating recent development, John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Richard Lugar, Republican of Indiana, introduced the Start-up Visa Act to the US Senate, as reported in Inc. magazine.

The legislation is a forward-looking bid to turbo-charge entrepreneurial venturing in the U.S. by attracting foreign entrepreneurs and connecting them to U.S. capital, therein driving new economic growth and local jobs. What’s really interesting is it goes against past common wisdom that recessions are ‘bad for immigration’ (as citizens demand job protection.)

If passed, the bill gives U.S. visas to foreigners who can raise $100,000 from an angel investor or $250,000 from a qualified VC firm. After two years, if the immigrant entrepreneur can create five or more jobs (excluding family), attract an additional $1 million in investment, or produce $1 million in revenue, he or she gets a green card (permanent residency.)

The only current option, the EB-5 business investment visa, requires immigrants to invest at least $1 million in the U.S. and employ 10 people.

Job creation

The  National Venture Capital Association says 25 percent of America’s venture-backed, publicly-traded businesses, incl. Google, Yahoo!, eBay and Intel have been founded or co-founded by immigrants. According to Richard Herman, author of Immigrant, Inc.: Why Immigrant Entrepreneurs Are Driving the New Economy, nearly all U.S. job creation in the past 20 years has come from companies less than five years old.

The history of US immigration policy has been schizophrenic to say the least, with periods of great social openness followed by about-face door slamming. The slamming has always corresponded to economic downturns or anxiety thereto. But here we have the opposite effect. And we have legislators taking a forward view! Both proof that the future is sure to surprise us.

“Profiles of the Future” at the Foresight Institute 2010 conference

Says Saffo: “Futurists today are talking to the wrong people, don’t have good methods (for the most part,) and are still doing the kinds of silly things we did (or they did) when futurism got started…We should have an instant prohibition on anyone who writes an article titled: ‘Top 10 Trends to Watch’… We’ve got to get rid of this ‘future entertainment’ stuff and ‘top-10 trends’ stuff, and get serious.”

Part of the raison d’etre of Future Savvy, of course, is to demythologize exactly this kind of self-promoting infotainment foresight, and give real-world managers a way to see through it. Thinking long-term is too important to allow it to be tainted by snake-oil salesmen. Saffo admits he’s ranting on this topic (as I do too.) In a less ranting mode, he would probably admit there are also many high-quality thinkers doing exemplary foresight work. Certainly he’s all in favor of thinking long-term, and doing it better.

Saffo’s solution? “Move foresight to the masses; make policy conversations cool; engage powerful myopics (short-term thinkers on Wall Street and other financial institutions); engage politicians (incl. via the OTA). But he doesn’t say how, and of course therein lies the rub.

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Those of you who know this blog know that I try to keep it updated every 7-10 days with real content I have personally written. But this last week I have held back my posts. In the wake of the truly humbling loss of life and human calamity we have seen, somehow no futures posting seemed quite right.

In a foresight community we are, I think, rightly vociferous in getting decision makers to see the benefits of taking a long-term view, despite the systemic short-termism of incentive cycles (annual reports, political elections, and – dare I say it – banking bonuses) that most organizations and human systems use as basis of reward. But at times like this, similar to post-Katrina, post-the 2004 tsunami, and previous epic-scale natural and human disasters, we should not bury our heads in the sand of tomorrow. For now it is the present that counts: focusing on what matters to save lives and give food, shelter, and a modicum of respect to those with shattered lives.

The ‘social’ side of disasters

When the dust does finally settle, and there is time to draw some lessons, there are two future-anticipating principles that apply strongly in the Haiti disaster. The first is that fragile systems are always more likely to have ‘a collapse in their future.’ I’ve been reading Flirting with Disaster by Marc Gerstein, and one of its points (not new, but well described) is the role that human organization plays in facilitating or magnifying a ‘natural’ disaster. Yes, an earthquake can’t be controlled, or even forecast, but what its actual total impact is (the future we should have anticipated) has significantly to do with the efficacy of human organization, including preparedness, robustness, early-warning, and mitigation systems. Where these are in place and working well we should expect a different future.

Put another way: since man has had any say over his domain there have been no purely ‘natural’ disasters, and there will not be any in the future. Every future disaster will likewise be the product of natural forces meeting social organization.

Opportunity jolts

The second principle is that change often happens by jolts, that is, via the application of a sudden and overwhelming force rather than via gradualism. Particularly, a shock from the outside can ‘free up’ a situation and be the catalysing event that sets off wider and ultimately fundamental change. This is (best case interpretation) what the toppling of Saddam was about. Freeing the system. ‘Black Swan –ing’ the system, perhaps.

It the case of Haiti we have, by all accounts, a nation mired in poverty and corruption. What it is going to get from the events of the last week and the weeks to come, is like a punch in the jaw followed by a lot of world attention, solace, and aid. Add them together and it could be a system-busting event, a real opportunity to break out of existing governance cultures and existing global relations. History suggests Haiti won’t grasp the opportunity, but the window will be open for a while, and good foresight would keep this potential upside scenario in mind and even work to facilitate it.

So to the Copenhagen climate change summit, and all the luminaries and dignitaries and celebrities landing at København airport, many of them in private jets.

http://www.cph.dk/CPH/DK/MAIN

This tells us something about the future, and what it says is: ‘needs must.’ What are they going to do, row a boat to Copenhagen? Scale that up and you have the real, actual future. People will fly. In fact the entire new global middle class of billions will fly. And they will heat their homes. And they will eat meat, and so on. And any even remotely democratic system that tries to take away this will be out on its ear.

But we will of course move to cleaner, renewable, sustainable systems. How fast this happens depends essentially on money, which in turn depends on political will, which in turn depends on public concern. Money is required to fund new energy technology research, and — the core issue of Copenhagen this week — it is needed to buy off industrializing countries.

There’s no doubt that climate change (manmade or not) is real, and a real danger. But when scientists and academics are worried about it that means little in terms of changes to human practices. When the public gets concerned — as they now are — we get the possibility of fundamental change. This is true of the future generally, not just climate and the environment.

Between the public sentiment and the money lies political will. Essentially the political will of post-industrial economies on the one side, who find it politically easy, relatively, to pay the price of emissions constraints vs. that of developing economies which will be choked economically and therefore politically by those constraints.

Inequality

Correlating degrees warming with ecological and therefore social upheaval is important. But to think that is what the argument is about is to miss the point. The point is global inequality and its future, and how developing economies are not going to allow emissions constraints to further entrench it.

The future goes always to the most powerful side. That’s what power is for: determining the future. The sides are both strong in this dispute, so this battle will not be won or lost in Copenhagen this week. We are still in its early stages. The effects of climate change are incremental (unlike, say, nuclear holocaust) meaning there is plenty of room for postponement even if the planet can’t and won’t ultimately take it. And those who would occupy the moral high ground have burned public and private jet fuel to be there to do it, and will no doubt indulge in a bit of Smørrebrød and Frikadeller too. Needs must.

So expect the political clock to remain stuck as it has been for a while now, at ’5 minutes to midnight,’ while the issue smolders slowly without definitive resolution — until technology advances get human energy, finally, off fossil fuels and the problem works its way out of environmental and human systems.

There’s an old joke in journalism from the 1970s that goes: “You can write the same headline on any and every story about Israel’s relationship with its neighbors: ‘Prospects for Middle-East Peace Dim.’”

Sure, it’s partly Eeyeore-ish journalist wit. But what’s interesting from a foresight point of view is that, running the world forward 40 years shows it was a reasonable understanding of the future. Why? Solid foresight is always predicated on a solid understanding of the forces for and against change. “Prospects for peace dim” acknowledged that forces and enablers of change were overpowered by what was preventing anything fundamental from happening (friction and blockers in Future Savvy terms.)

The basic truth is that Israel-Middle East is a complex situation characterized by a more-or-less equal balance of power. Israel has military and nuclear superiority, and US backing. Arab countries have oil, population numbers and population growth, and a billion more-or-less sympathetic moslems around the world, and therefore time on their side. They also have, particularly in Gaza, relatively widespread poverty and low welfare and educational development, which is  a force against moderation and therefore a negotiated settlement.

A genuine balance of power means we have equilibrium, and therefore should expect no change. That’s why we’ve had plenty of skirmishes, but no change in 40 years.

Looking out for the next 40 years, is this still the case? Can we write “Prospects for Middle East Peace Dim” on all news stories for another two generations? Following the foresight logic above, this depends on whether anything breaks the fundamental equilibrium. There are four issues apparently large enough to threaten the status quo:

• Water shortages and water conflicts
• Change in US policy
• The end of oil-based transport energy
• Iran going toxic

Water is a favorite of trend-foresight sessions. It sounds like the key issue in a rising-population world. In theory yes, but it’s unclear whether it will lead to anything more than local conflicts or wars, which in Israels case, we have already. On US policy, the Obama administration is attempting to show even-handedness, but its strategic interest lies with Israel as military ally and ideologically temperate (democratic, at least) bastion in the region. So no change there either. On oil, we are definitely in an era where – for security and climate change reasons – fossil fuel is entering it’s twilight phase, which will erode revenues and therefore power of ME Arab states. But, as mentioned earlier, poverty is as great an obstacle to peace as any other. (Remember the Israeli “let’s-grow-our-way-out-of the-situation-together peace platform of the 1990s, seeing tackling the development issues as the root of creating moderate mindsets across the region.)

That leaves Iran which may change the balance if it really goes toxic (develops and uses nuclear weapons in terror strikes.) This is a low futures likelihood – it’s not just luck that nukes have stayed in their box since 1945 – no state wants to carry the stain of the nuclear pariah for all time. There’s a moral blocker on this outcome that has worked for generations. Nuclear powers rattle, but the don’t bite. But … what if the wildcard scenario of a massive nuclear strike on Israeli soft targets were to happen, what then? The current low-grade hostile standoff would become a supernova, but we’d still have power balance, and while we have that we’ll have status quo and  journalists can expect to write “Prospects for Middle East Peace Dim” on top of every story about the region for another 40 years.

Allowing for the usual pep-talk style of these things, it’s possible to boil the list down to five key things, which will indeed be essential to technology enabled industry and social change in the lifetime of today’s college graduates:

1. Non-pulluting, inexhaustible energy. Schwartz mentioned potential sources including fusion and gasoline-excreting molecules. “We need something new for the long run, and it will require new physics, new chemistry, new materials, new biology, or likely some combination.”

2. A “bio-industrial revolution” to make production of goods more energy efficient and environmentally sustainable.

3. Advancing understanding of the human brain, and developing new means to combat aging effects.

4. Improving agriculture to raise yields while reducing environmental costs.

5. Better urban planning, civil engineering, and smart architecture for more sustainable cities.

A fairly well known list – yet these are the key issues. But the most interesting thing of all that Schwartz said was this:”graduates should not assume they can do it alone. Collaboration is a key ingredient of progress.”

“At some point in the next few years, probably by the time you are 30 … you will have to make a life trajectory decision that no one tells you about: Are you mainly going to work on your own or work through others?” Schwartz said. “Many engineers, scientists, artists, poets, writers have great lives working mostly by themselves. But there are many things you cannot do on your own. If you want to lead research teams in larger organizations, or design and construct new buildings, or make movies or start new businesses, the skills of human collaboration are essential to success.”

In other words, collaboration – the means to and willingness to and resources to collaborate (globally) – is a key enabler of important breakthroughs. In theory everyone knows this and everyone agrees. But how much of competitive and legal process is all about protecting individual or national work, that is disrupting collaboration?

So in addition to the grand technology challenges for coming lifetimes, I offer a similar grand policy challenge (perhaps for Kennedy School grads of 2009): create the policies that genuinely promote and encourage collaboration. Do not encourage people, or companies, or countries to see benefit in working on their own. Facilitate and reward information sharing at every level… and then the Rensselaer grads and their equivalent around the country and the world will really be able to create the future that Schwartz envisions.

For event report see Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute http://news.rpi.edu/update.do?artcenterkey=2585

Guinness' view of the pub of 2259. Image credit: Chris Bainbridge

The Guinness Pub-of-the-Future is a St. Patrick’s day (March 17) promotion. Nothing wrong with a little bit of fantasy foresight. But what they come up is so “20th-century-futurism” it’s hilarious. Among various reports on the project – for example in the Telegraph – the following features are foreseen:

- robotic doorman, greets you by name
- cash obsolete; orders via RFID; payments deducted automatically
- your product tailored to you on the spot
- touch-sensitive tables, send your order straight to the bar
- socializing via virtual / hologram technology
- a running tally of the number of units consumed.

Yawn. Even on it’s own terms (minimal constraints of realism) this is a totally derivative piece of foresight. These “innovations” are the staples of an infotech view of the future, and they have all been thought and spoken of countless times. Also many of the elements and services cited are already here, or not more than a decade away. What we have is the current pub assumptions + digital steriods, while the year 2259 will be, truly, another world.

The limits to growth
But all this leads us to more interesting industry foresight problem. Will there be pubs in even a generation, never mind 250 years? What the Telegraph dryly observes at the bottom of its report is that 39 pubs are closing every week Why? A number of driving forces are coming together:

First is strict drink-driving limits, which makes “the local” literally local or nothing. Second, pubs in the UK have traditionally been a refuge from housing that was poor and/or underheated. Unprecedented waves of affluence (credit-crunch notwithstanding) have led to widespread housing “do-ups.” It’s now a valid option for most people to spend their leisure time at home and entertain at home.

Then there’s the where’s-my-friend trend. You’re likely to go down the pub if your friends are there, but not if they are where most people’s friends are: on Facebook.

The social-legislative clock
Fourth, no matter how you dress it up, pubs are retail outlets. So, like all retail they are under the cosh in a Wal-mart / Tesco world. The price gap between store and pub has become too great for most consumers to cross with good conscience.

Which brings us to the current price-floor legislation bid. Alcohol is a huge social cost in terms of health care and violence. Drink costs the NHS £3bn a year, and the total price of alcohol to the taxpayer is estimated at five times that. Eventually these costs will become unjustifiable so, like smoking before it, the social-legislative clock is ticking for booze. As the 2-martini lunch has become the 2-seltzer lunch, the trend to social stigmatization is clear, and legislators will follow (not with Prohibition, but with a much more subtle community-endorsed squeeze).

Like the good politician he is, Gordon Brown won’t let his party get ahead of the trend. But the trend is clear and it bodes ill for pubs.

The IFTF’s full map is available for download here.  Quick aside: these maps, putting complex forces into visuals, have defined IFTF’s public (and client, one presumes) communications for over five years, and have raised the bar of excellence in the foresight communications. The company has produced many such outstanding maps, some publicly available.

The new map and Sir Fred-gate are unrelated of course. But here was the connection for me: The IFTF map lists six “Key Driving Forces” (2007-2017) in the area of sustainability, and the first is:
“An Imperative for Looking Long: The 21st century will test our ability to grasp the future impacts of present choices, but even as we struggle to incorporate future knowledge into our day-to-day decisions, we’re tuning up our bodies and minds and even our cultural frameworks for a much longer view.”

My question is, “really?” Is the long view really a driver – something that will drive change and shape the future? Or do we hope it is. Are we trying to talk it into being?

No question that the long-term view is crucial. Solving just about any social, technological, or environmental problem requires sustained long-term action. And everyone who works in foresight keeps evangelizing long-termism. But, in fact, what we have in industry and government is rampant short-termism and there is no indication this will change, despite the crisis and many heartfelt calls.

Linking big to long

The problem with Sir Goodwin’s package (in career and in retirement) is that the reward numbers were based on short-term company returns. “Hey, we made lots of money this year, so you get a big bonus, and you get a big bonus,” etc. But a few years down the line  – in the long term – it turns out that no bonuses were valid (if a bonus is, truly, a reward for success).

Put it another way: in finance, as in other aspects of society, technology, and the environment, we don’t know if we’ve succeeded or failed until the long-term numbers are in. Few would have a problem with handsome rewards for a valuable job well done, but those rewards must surely be delayed, and delayed, until we are in command of the long view of the performance.

Easy in theory, hard in practice. Perhaps impossible in practice when most politicians and legislators are themselves on a short 3-7 year cycle, like CEOs. I have some inkling from the IFTF map that the thinking is that life-extending technologies will improve to the point where people will really see themselves in for the long haul, and so adopt a longer perspective on benefits and rewards.

Time on the clock

Perhaps. But, life-technologies aside, plenty of decision-makers – Goodwin included – still have a lot of time left on the clock and that doesn’t appear to stop them chasing and cashing in short-term incentives at the expense of the future. Or legislators (and the public who votes them in) structuring performance rating on our immediate perception of their performance.

What we have, and what we have increasingly had (the trend) over the past few decades, is systemic short-termism. Winning in the next annual report or the next election is what what leaders’ rewards are based on. Incentives for politicians or business leaders or even scientists or engineers to make a better world for 2025 or 2050 are negligable.

Until there is reason to anticipate that this fundamental underlying short-term incentive structure and mentality changes (that is – convince me – who will change it and how?) the future savvy perspective must say that the “long-term imperative” remains a nice sound-bite, but not a material driver of anything.

The mood is justly sombre at the World Economic Forum’s Davos meeting this year, as grim-faced world leaders mull over the dismal state of the global economy and how to fix it. This is in marked contrast to recent years, when the top executives were warmly congratulating themselves on the general state of things.

In one sense this is perfectly understandable. The crisis is upon us and leaders should be directly and practically involved in tackling it. On another level it’s profoundly disturbing, because world leaders and senior managers should be doing more than merely responding to situations. When crises occur, crisis management becomes part of a leader’s job, but their real job is thinking ahead effectively to avoid crises and, on the positive side, develop opportunities.

Put another way: the heads of a companies or countries – Davos-level people – are tasked far beyond effective daily management. They are tasked, fundamentally, with negotiating the VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) world on behalf of the rest of us. If not them, then who?

This requires foresight and vision. In this sense, many who are at Davos this week are responsible for the current crisis. They failed to foresee it, in fact they generally endorsed the growth of complex financial instruments, the shadow banking system, and private equity growth –- much of which bypassed SEC or equivalent regulation, and which is now seen to be the root cause of the meltdown.

In fact much of the “new finance” system was thought to spread and therefore actually lower risk. Turns out that was a poor view of the future. In fact the present situation as a whole is the result of key decision-makers operating on a poor view of future. As a group, their mental model was not open to bad outcomes, or even just alternative outcomes to what was commonly expected.

Could we have thunk it?

Their response might be: “nobody can predict the future!” “Easy to say after the event!” This is true. But it’s common knowledge that there were those who foresaw the mess — The Times identified at least 10. As Davos attendees might now be forced to agree, some forecasts are clearly better than others.

This is where executive leaders can learn from the foresight field and particularly the history of failed predictions. Everyone relies on predictions for their guide to the future – nobody can be an expert in every field. And there’s never a shortage of them – they are frequently published in the media, offered by consultancies and think tanks, and are a key part of Davos.

While getting a prediction is easy, the key leadership skill is to be able to tell a good one from a bad one: that’s what turns a forecast into a strategic resource. That is what leads to better decisions, better plans, and better actions.

Can one do that? Can one critically assess a particular or consensus-held view of the future, to identify its strengths and weaknesses? Absolutely yes. Among the tests one can run on a prediction are:

•    assessing motivation – who is speaking and what their agenda might be, particularly if they have an interest in maintaining a current system or shaping the emergence of a new one
•    determining whether the tools used are appropriate to the level and type of uncertainty faced. High-uncertainty situations and long-term views require different approaches to standard modeling
•    questioning consensus mental-models and forcing consideration of alternative outcomes. All foresight is swayed by “zeitgeist” – spirit of the times – and good forecasts swim against this tide.

These are just a few among the many forecast tests one can run, as detailed in Future Savvy.  But even if Davos attendees had been applying just these three in previous years, their foresight would have been greatly improved. It won’t help with this crisis, but it might forestall the next.

* This article, authored by Adam Gordon, was first edited and published by Bnet.co.uk

The environmental pitch is a new salvo in the old “war on drugs,” which has been waged backwards and forwards, over decades now, without being won. It’s worth stopping to think why it has not been won, because it’s a salutory lesson in thinking about the future. It has nothing to do with the morals of “pushers” or willpower of “addicts” or the “the youth of today.” It is perfectly explained by the reinforcing loop (aka viscious/virtuous cycle) that dominates the drug-prevention system. This can be diagrammed as follows:

Alternatively the identical idea may be represented as a “fixes that fail” archetype, as defined in “The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook” (Peter Senge et al, Doubleday, 1994, p125).

For more on systems thinking see The Systems Dynamics Society. The role of systems thinking in improving our understanding of change (or non-change) is also the topic of Chapter 8 of Future Savvy.

So, yes, these are simple charts. We could make them more complex by filling in details of all agents and institutions at work in drug supply, demand, and prevention – but this would only elaborate, not alter the logic of the system. Either way, the chart allows us to see the wood for the trees, which is that drugs and their prevention are in a reinforcing loop. While it appears that preventive laws and their enforcement will lower drug use, in fact law enforcement constrains availability, pushing up the price, which makes production more attractive, which creates incentives to farm (incl, in rainforests), which raises supply, which leads to drug pushing (marketing by another name), which leads to drug trial, usage and addiction, therefore social concern, and therein renewed pressure for stricter legislation and crackdown, which sends the loop round once again. (There are many side effects of this main loop, including increased street crime – funding drug habits; the creation and enrichment of gangs and warlords; and so on.)

Scratching doesn’t help

Nobody in their right mind wants this to happen. But even a kindergarden child can see that policing and jailing, like a good scratch, feels good in the short term but just drives the wheel of the problem in the long term. What are the alternatives? From time to time pressure is brought to bear on production, for example, trying to obliterate coca or poppy fields, or disrupt supply chains. But this is also hopeless because as long as there is a good price to be had, the systemic reality is that drugs will be grown, produced, and shipped. What shows great promise is tackling price. The legalization lobby is all about capping price by making drugs legal, supervised, available, and free (or low-price), removing the superprofits from the industry and thereby blunting the primary interest of drug bosses and warlords. (This is what happened when Prohibition was repealed).

From a systemically informed viewpoint, only a solution that changes the system (interrupts the reinforcing cycle) can change the future. In other words nothing significant will occur in the future until the system changes, and removing drug barons’ price interest is the only way to do it. Until this happens the savvy forecast must be: no change.

Educating consumers

But the public is not ready for such policies. So we are left with the holding pattern we are in. And this includes exhorting the consumer, as Vice-President Calderón is doing. (The same story and interview was featured earlier this week on Radio 4′s “Today” Show.) He’s targeting the middle class, occasional, and recreational drug users who, he says, otherwise recycle, and compost, and “drive a hybrid” and buy fair trade coffee, and so on, and so should be desist from drug use because of it’s environmental impact.) This is not the first time that consumers have been “educated” – school and public education programs consistently target, inform, and discourage consumers and would-be consumers (including, of course, in the laughable “Just Say No” campaign.) All good or at least harmless work, in a good cause.

Into this Calderón has added a new-to-the-industry category of demotivator – the environment. Sure, this should work in giving middle-class consumers pause. But if environmentally sensitive cocaine customers are a big part of the market — and it’s hard to tell if they really are — expect producers to just respond with Green reassurance, real or fake: “No trees were ploughed under in the creation of your snort.”