MORE ON FUTURING

6 Supertrends Shaping the Future

A brief review from the June 12, 2006 Blog:
An excellent book for teaching is, Futuring: The Exploration of the Future by Edward Cornish. As Cornish writes: “Most of us know better than to drive down a highway at eighty miles an hour without looking at the road ahead. But when it comes to steering our careers and businesses, we hardly ever consider what’s coming toward us. We often wind up in a nasty ‘crash’ that we could have avoided if we had better anticipated possible developments. This is where futuring can help.” Cornish is the president of the World Future Society and the editor of its magazine, The Futurist. As you will learn as you read the book, futuring is not “fortune-telling.” It is the science of looking at trends, studying demographics and researching attitudes and behaviors that will ultimately affect societies.
Today will be a brief review of what Cornish labels, “The 6 Supertrends Shaping the Future”:
1. Technological Progress
Technology is lowering the number of workers needed in manufacturing, technology and the service industry (web sites provide sales and service for example). In China, over half of this year’s college graduates will not find work. Technology can build better cars, appliances or heavy equipment better than a human counterpart. This increases a company’s profitability and pushes workers into lower paying jobs, if the jobs exist. The only jobs being imported to the US are in healthcare, specifically, nurses. Higher unemployment will be a way of life in the future.
2. Economic Growth
The sheer volume of people insures that economic growth will continue. It may not yield double-digit growth, but commodities will be consumed and more products will be required. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has stated that the pace at which America consumes will require 4 Earths to keep up supplies over the next 100 years. Economic growth is a self-sustaining process.
3. Improving Health
There’s a major difference between longevity and quality of life. Medical advances can keep people alive for many years in a state of total dependence. That is not quality of life; people would say that if they can’t do the things they enjoy, then life is not worth living. Unfortunately, the US has no euthanasia option. Hence, people live on.
Longevity is changing our view on living. Older people who require more interventions are absorbing an unequal share of the resources. It has been estimated that 90 percent of all Medicare payouts occur in the last 10 percent of life. This “never quit attitude” has changed people’s expectations about death.
4. Increasing Mobility
Barney Frank, Congressman from Massachusetts, said that you cannot easily address gas consumption in the US because we have spent decades telling people to move from the cities and towns and commute to work. The decision to build interstate highway systems instead of mass transit was made over 50 years ago. The automobile is the US’s means of travel.
This kind of individual/family mobility also means that communities no longer have the kind of familiarity that existed when several generations of families would live in the same town. People no longer have a commitment to community beyond what serves their family.
5. Environmental Decline
Oil and other fossil fuels may be the current news headlines but it will be water that ultimately determines the strength of a country. Clean water is essential for survival; just look at how hard it is for people in the arid areas of Africa to live from day to day. Progress hardly matters when starvation is hours away.
Also, if you have seen Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth, you should be concerned about global warming. Many scientists in that film feel that the Earth could be inhabitable north of Equator in just 5 years (around 2011-2012).
6. Loss of Traditional Culture
Thomas Friedman of the New York Times has written two books and hundreds of opinion articles about the “flat world.” This notion that people will morph into one community is the essence of unrest and the “holy war” being fought to preserve radical religious views. But, don’t limit your vision of terrorists to those from the Middle East. White Supremists also have a agenda of “purity” and much of the uproar about immigration quotas and even gay marriage are examples of people fighting to preserve their view of life.

GROWTH <> LEADERSHIP <> EXCELLENCE
© 2006 3 Minute Learning LLC

LEARN AS YOU EXPLORE?

7 Lessons of Great Explorers

School is a great place to learn history. The past is easy to teach and measure. But, there’s a saying for investors: “Past performance is not indicator of future performance.” So is the case with learning: focusing on the past doesn’t help prepare people for the future.
An excellent book on teaching forward is titled, Futuring: The Exploration of the Future by Edward Cornish. As Cornish writes: “Most of us know better than to drive down a highway at eighty miles an hour without looking at the road ahead. But when it comes to steering our careers and businesses, we hardly ever consider what’s coming toward us. We often wind up in a nasty ‘crash’ that we could have avoided if we had better anticipated possible developments. This is where futuring can help.”
Cornish is the president of the World Future Society and the editor of its magazine, The Futurist. As you will learn as you read the book, futuring is not “fortune-telling.” It is the science of looking at trends, studying demographics and researching attitudes and behaviors that will ultimately affect societies.
It seems to me that the main reason that people choose not to be a futurist is because it takes thinking. A good futurist will read, explore and think more than the person satisfied with the past. I suspect the main impetus for so many people be against continuous learning is the resistance to unlearn “history.” This does not mean world or American history, but that knowledge that fits our conceptual framework. What we know provides us with a comfort zone and a safe place to express our opinions and make choices.
An interesting section of the book deals with the great explorers. There are many lessons to be learned from those that explored without a “safety net.” Cornish has listed 7 lessons:
1. Prepare for what you will face in the future
It seems like the old axiom from the Boy Scouts is a must: Be Prepared. The age of the specialist needs to be set aside for the age of the diverse. The world is changing rapidly and the knowledge base turns over every 6 months or sooner. That’s much different from earlier generations when new knowledge may not appear for years. One of the keys in knowledge management is understanding what to keep.
2. Anticipate future needs
Businesses work in 3 to 6 month intervals. It is easy to understand why behemoths like General Motors get “caught” with the wrong consumer products. It can also explain why the majority of second generation businesses fail. What worked before is not necessarily what people want now.
3. Use poor information when necessary
Businesses are obsessed with analysis. Most likely the FEAR of making a wrong decision leads to paralysis by analysis. If no one makes a decision, no one can be wrong. Unfortunately, there are companies making decisions without all the “due diligence” and they will capture the new consumer market.
4. Expect the unexpected
“What will go wrong, will go wrong” is one of Murphy’s Laws. If you go into something without the necessary back-up plans, you increased your chance of failure. It is impossible to anticipate all that could happen, so be ready with an arsenal of alternatives.
5. Think long-term as well as short-term
When I first started in working in a large corporation, thinking in 5 year increments was expected. As factors influencing business accelerated, the leaders thought that 5 year strategies were a waste of time. Actually, loss of that kind of strategic planning actually accelerated their losses. Instead of having people exploring the future, everyone was consumed with the “here and now.” Short-term thinking with a long range plan helps people stay focused.
6. Dream productively
Do you ever see anyone sitting at their desk, staring off into space? Of course not! That kind of daydreaming behavior won’t be tolerated, regardless if it is at work or at school. Managers want their people to look busy, not being seen reading a book or magazine (that applies to work). Thinking looks like you are wasting time. Get busy even if all you are doing is moving papers from one file to another!
Dreams are the future. You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. --- Mark Twain
7. Learn from your predecessors
If a person is relieved of duties, terminated or “downsized,” people around them automatically assume that they did something wrong. There may be some real valuable learning that can be gleaned from this poor person’s fate. Not every person escorted out the door is wrong.

GROWTH <> LEADERSHIP <> EXCELLENCE
© 2006 3 Minute Learning LLC

TGIF 2006 MUSINGS

Odds and Ends to Finish the Week

1. Since 1980, the number of cigarettes smoked (in billions) dropped from 605.8 to 393.1.
I once heard it said that smoking would be a 20th century phenomenon. Well, not quite, but there’s definite improvement in the numbers and the decline should continue considering the price of a pack or carton of cigarettes. Just like other commodities, raising prices does affect consumer behavior. Let’s hope cigarette sales continue to be too pricey for people to start or that the cigarette companies don’t somehow subsidize lower prices.
2. The graying of America has hit the US Congress! The average age of US Senators is 60.4, up from 58.5 in 1949; US Representatives average age is 55, up from 51 in 1949. Average age of the Supreme Court justices is 66.1
Certainly the average age of the US lawmakers does reinforce the idea that social change will be slow as this generation still represents a conservative and male dominated era. The equality of females in the workplace and politics, the question of women’s choice, equality between races or gay rights will not be effectively discussed until the next generation of lawmakers takes office.
3. Parents in a Pennsylvania school district will be barred from bringing fast food lunches to their children when visiting for lunch. (Schools are being pressured to start serving quality lunches that are low in fat and address the rise of obesity in young people.)
First of all, the idea that any school can greatly affect eating behaviors of students without the help of parents and the community is absurd. Schools serve 180 lunches per year (given no early dismissals that may reduce the number somewhat). That’s around 16 percent of the meals a child may have during the course of a year (snacks not included). The other 84 percent of the time, the child may make their own “fast food” meals or the parents will treat them to their favorite high-fat, high caloric belly budding meal. Convenience food chains are abundant in every community.
If a school has to order a “ban” on bringing fast food for lunch, it’s not likely that the offending parents understand why. Don’t you know that it is un-American to limit the freedom of choice? Don’t you know that people have the right to be as fat as they want and it is part of our democracy? Good luck school administrators; let’s hope your school funding isn’t tied to the bathroom scale!
4. There’s a rise in private tutoring that is the result of more home schooling. Retired or unemployed teachers are being hired to tutor home schooled students in subject areas parents are unable to teach. Today, nearly 29 percent (1.1 million) of all school age children are home schooled and 21 percent have private tutors.
Actually, this is a time-honored practice that was once reserved for the wealthy. With an abundance of under-employed teachers, fresh from college and credentialed by their respective state, tutoring should grow and be affordable to more families.
Home schooling with highly trained teachers will challenge public schools to change. Poor reading and math scores coupled with standardized testing and fewer extra-curricular activities that involve all students will make public schools less inviting in the future.
The one key area that home schooling with a trained teacher can’t match: the socialization and diversity of groups. Isolating students from diversity and common interactions can place them at a disadvantage when entering the work environment or higher education. At least they’ll be able to read and understand a book about manners!
5. Doing nothing is a choice.
People routinely say something like, “I can’t get involved because of __________.” Doing nothing is as much a choice as drinking and eating. Not getting involved is an opportunity to generate excuses. That’s why we have crime, hunger, poverty and homelessness. It’s easy to allow those things be someone else’s problem.
Libertarians believe that government should be limited to protecting the country. They believe that social programs are the responsibility of local communities. When you consider the bureaucracy in health, education and human services and the inconsistencies of funding or leadership of programs that yield tremendous wastes of resources, maybe government should be reduced to homeland security.

GROWTH <> LEADERSHIP <> EXCELLENCE
© 2006 3 Minute Learning LLC

5 MYTHS ABOUT CHANGE

Demoralizing The Workplace II

1. CRISIS is a powerful force for change
From my experiences working in health care, cardiac patients rarely modify their “negative” behaviors to decrease the likelihood for another incident. Furthermore, some people caring for cardiac patients are likely to smoke, be obese or exhibit the kind of behaviors that are being discouraged in the people they are caring for.
People like their comfort zone. If a crisis scenario is forced on them, the likely response is to retreat and feel powerless. This is how dictators are able to control and manipulate large populations.
2. FEAR motivates change
Cognitive dissonance is a powerful attitudinal force that people use as a defense mechanism. For example, smokers believe that poor health will happen to someone else or that spending an extra few thousand dollars on a car was worth it.
In the workplace, people are motivated by a positive vision with clearly defined outcomes and rewards.
3. FACTS will guide people to accept change
Everyone has a conceptual framework that is comprised of values, morals, beliefs, knowledge, attitudes and behaviors. If the facts don’t fit the framework, they will be set aside.
People know that hurricanes are destructive forces, yet many refuse to leave an area believing that they can ride out the storm. Americans know that gasoline supplies will eventually run out yet they continue to buy gas gulpers.
4. SMALL changes are better than all at once, large scale change
“Cold turkey” (wholesale, all-at-once change) works for people trying to quit drugs or smoking rather than a wean strategy. Gastric bypass surgery helps obese people regain control over food better than diet programs. A newborn will help parents stay focused on building accountability better than a “to-do” list.
In the workplace, a large scale overhaul may be more effective in creating new opportunities instead of a linear piece-by-piece plan. Remember the “definition” of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.
5. I’m TOO OLD to change
Many people believe that their brain is “hard-wired” and change is impossible. Actually, the brain will accept whatever you decide to input. If you make a commitment to continuous learning, you can do anything you choose (doesn’t mean it will make you wealthy, just more competent). People are responsible for personal change; you can’t change others you can only change yourself. We live, we change, we grow and just when it seems everything is stable, it is time to start over.
Alvin Toffler in his ground breaking book, Future Shock (1970) said: The definition of illiteracy in the 21st century will not be the inability to read but the inability to UNLEARN, LEARN and RE-LEARN.
Many people believe that Darwin’s theory of evolution was that the strong or fit will survive. Actually what he said was that survival belongs to those who adapt.

GROWTH <> LEADERSHIP <> EXCELLENCE
© 2006 3 Minute Learning LLC

6 MANAGEMENT MYTHS

Demoralizing The Workplace

1. Creativity is limited to those paid to be creative
2. Money is a motivator
3. Pressure on time and resources create better solutions
4. Fear creates breakthroughs and savings
5. Internal competition produces more results than teamwork
6. Less employees creates stronger commitment and results

Fact: Stress costs the US economy over $300 billion a year in absenteeism, lost productivity and increased health care costs
Fact: US companies have laid off more than 30 million full-time employees since the early 1980s.
Fact: In 2005, over 15 percent of the world’s 2500 biggest companies lost their CEOs as boards became less tolerant of poor performance.
Fact: Over 40 percent of retired workers in the US stropped working sooner than planned because of health problems and layoffs

Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted.

--- Albert Einstein

GROWTH <> LEADERSHIP <> EXCELLENCE
© 2006 3 Minute Learning LLC