Uncertainty – in the economy, society, politics – was so great that become useless, if not counterproductive, the kind of planning still practiced by most companies: probability-based forecast.
unique events such as the Perot phenomenon or the dissolution of the Soviet empire, not likely. However, executives have to make decisions that compromise the future for current resources of time and money. Worse, they have to take not commit resources decisions – to give up the future. The durations of these commitments are steadily increasing: in strategy and technology, marketing, manufacturing, employee development, the time it takes to put a new plant in operation, or years until the investment made in a store you pay. All these commitments are based on assumptions about the future. To reach them, the traditional planning question: “What is most likely to happen?” Instead, planning for uncertainty question: “What has happened that will create the future?”
The demographic data are the first to be looked at. Almost all people who are in the labor force of developed countries from the year 2010 were already living in 1992. There were two revolutionary changes in the workforce in developed countries: the explosion of advanced education and the onslaught of women in careers outside house. Both are facts. The passage of the center of gravity of the population of laborers to knowledge workers and services is irrevocable, as well as both the aging of the workforce as the population.
Businessmen need to ask: “What these accomplished facts mean for our business? What opportunities they create? The threatening? What changes they require in the way the company is organized and directed in our goals, products, services and our policies? What changes they make possible and are probably advantageous? “
The next question is: What changes in the industry structure and market in basic values (for example, the emphasis on the environment), and in science and technology have already occurred but have not yet had any impact “believed -If commonly that innovations create change – but very few do. Successful innovations exploit changes that have already occurred. They explore the term – in science, often twenty-five or thirty years – between the change itself and its perception and acceptance. During this period, the operator of change rarely faces a lot of competition. The other people in the industry still operating based on yesterday’s reality. And a change, after which occurred usually survives even extreme turbulence.
The First World War, the Depression and World War II had no impact on these trends, but accelerate them. Examples of the passage of railways freight traffic for trucks, the move to the phone as the main vehicle of telecommunications and the passage to the hospital as a center of care diseases.
The following questions are closely related, “What are the trends in the economic and social structures and how they affect our business,” Since 1900, the hand labor required unit for an additional unit of output in manufacturing has falling will compound rate of 1% pa . Since the end of World War II, the unit of raw materials needed to manufacture an additional unit of manufactured product has been decreasing at the same rate. Since 1950, the required power unit will manufacture an additional unit of manufactured is also falling at the same rate. But from 1880, the introduction of the telephone and the “scientific management principles” of Frederick Winslow Taylor, the volume of information and knowledge required for each additional unit of production has been growing at compound rate of 1% pa – The rate at which companies have been adding people educated ace their payrolls
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In fact, the computer may have been a response to this explosion of information, not its cause. Similar structural trends can be found in most industries and markets. They do not “time” for an industry or company, but create the “climate”. In the short term, its effects are mild, but the longer term, these structural trends are much larger than the short-term fluctuations importance to which economists, politicians and executives devote your full attention.
Anyone who explore the structural trends is almost guaranteed success. However, it is difficult to escape the short term and almost impossible in the long term. When one of these structural trends runs out or is reversed (which is quite rare), those who continue as before facing extinction and that change quickly faced with opportunities.
The most important structural trends are those of which many executives have never heard: the distribution of disposable income of consumers. They are particularly important in a time of uncertainty, like today. At times like this, these trends tend to change -. And quickly
Over the past 120 years, most of the dramatic increase in wealth-producing capacity and personal income – fifty times in developed countries – has been spending more on leisure, in health care and education. In other words, these were the dominant growth areas of the twentieth century.
Do they continue in that role? For leisure, the answer is almost certainly “no.” Spending on health as a percentage of consumer income will probably decline in the first decades of the century, despite the increasing number of elderly and advances in medicine. Education should continue its growth – but mainly as additional education for adults already well-educated, while the main industries will become highly capital intensive rather than labor-work. What challenges – Ace policies of a company, its products, markets and targets – represent these changes? What opportunities?
These are macroeconomic trends. But similar structural trends shape the micro-economies of individual industries and markets; they are equally important. For three hundred years since colonial times, the space per family, and with it the percentage of consumer income spent on housing, has been growing steadily in the United States (in contrast to Europe and Japan). Does this trend ended with the dramatic changes in the size and composition of families?
Since World War II, the share of disposable income spent on consumer electronics entertainment – radio, TV, audio cassettes (CDs), videos (DVDs) and so on – has been growing steadily, a trend that Japanese understood and explored. Does growth ended? The share of the disposable income of consumers spend on telecommunications has been growing for more than a century. It may be about to explode.
The economic wisdom says that older people do not save. Does this still true? The growth of mutual funds shows otherwise. And this change in the distribution of disposable income for people fifty and fifty-five years – the fastest growing segment of the population in developed countries – means for financial institutions, products, services and your marketing
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These issues are particularly enigmatic. Most executives know the answer or how to obtain them. Only rarely do they ask questions.
The answers to the question: “What has happened that will make the future” define the potential opportunities for a given company or industry. The conversion of this potential actually requires to equal opportunities to the forces and competencies. It requires what Peter F. Drucker presented (in his book “Managing for results”, 1964) as “power analysis” and today – thanks mainly to the work of teachers CK Prahalad and Gary Hamel – is becoming known as the analysis of the “core competencies.”
“What this company is good? What are you doing well? Or: “What forces give you a competitive edge? Applied to what? “The strength analysis also shows where you need to improve or enhance existing and where to get new strength. It shows both what the company can do as what she should do. The equation of the forces of a company to the changes that have occurred already produces a plan of action, allowing it to become the unexpected ahead. Uncertainty is no longer a threat and an opportunity to be become.
However, there is one condition: that the company create the resources of knowledge and personnel to react when the opportunity arises. This means the development of a future budget separately.
The 10 to 12 percent of annual expenditures necessary for the creation and maintenance of resources for the future – in research and technology, market position and care at the individual and their development – need to be placed in a constant budget, kept both in good years and bad. This is investment, although accountants and tax collectors consider the operating expenses. They enable a company to do your future, this is, ultimately, what means planning for uncertainty. Other considerations on the topic, essential to understand the trends of modern management, can be found in the book Peter Drucker – managing in times of great change
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