FutureThink: How to Think Clearly in a Time of Change Review

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According to Weiner and Brown, their book "defines the ABCs of clearly seeing patterns, weighing choices, understanding trends, getting the future right, making good and innovative decisions about the future, and, indeed, influencing what that future will be." Frankly, my own crystal ball imploded many years ago but, that said, I am grateful to Weiner and Brown for providing some truly unique and thought-provoking perspectives on how to "think [more] clearly in a time of change." Weiner and Brown respond to a number of critically important questions:
1. How can (and do) "personal traps" such as individual biases prevent us from recognizing and then understanding change?
2. How can (and do) "organizational traps" also do so?
3. How can we avoid (or extricate ourselves from) these "traps" in order to see what Weiner and Brown characterize as "The Big Picture"?
4. How can we use metaphors to help us to "see" more...and to see it more clearly?
Rather than "give away the plot" by attempting to summarize Weiner and Brown's responses to these questions, it would be more appropriate for me to provide some brief excerpts from their narrative. In Chapter 2, they suggest: "The important thing to remember is that both trend and countertrend present opportunities for profit. At the fork in the road, businesspeople should not merely ask which is the best road to take. We should also ask how our assets and constituencies can be used to our advantage on either or both roads." Why? "Not realizing that every trend creates a countertrend will leave you confused and surprised by unfolding events and changes ahead. Understanding the existence of countertrends will untrap your mind and allow it to process change much more accurately."
For example, understanding disintermediation which involves bypassing traditional channels for the delivery of goods and services, offering lots more options, choices, and sources of information.
Then in Chapter 7, Weiner and Brown example the mental trap of entropy which can be especially difficult because its requires thought and action which most people prefer to avoid. What to do? "Give up many `sacred cows' and start over...Pick your fights more wisely...Lose the fear of experimenting, particularly with less significant things...Be more aware, active, and informed politically...Give up relying solely on the best practices of others in running your business...[and finally] Stop trying to fit every opportunity or challenge into an old framework."
Weiner and Brown conclude Chapter 14 with a recap, noting that "football is a useful metaphor for how sellers must approach the modern marketplace. There's first down, which is some combination or price, quality, convenience, and assortment. Second down is personalization or customization. Third down is company reputation. Fourth down is the punt (giving up and going on defense), the field goal (a business-to-business strategy), or the touchdown (the relationship)."
Granted, these brief excerpts are taken out of context but they at least offer a sense of how innovatively Weiner and Brown think when focusing their attention on situations and circumstances which seem so familiar that most people give them little (if any) rigorous thought.
To me, Chapter 15 (all by itself) is worth far more than the cost of this book. Weiner and Brown suggest how to manage effectively by "harnessing evolution." Darwin's Theory of Evolution has two major components: differential reproduction and sexual selection. Weiner and Brown observe that a "newer, disputed addition to evolution theory is [in italics] punctuated equilibrium [end italics], which is when a sudden event, such as a natural catastrophe (a crisis) or a mutation (a new development) creates an abrupt new path toward development." That is, it disrupts what is generally referred to as the process of natural selection. To decision-makers in all organizations (regardless of size or nature), Weiner and Brown recommend what they consider to be "the next big management tool." Specifically, the idea of time-pacing which involves "deliberate recombination, procreation, and mutation [in all areas of operation within an organization] at predetermined intervals." Only then can flexibility be the central characteristic of an organization's culture. And only in such a culture can those who share it function effectively at a time "when evolution moves so quickly that it becomes revolution."
In Leading Change, Jim O'Toole examines various barriers to change, suggesting that the worst of them is what he calls "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom." Presumably Weiner and Brown agree. In FutureThink, they suggest that, in fact, there are no effective barriers to the process of natural selection and that the velocity of this process continues to accelerate rapidly and irrevocably.
One final point. If I understand Weiner and Brown correctly (and I may not), what we do now to avoid or extricate ourselves from the personal and organization "traps" they have identified may not be wholly sufficient in years, perhaps even in months ahead. But at least understanding the "16 proven mental paths to insight and foresight" which they recommend in this volume will help us to respond to change in the future, whatever its nature and extent may prove to be.

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