Trying to predict the future of your industry or business? It’s a common endeavor, yet fraught with uncertainty. No one can definitively foresee what next week, let alone five years, will bring. As Yogi Berra quipped, “It’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future.” This sentiment resonates universally.
Predicting the future is notoriously difficult. Even professional futurists achieve a mere fifty percent success rate. Despite this inherent challenge, businesses consistently attempt to forecast future outcomes using tools that inherently rely on guesswork:
* **Future Revenues:** Businesses estimate future revenues, which heavily influence proposed business decisions. However, these estimates are frequently inaccurate, leading to potentially flawed spending patterns.
* **Industry Scenarios:** Predicting competitor actions represents another level of forecasting. Businesses attempt to anticipate industry-wide shifts and competitive maneuvers.
* **Strategic Planning:** This encompasses the most complex level of prediction, involving setting annual and long-term objectives and developing plans to achieve them. Resource, financial, market, sales, and project planning all hinge on the accuracy of these predictions.
The pitfall of relying on these business tools lies in the development of “planned reactions” to anticipated future events, hindering proactive planning. Moreover, the success of these “planned reactions” is often measured against the accuracy of the initial, often flawed, predictions.
If predicting the future is so unreliable, why engage in it at all? Because the best way to predict the future is to invent it.
Instead of reacting to future estimates and predictions, take a proactive approach by creating your own future. Declare the direction you want your business to take. Chart a course and implement plans to capitalize on and profit from that direction.
You might arrive precisely at your intended destination, or you might deviate significantly. Your initial northward heading could shift eastward or southward. Regardless, you will progress further and remain closer to your declared direction than if you lacked direction and relied solely on “reaction plans.”
Declarations, predictions, and strategic plans serve to focus attention and mobilize efforts far more effectively than random action or aimless plodding. A boldly conceived and declared future energizes your entire enterprise. The “shock of the new,” as art historian Kenneth Clark termed it, inspires and excites us. By inventing the future, you have the potential to reshape the competitive landscape and instigate unprecedented changes.
The future is shaped by our collective vision. By defining what is possible, embracing inspiration, and dedicating resources to achieving specific objectives, we can transform future possibilities into present-day realities.
While predicting the future is a gamble with unfavorable odds, inventing your own future guarantees you’ll be right on track.