Do you know your purpose for action in the world? Think about the idea of being able to express your purpose in 6 words. This idea comes from a friend, Stephen Johnson, who wrote the book ‘What do you do for a living?’ in which he talks about leadership from purpose. Having just been appointed as CEO of a large company, he was showering before his first day of work and it struck him that he didn’t know what he was here to do. He asked his wife (who works a paediatric doctor in a hospital) to express what she did for a living, she replied, ‘I make sick children well’. He found he didn’t have the same clarity of purpose. Do you?

Being able to encapsulate your reason for action in a mere six words is an injunction. Having a core purpose delivers clarity around what we should be doing on a daily or hourly basis. Asking ‘does this fit my purpose’ is an injunction, a pause for reflection and re-orientation. The use of injunctions comes from the wisdom traditions, to give us a reason to stop and reflect upon our actions. Action without reflection and understanding is blind, just as theory without action is meaningless.

My core purpose for the past 3 years has been to help people consciously develop their innate foresight capacity. I can feel that there is another purpose starting to arise for me as time and experiences are accumulated in the service of my purpose. I find this idea interesting, our core purpose can and will change as we change. The challenge is to have enough stillness in our lives to allow core purpose to emerge. I think we also need ritual as part of this process. A way of allowing the future that wishes to emerge through us a voice that we can hear.

Give yourself time and space to listen to your core purpose as it tries to emerge through you. As someone once advised me ‘get out of your own way long enough to hear what is being said to you’.

It is opportune that Vaclav Smil’s latest offering, Energy Transitions: History, Requirements, Prospects, has just landed. Smil is required, if uncomfortable reading, for anyone who professes a concern in matters to do with energy transition. In his previous writings Smil has outlined in forensic detail all aspects of our current energy system. In his previous books Smil has destroyed the optimistic claims proffered by alternative energy proponents that we can maintain our current economic and social systems by just changing from carbon-based systems to something else. The numbers just do not add up. So is Smil also impatient for change? No he is not.

In this book Smil outlines how the energy transformation that we must make, and we will make it, is a generational exercise. The history of energy system transformations show us that anything up to four generations would be needed to accomplish the bulk of the economic, political, scientific and social unwinding and rewinding that will have to take place. When we change how we get our energy, and especially if the energy that is coming gives a lower energy return on its investment then everything must change –  by everything he means how we live, work, feed ourselves, educate our children, form communities, relate to other people, form our geopolitical relationships, fight our wars, entertain ourselves and create art. Everything.

Smil’s latest warning is that people are underestimating the extent of change and overestimating how quickly the changes can occur. When things move slowly, as Smil says they must, then people will get frustrated, will toss out their political leaders because they are not ‘doing anything’, and then toss out the ones after that because they are no better. What will follow is decline in institutional respect, suspicion that others are ‘free riding’ on the backs of others who are trying to do the ‘right things’ and commercial enterprises will flee from investing in the necessary innovations.

Into this unpleasant scenario I inject myself and all the other like-minded souls who are concerned about the future. What should we do, given Smil’s prediction? I suggest we need to practice patience and purpose.

If Smil is right, and I think he is pretty close, then I think preaching and practicing patience is a good first step. We need to realise that we are unlikely to see the desired transition in our lifetimes. Rather than blame others for failing to do more we should adopt the philosophy of the people who built the great cathedrals and their like. Begin a monumental building process that will be completed and enjoyed by those who come after us. Ours is not the key generation, not the group who will save the world. It merely is the generation that realises that a lot needs to be done and so starting work is far more important that thinking about the end. Adopting and living to that purpose might be the best thing we can do.

Patience and purpose together. The necessary changes will be made quickest when someone starts, so we are the ones who can start now. We need the patience to realise that our individual actions will be largely invisible, like the actions of the person who lays one stone in a wall are largely invisible when the wall is completed.  We need the purpose to stay at the task while others are not doing likewise. Someone needs to start, I think it needs to be us.

When things don’t go as planned is always a great time to reflect on what is important and what has ‘charge’ in a particular situation. I am not clothing conscious but I do like to feel comfortable, this wasn’t about that. This was ‘my stuff’ that had gone missing. I have been through a period of simplification and had shed a number of my possessions, so I have been contemplating the idea of letting go.  This reaction appeared to be about travelling and taking stuff with me to feel more at home in a strange place. My adult equivalent of a baby blanket. So what happens when it is not available?

For the past few days I have done without a high level ability to communicate, read signs and generally make myself understood. Life is reduced to the basics and that is enough. I think this feeling of enoughness is an interesting idea. Is it possible to be ‘full’ without being encumbered? I visited a Buddhist shrine in Nagoya and there was enough and no more. The tea ceremony, the design of the teahouse, the gardens designed for contemplation were all enough with nothing extra that wasn’t absolutely required. There was extreme beauty in this, a carving out of space for contemplation, which is seen as a luxury now in western society. So the luxury is in time, space and peace not in the trappings. When my stuff arrived, there was a requirement for me to ‘spend’ time unpacking, ironing and deciding what to wear. Previous to this I had not needed to use my time in such a way and could reflect, read, and rest unencumbered. This is the tension – what do we need to sustain us? Things or time?

I think that balancing these two requirements will become more and more important in the future as the cost of living increases, but we know we need to ‘buy’ more time to reflect and act in order to support ourselves and make wise decisions as the complexity around us increases.

The questions?

1. Do you think you will have a good future?
2. Do you think the world will have a good future?

The answers?

1. Yes
2. No

It seems a curious pair of answers when you first see them. We have an answer why we see that pair. You see people are confident about “I” futures – the ones that I control by my own actions – while people are less confident about “We” futures – the ones where a bunch of I’s need to act in a way that supports their mutual interest.

Thus we come to one of the most critical goals of doing foresight work – working with groups to help them create shared futures – “We” futures. While it is important that individuals feel hopeful about their own futures it is critical that we also develop hope in our shared futures too. These are the big ones that occupy a lot of our thoughts.

So can we do it? Yes we can (Doesn’t that sound familiar)?

We know how to do this by visiting a theory of moral reasoning – a philosophical approach called The Social Contract. In this theory of moral reasoning we should make decisions as if each and every one of us had contracted to act in our collective interest. Sounds cool doesn’t it?  The core of this theory is contained in a game of logic called The Prisoner’s Dilemma – if we can make the correct call in the game then we can always make moral decisions.

The game goes like this.

“You are in a totalitarian country and you are arrested by the police and charged with a crime you did not commit. You know that there is no group that is going to get you out of this situation; you have to get yourself out. You learn from your captors that someone else, someone called Smith, has also been arrested and is currently being interrogated along with you. Your captors tell you they must have some to charge with the crime. They don’t care who it is, either you or Smith will do. They offer you this deal. If you cooperate and give evidence against Smith and he refuses to cooperate then he goes to jail for 10 years. If Smith cooperates and gives evidence against you while you refuse to cooperate then you get the 10 years. If you both cooperate and give evidence against one another then you will each get 5 years. If you both refuse to cooperate, well they will have to release you both and then go and get another couple of people and start again.”

You don’t know Smith and will never meet Smith. So what do you say to your captor? Your best decision from your “I” perspective is to cooperate – either you get out if Smith doesn’t or you get 5 years if he does. The best outcome for both of you is a “We” future – both refuse and both go free. But here is the clincher – Do you trust Smith? If you act in such a way as to get both of you out, refuse, then Smith is out no matter what he decides. Because you acted in such a way as to expose yourself to hazard then a good future is possible for both of you. If you trust Smith then that is the only decision you can make. But can you trust someone that you have never met?

And that is what goes to the core of “We” futures – building ideas of good futures based on trusting the other party, even if we don’t know them and never will know them. The big car and house, the round the world holidays – If we both take it all then we both are in trouble. However, If I don’t cooperate and I trust you to do the same then we have a good future together – I trust you notwithstanding that you might betray me and take the holiday, car and house anyway. If I act in any other way then I’m consigning myself to a bad future.

But can I trust you …

One mode of ‘prior’ thinking that gets a thorough caning is the thinking underlying most of our institutions. Like the famous Monty Python sketch about “what have the Romans done for us?”

Institutional thinking is seen as outmoded, slow, narrow, restrictive and totally unsuited to our modern times and thoroughly modern challenges. So naturally our problems require thinking that is un-institutional. This all seems perfectly obvious so where exactly is the problem?

The problem is that large scale change requires institutional steps to change the laws, rules, boundaries, agreements in order for those changes to become widely adopted. Without institutions then change is always just a matter of individual personal choice. Garret Hardin showed in his archetype, ‘the tragedy of the commons’, that well thought out individual action can maximise the personal and bring down the collective very well. At some stage rules are going to have to be established and enforced that compel the bulk of people to conform to a set of agreed social agreements. And along with these social agreements we will also need a whole bunch of people to enforce and possibly even punish people who will not conform. Climate change is one such change that is only going to managed at a planetary level when a planet full of individuals begin to cede their individualism to the rights of institutions.

Yet the post-modern way, the post-conventional way, is to see the institutional as always being shallow and prior to their way of seeing the world. So as a person’s perspective grows then the institutional is left behind, not for them, not for their leadership. Who, therefore, is left to do institutional leadership? Who would want to be a plodder, to do the long and hard yards that are necessary to get laws changed, to fight for new rules? Who would want to sacrifice their efforts to support an institution, somewhere were their individual efforts are subsumed into the collective? In our world in the thrall of change, innovation, and creativity then those who push knowledge forward are seen as the leaders; the creators. Someone nameless and faceless has to follow behind and institutionalise the best of those innovations otherwise they never really change the world. Ideas don’t change the world; they need to be institutionalised to do that. The idea of women voting didn’t change the world; the fight to get women the vote did that. The concern about the environment did not change the world; the new rules around environment protection did that. And as soon as something is institutionalised it is out of date, now part of the problem not part of the solution. Who wants to be that?

The funny thing about knowledge is that it is always provisional. An idea is only as current as it is, until a better idea comes along. Thus we see the ceaseless growth of knowledge as progress. Institutions are different. Find the error in an idea and we get a new, better idea. Find the flaw in an institution then we get a weakened institution, we don’t automatically get a better one. Diminish the institutions of politics, of education, of commerce and you get a weaker, less effective institution because it is less respected, less authoritative. Someone else has to come along afterwards and build the new institution, do the hard yards, make all the new deals, create the new agreements.

So when we talk to the new leaders about the future, those who grasp the need for new ideas, we ask them are you prepared to build the new institutions that we need? Because if you don’t who will? Someone has to. But it will take time, maybe more than your lifetime to do. And if you do commit yourself to building the new institutions then you know that there is someone who was like you who now sees you as part of the past, too slow, too reactive, the problem and not the solution.

What kind of leader will you be? What kind of leader does the future need you to be?

“Unfortunately, the poor quality of the official projections cascades downward through state and local data systems into the hands of policy makers . .. Ultimately, the official data misinform the educational choices and career plans of individuals. These are the wrong times for inadequate information on jobs and skill requirements… Educational and career planning need to catch up and adjust to this new reality.”

I agree completely with the above sentiments of the report authors but, as a foresight thinker, I disagree with their conclusions. Let me explain.

The report writers find that the historical data back to the 1970s (correctly) shows that jobs requiring post high school education have grown quicker than forecast and that jobs requiring only high school education have disappeared faster than forecast.  Their projection based on this is, of course:

“By 2018, about two-thirds of all employment will require some college education or better “ (in 1973 it was 28%).

The report goes on to say that recessions have been where this shake-out is most stark, because the jobs that disappear do not always return.

“In the past two recessions, the typical job loser was a high school-educated male in a blue collar job, such as manufacturing or construction, working in the middle of the country. In the past two recoveries, the typical job gainer was a female with a postsecondary education who lived on either coast and worked in a service occupation—particularly healthcare, education, or business services. That picture is not changing.”

In that single finding are a world future pain in areas like social cohesion and health outcomes. A future where a previously dominant group lose power, income and social standing is one fraught with turmoil and upset. That is not news. But the clincher for me is that last sentence.  What has happened over the past 40 years will continue into the future. But will it?

As you dig further into the report you find findings like these:

Hundreds of thousands of low-skill jobs in manufacturing, farming, fishing, and forestry have been permanently destroyed because the recession has further prompted employers to either automate those positions or ship them offshore to take advantage of cheap labor. Overall, we project 637,000 jobs in the Manufacturing and Natural Resources industries will meet such fates by 2018.

And where will the new jobs be appearing?  “The most intense concentrations of postsecondary workers are in the Science, Technology, Engineering, Education, Healthcare, Community Services, Arts, Managerial and Professional Office Occupations.”

In the 21st century, computers and related inventions are transforming the U.S. economic landscape—boosting productivity so companies can produce more with less and spurring an economic shift from Manufacturing to Services. That is why, when old-line Manufacturing and Natural Resources jobs disappear, they often don’t come back.

So the thrust of the report in simple terms is Primary and Secondary sectors jobs will continue to disappearing and the growth will be in the Tertiary sector. The historical data supports this, the logic says that this is valid and thus our future projection is a certainty.  This is about the place that a foresight thinker is looking for the exit from the theatre.

This is an utterly safe, logical, rigorous and evidence-based piece of policy analysis that makes perfect sense … and wait for it … only if the assumptions of the single scenario world of 2018 come true. And what are those (unstated) assumptions? They are quite simple really – in the future we won’t need to worry about growing, digging and chopping things up and then turning those resources into physical things because in the future it will be cheaper for someone else to do that for us. It’s all about cheap energy stupid, we have had lots in the past 40 years and we will continue to have lots into the future.

I’ve looked long and hard to find those assumptions stated in the report but I can’t see them. I guess the writers and the readers don’t need to be aware that other scenarios are possible.  It’s safe to assume that things will remain the same.

The future doesn’t always cooperate with those who play it safe. Billy Joel’s song Allentown described the young of Pennsylvania whose predecessors’ ‘safe’ future didn’t actually work out

Well we’re waiting here in Allentown

For the Pennsylvania we never found
For the promises our teachers gave
If we worked hard
If we behaved.

So the graduations hang on the wall
But they never really helped us at all
No they never taught us what was real

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/sy-70349537/billy_joel_allentown_official_music_video/

If you are looking for a contemporary image of how the future might play out when the ‘safe’ scenario doesn’t work out then check out Howard Kunstler’s post peak oil novel – The World Made by Hand which includes this memorable exchange between a young ‘tertiary  educated’ male whose education didn’t fit a low energy world that needed primary and secondary sectors skills rather than the safe future tertiary ones  and an older male whose life had spanned both worlds – pre- peak  energy and post-peak energy.

Shawn limped slightly.

“Did you hurt yourself?” I said.

“I fell off Mr. Schmidt’s barn roof.”

“What were you doing up there?”

“Fixing it. What do you think?”

We walked a ways in silence. I hadn’t known him to be so irritable before.

“It’s been might hot lately,” I said.

“It’s not just the heat . Jesus, Robert, look how we live? I’m practically a serf. You know what a serf is?”

“Of course I do. I went to college,” I said and regretted it right away. “You know, Shawn, even back in normal time’s people got down and depressed. In fact, you could argue that people are generally better off now mentally that back then. We follow the natural cycles. We eat real food instead of processed crap full of chemicals. We’re not jacked up on coffee and television and sexy advertising all the time. No more anxiety about credit card bills –“

“I don’t want to debate.”

“I bet its true, though.”

“Find someone else if you want to have a debate.”

“It’s just conversation.”

“Whatever you call it, quit trying to persuade me that everything is great okay” he said and stopped in his tracks. I stopped too. His face was red and tendons stood out in his neck. He was a large young man, and he looked a little scary.

“You frustrate the hell out of me son,” I said.

“Do I? I work like a dog. Harder than this dog. From sun up to sundown, like a medieval peasant.  I do it with hardly any sense of a future, and the last thing I need is a lecture from the generation that screwed up the world.”

I can imagine all the safe reports that preceded that exchange between the past and the future. All the rigorous and evidence based data that was used to create a better future. Safe and sorry.

The worst case scenario is also used when a person is trapped in a low-hope circumstance and they believe that a recommended course of action will only make things more hopeless. When the worst case is closely examined and does not seem so disastrous then a low hope person can find the self agency to take the course of action and hope can be restored.

The attraction for practitioners is to think that such a commonly understood use of the foresight can be deliberately employed to open up a foresight space in decision-making processes. Further it could be imagined that evoking ‘worst case’ will lead to better, more foresightful decision-making. But will it? I have just read a very useful book on this very topic. Called, not surprisingly, Worst Case Scenarios by Cass Sunstein (2007), and it takes a serious look at the strengths and weaknesses in this foresight approach. The book does makes for uncomfortable reading at one level as it clearly concludes that the serious consideration of the ‘worst case’ is a bridge too far for most people. Still within it I did find some hopeful signs.

While there are a few examples of the social capacity to consider the worst case scenario (e.g. CFC gas bans, Y2K, Swine Flu) history, at the present, is replete with examples of policy and leadership trainwrecks in this regard (Hurricane Katrina, global warming, 2009 Victorian bushfires) and few issues that keep some of us awake at night (GM food, nannotech). Sunstein’s hypothesis is that we can’t use worst case scenarios about futures that people don’t have a current referent for. So domestic airline security was not a referent for a worst case scenario on 10 September and it was on September 11. This is quite depressing as it does suggest that we will need to experience something like the worst case before we will be able to think about the worst case. Bugger.

Some more joyful points from Sunstein; he found that the shibboleth of the futures community, the Precautionary Principle (having no evidence that something won’t go wrong is not a basis for doing something anyway), is basically useless in situations of significant complexity because the principle prevents all actions and inactions because whichever way you move you will offend it. After trashing the much-loved Precautionary Principle, Sunstein then found favour in the much-hated ‘future discounting’ approach to the worst case. While futurists hate the idea that the future is less ‘valuable’ than the present, Sunstein found that it is an effective way to consider worst case scenarios. If consequences can be monetarised then decision-makers do have a basis of making preventative and precautionary decisions. Importantly though Sunstein also found that future discounting did not work in worst cases that involve the loss of human life.

I’m very glad to say that Sunstein did find a need for worst cases to consider Intergenerational Neutrality to be fully effective as a decision-making tool. He favours processes that explicitly draw back the “veil of ignorance to the intergenerational question.”  Rather than avoid the question of whether our actions (or inactions) suit us and our choices, he favours worst cases that consider the impact on those not present now who will live in a worst case that they did not choose. He also favours processes that make decision-makers explicitly declare their view that a life today is worth more than a life in the future as part of their cost-benefit approach – what he calls the ‘morally objectionable’ viewpoint.

Ultimately I think that managing worst cases is at the core of our purpose as practitioners. Being better able to navigate such treacherous waters must be one of our core competencies that we can offer to our clients and organisations to assist them.  It appears that technique will only get you so far and that ultimately it is our ability to reason and act morally in considering the worst case that will determine whether we are a help or a hinderance.

Ekhart Tolle has a neat way of describing this eventual realisation.

“If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it or accept it totally.” (Power of Now (1999) Chapter 4).

The way Ekhart puts it is quite straightforward – continue, leave, change it. But is straightforward easy?

I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that we really do not want our choices to be this straightforward. I’m suggesting that all those things that we had to bring within our apprehension were originally ‘hidden’ because we did not want to really to bring them into awareness in the first place. What we actually put down were our psychological defences – we took off our protective clothing and so here we are – naked so to speak – with three simple choices – continue, leave or change it. Why would we do this? Why would we not want to know that our choices are clear? Because if our choices are so clear and all we have to do is choose one then to do none of those things means that we are cowards. We would rather run away and hide from having to make a choice.

Which leads me to my thoughts on courage for I believe it takes courage to commit to one of Ekhart’s three choices. What type of courage am I talking about? Is it Dutch courage that we need? Dutch courage is when you find courage through something that suppresses your fear – giving soldiers alcohol so they will choose something (put their life on the line) that they would not choose if they were sober. Does that sound like an ethical goal commitment process to make one of Ekhart’s choices – I don’t think so.

I have found a type of courage that I think is applicable to Ekhart’s choices. It is called 2-o’clock in the morning courage and it is attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte.

“As to moral courage, I have very rarely met with the two o’clock in the morning kind. I mean unprepared courage, that is necessary on an unexpected occasion, and which, in spite of the most unforeseen events, leaves full freedom of judgement and decision.”

That I think is why we do what we do. We extol to our clients and ourselves that we want/need to see things as they truly are in order to spot hazard and sense opportunity. We tell ourselves that we want to get to the deepest level, that we wish to make fundamental change in order to create our preferred futures. We push closer and closer to that point in time when we actually realise what our choices are – do we continue with this life, do we leave and create a new life or do we try to make this life better – and then we find out how brave we really are … at 2 o’clock in the morning.

As a futurist I am not impressed by strategy that fails to make an explicit link with the intended future that the strategy is meant to bring about. Strategy that fails to make such a link I call ‘cookbook strategy’.  Do this first, then this next and finally this and bingo, there is your future.

Now cookbooks are very useful and when you discover a favourite recipe then you just know that when you apply the correct ingredients in the correct sequence that the yummy future your desire will eventuate. And even if you haven’t cooked the dish concerned for a long time you know that you can always go back to those favourite cookbooks again, repeat all the steps and the desired future emerges again.  If only real life worked liked a cookbook.

In real life if you follow a strategy cookbook – whether it be diamond shaped or involve 5 forces – add all the recipe ingredients to get your favourite banana cake and while you were not looking the future adds some minced steak and a kilo of hot chillies and it also changes the oven to run 100 degrees hotter or colder than the dial says. And when you get to the future you get the shock of your life; “I didn’t order this!”

Imagine my delight when I went to a recent presentation by the writer of a leading strategy text book, Bob de Wit (Strategy Synthesis), and in his opening he described strategy as a “dialectic approach between two irresolvable paradoxes”.  Now that sounds like a strategy approach that is nothing like using a cookbook.

Bob de Wit sees strategy as managing rival tensions with there being a multitude of positions that offer distinct resolutions but never a perfect answer. One such tension is the strategic balance between shareholder value (profitability) and stakeholder value (responsibility). Whatever strategic response is chosen (maximise profit) has consequence upon the other dimension of the paradox (minimise responsibility). This is not a simple binary opposition but there are an unlimited range of synthetic options available – hence the dialectic. His book outlines ten such paradoxes that organisations face.

This did seem like an interesting approach to strategy and one that seemed to integrate with our ideas about ‘using the idea of the future’. I began to wonder how we could use the future to assist organisation’s manage their paradoxes?

The first obvious way is to use the future as the design space within which to prototype future synthetic resolutions of the paradox. Create a synthetic future model that maximises both dimensions of the paradox (responsibility and profit) and thus you have your desired future and hence your strategic direction.

I then saw parallels in our approach called Actionable Foresight. The phase we call Present Need is where the paradox(es) are identified and Pathways Thinking and Option Generation are where the multitude of synthetic positions are explored. And finally Goal Commitment is where we settle on the best resolution of the strategic tension. Not a solution but the best tradeoff we can build commitment to. And as we move towards the commitment future then we scan the state of the paradox, where is the pressure building and where is it lessening, always seeking for new and innovative combinations that provide a synthetic resolution of the tension.

Easier said than done as assumptions play a fundamental role for us. If we did not have them, and everything started from first principles, we would not get out of the house in the morning. We use assumptions to short circuit thinking processes – when I turn on the hot tap I assume hot water will come out of it. How many minutes have you wasted in hotel rooms with unfamiliar showers trying to work out where the hot water comes from?? Assumptions speed up this type of process. Where they trip us up is in big picture thinking about the future. Any report, modelling or forecast will have assumptions built into it as the future is not yet known therefore we MUST assume something. Can you critically examine these assumptions and better still can you catch them before they are accepted as fact?

So, how do we deal with assumptions in organisations and when thinking about the future? We need four ingredients – mindset, culture, embodied behaviours and systemic rewards.

Mindset – can you ask dumb questions? Are you able to be the ‘idiot’ who asks the question that you may be the only person who doesn’t know the answer to? Are you able to question the emperor’s new clothes – can you take risks? The internal ability or mindset to approach problems with a beginner’s mind, to ask the dumb questions and to risk your incompetence being demonstrated is a key attribute of able long-term thinkers. If you self-image is wrapped up in always being the expert or looking competent then there is a very high likelihood that you will never be an able long-term thinker. If you are able to put down the need to be right and pick up curiosity and develop the ability to ask excellent questions then you are part-way to developing a capacity for the long term view.

Culture – is the uncovering and questioning of assumptions ‘allowed’ within the culture of your organisation? Or are the elephants in the room outnumbering the people?  Many groups do not allow the unspoken assumptions to be questioned and those that do are asked to remove themselves. There is always risk in asking the obvious question, especially if you are exposing those higher up the hierarchy to difficult questions and asking them to make hard choices. There are many organisational cultures that allow assumptions to flourish in order to duck hard decision-making and these organisations invariably end up in difficult places.

Embodied behaviours – do your senior managers ask dumb questions or are they too wrapped up in looking like they know it all? If the leaders within an organisation are not actively trying to uncover the assumptions operating within the group, there is little chance for a culture of open discussion and robust debate to be established, let alone flourish. If the CEO can model this behaviour but allows their direct reports to do otherwise, there is no chance a culture of questioning will flourish. Command and control works in situations that are complicated, with solutions that can be developed over time by smart people putting their heads together. It does not work in complex environments where solutions will only ever be partial and a system view is required to navigate past obstacles and to take advantage of opportunities.

Finally, what are the rewards generated by the system in operation? Humans like to operate within known systems. Most people coming new into an organisation will work out what behaviours and mindsets are required by the rewards on offer. Does your organisation reward the questioning of assumptions? Will you receive a positive performance review if you are happy to look stupid on occasion and say you don’t know, or are those who exude confidence and always have the answer given the bonus or the promotion? If you do not have questioning behaviours present in your organisation or you are constantly being undone by assumptions, then look at your system of explicit and implicit rewards to see what behaviours are being promoted over others. Remember the system always works perfectly, if you don’t like the outcome then the system will need to be changed.

Developing the mindset, culture, behaviours and rewards that support the review and questioning of assumptions is not easy but it will deliver the ability for your organisation to engage in robust planning for the future.