Now, Near + Next
4 minute read
“The seashore is a sort of neutral ground, a most advantageous point from which to contemplate this world.”
Looking out from the present, we perceive the visible and anticipate what lies beyond our vision - anticipation informed by our history, tempered by our attitude, and discerning our actions. Today is no different - seeing the Now and anticipating the Near and the Next.
Actions and behaviors follow Maslow, starting with safety, ever present in our Now. We hold and hover as businesses are shuttered, density plans altered, leases terminated and in some cases construction discontinued while in other cases it continued. We make safe our environments, plan to accommodate needs with existing adjustable solutions, and continue a heightened alert status. We wait, we work, and we watch.
We anticipate the Near, organizations sharing projections with employees, preparing them for a return to office – of some sort- commonly and currently identified as June 2021. Organizations consider how to perpetuate the best qualities of culture and practice through a digital, or hybrid digital-on site connection. People consider how long the coping will be, what the near future looks like and what skills or aids can help survive it. And they wonder.
While thankful for surviving, people pay attention to how they are treated – always looking for indicators and patterns and wonder if their promised continued employment in this pandemic will continue. They live in the Now and tiptoe towards the Near. Behaviors and beliefs will be informed and altered by what is being learned now – about transparency, clarity, and loyalty – from organizations and people, and towards work. The workplace will be impacted.
Anticipation of the Next requires a different point of view. The Now and the Near are well handled by operational management – but the Next requires holistic, creative, deliberate consideration of what has been, what has not yet been, and what has not been even considered. Organizations and people venture to explore the Next in order to identify the nexus of influences and drivers which will impact their futures and develop responses to those opportunities.
Next considers the past and the potential future, for as Daniel Kahneman says, “The idea that the future is unpredictable is undermined every day by the ease with which the past is explained.” Foresight devices are engaged to explore and facilitate understanding the potential, even probable, futures. Minds are engaged and theories proposed. Primary activity focuses on content which can assist the development of preparation and response mechanisms. Eisenhower said, “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything”. Exploration of the Next includes planning, often through Scenario Planning, a technique initiated by the military and applied to industry by Pierre Wack, a planner for Royal Dutch Shell.
Planning horizons are selected, often dependent upon potential impact, time to market product or service, or life cycle of product or service.
Signals are collected in categories of society, technology, economy, ecology, and politics, as well as the market - customers and forms of competition. The complexity of the process is exacerbated with the selection of these signals, for as historians Will and Ariel Durant have noted, even hindsight is not quite 20:20. “The historian always oversimplifies, and hastily suggests a manageable minority of facts and faces out of a crowd of souls and events whose multitudinous complexity he can never quite embrace or comprehend.” Selective dynamics are utilized even more so in a world of stimulus overload.
These signals are examined and combined to create trend indicators. Indicators are merged to develop scenarios – generally three to four. Historian Niall Ferguson indicate “there really is no such thing as ‘the future’, singular. There are only multiple, unforeseeable futures, which will never lose their capacity to take us by surprise.” The scenarios include what is considered plausible, as well as wild cards – things not considered plausible, and they serve as a learning experience and platform from which to plan. Any scenario is unlikely to play out as the story is written as scenario elements and outcomes often blend, and horizons leap forward or drop off altogether.
Potential impact statements are prepared for each of the scenarios noting implications for the organization, for people, for the work and the workplace. Strategies for addressing these implications are developed, and risk can occur if planning is stopped at the end of the discussion of the scenario without determination of strategies. The activity is useful; for while the scenarios may not fall in line, the preparation for them can inform and prepare an attainable, sustainable future.
The development of Next through scenarios can inform the workplace solution. The role of place in work has evolved – from a requirement for production and to an environment for tasks and interaction to the Next.
Place provides meaning and meets needs beyond the work process – for display (personal, professional and achievement), the balance of access through boundary and enclosure, welcoming and belonging into community, transparency of intent and purpose, and the need for health and balance. These are human needs and are likely to shift to primary importance in the Next, as this pandemic has taught that the workplace often no longer needs to be a requirement for production or an environment for task completion.
Scenario planning application can explore these Next needs and understand what people will miss from home if they return to the office, what qualities, functions and permission can be brought; what do they want to leave behind, and what can they imagine new? How can the workplace anticipate and allow adaptation? What places for work should exist? What organizational investments make sense?
Examination of the Now, the Near and the Next can suggest - who are we learning to be + and what do our places need to do?