The Business Norm

Climbing the "Endless Staircase": Always further to go, never quite reaching the top, and never really satisfied. . .

In this standard operating model, the past is extrapolated into the future with improvements. Some problems are being solved. Market changes, to the extent to which they can be predicted, are taken into account. So the strategies and goals in this planning model can be labelled "the past improved".

The Traditional Forecasting or Foresight Models:

• Extrapolate the past: This is the traditional way - the default way - of assessing how the future is likely to turn out. It is businesses' standard approach, the norm, the methodology taught in business schools and universally practiced.

The foresight process starts where we are now, and extrapolates from there. It gives weight to: 1) the current state of the business, 2) market and competitor activities, and 3) the known and likely pathways that are available and where they will lead. These steps completed lead to chosing goals. With this model, we pretty much get more of what we had in the past - what we had plus.

When the gap between the future we really want and the past extrapolated becomes too large we reduce our future goals to more closely align with the past extrapolated. The justifying conversation will sound like, "that's too ambitious", "let's be practical here, that will never happen". "no way is that possible", ... In this past extrapolated future, systemic problems do not go away to any significant degree. We rationalize with statements like “things take time”, “we can’t do everything at the same time”, “were making good progress, I am satisfied”. Yet there is an underlying sense of never being satisfied - really.

• Improve the past: It is in this model that the majority of change efforts are initiated. Improving is focused on fixing problems, resolving issues and conflicts, and augmenting what is already present in the organization. When we act in the improving mode, our target is to produce a better version of the present. Our history and experience are the benchmarks that set the limits of what is reasonable to expect and feasible to accomplish. Our choices are a function of what we already know and believe, and what we perceive are our current problems and threats. Often, our action is guided by our level of comfort with the available options rather than by a commitment to the outcome that we truly want.

This approach does not consider discontinuities that are not yet "on the map", what competition could do, for which there is no inkling as yet, or what new products or services may alter the market, and which are not yet being considered.

In many instances these models are not sufficient to build a sustainable and they put a lid on the inherent innovation and creativity of people. People who are insufficiently challenged quickly become bored and unproductive.