Rebecca Ryan, Founder of NEXT Generation Consulting, joins ChedHER to discuss what exactly being a professional futurist consists of, and how leaders can approach the future with curiosity over fear.

chedHER

How to Apply Strategic Foresight to Prepare for Unknowns

joining us now is Rebecca Ryan economist, professional futurist and founder of Next Generation consulting Rebecca, you are a top 50 professional futurist, but I have to ask what is a futurist, it's a common question, Alicia and just like you are a journalist, your job is to report on what's happening now. Historian's job is to interpret what's happened in the past. My job as a professional futurist is to interpret the trends that are coming and try to anticipate and influence the future. So with that, can you spell out the mission then of next generation consulting in line with that? I imagine, yes, next generation consulting's mission is to leave the world a better place for future generations. Some of some of your projects we understand include economic development plan, post covid resilience plan. When we get to that true post Covid moment, I hope, um can you tell us more about these projects though? Yeah. So one of the things that has emerged over the last couple of years is everyone realizes that the future isn't certain there's a lot of instability. So we're working on a project right now in the, in the midwest focused on economic equity in their economic development plans. They're literally putting the bipod community in the center of their regions plan for prosperity. We're also working in the mountain West as they're facing serious shortages of water in the future and you know, devastation from climate change. So in each of those cases and with all of our clients, we're trying to anticipate what the future will be and help shape and influence the future. So if you're a business leader watching this, hoping to get some tips and and some insight here, what kind of techniques can business leaders apply to anticipate these future trends and challenges? Well, the first thing I wanna do is encourage executives, business leaders that you know, it's your job to be strategic about the future. We have a survey in the field right now in 95% of our respondents say it's my job to develop a strategy for the future. But when you ask them how much time they spend per day Alicia, They spend between 90 seconds and 4.5 minutes on average per day thinking about the future. So tip number one is you've got to give yourself and your team time dedicated time to think about the future. That's such a great piece of advice and I imagine one of those pieces of advice that when you say it sounds intuitive but amid like even this environment right now where business leaders are so challenged at the moment, it is hard to think about the future when you're navigating in the moment. So you have to, to your point there, give yourself and your team time to truly be able to focus on those outlooks and better navigate them. I'm curious are you seeing, you know more business leaders start to adopt that mindset? Well the google analytics shows us that foresight and futurist is climbing in the search terms. So that shows that there's at least interest. We personally have never been busier in our shop and I think some of that is because people stopped doing strategic planning during covid, everybody was just hunkering and bunkering, trying to get through it. So now like the cork is out of the bottle, you know, a lot of people are saying we want to do a plan and we know it's got to be much different than it has been in the past. So in my experience, yes, there's a lot more interest in using the methods of foresight. So trends scanning, scenario development, um working with subject matter experts to develop a viewpoint of the future in terms of hitting home why this is so important. What kind of success stories have you seen from those who have actually used and applied these techniques to their way of thinking? This is such an important question because there's gotta be some r oi right, if you think about it right now, a lot of people's strategy for the future is to just keep doing what we've always done, but just better. So it's like rinse repeat, rinse repeat. But we all agree that the future will be different. It already is different than it was pre Covid. So what we find in clients who use strategic foresight number one is they have clarity and when they have a really clear understanding of what's coming, who their future customers will be or their future residents will be, then the future vision and plan that they create is on trend. It's on the money and once you have clarity, we've also found that the rest of the organization can sort of lock in. It's like, okay, we see where we're going. So it creates a lot of organic momentum so people can do things faster and with greater outcome. So I think you've hit home in terms of why this is so important, you know what exactly people should do. But can you talk a little bit about, you know, how we get there, how to executive shift from that response mode that they've, they've been in during the pandemic and probably even now to this preparedness mode. Yeah, so the urgency of everyday executive life is very alluring. It's alluring to be needed. It's alluring to to know that like I'm wanted. So number one is to sort of let that ego settle down. If it's truly your job To develop a strategy for the future, it's not your job to handle 200 emails, you know, so nobody's going to get promoted based on how many emails they managed. But if you can bring your top people together along with some members of the next generation along with some Bipac stakeholders along with some customers, some very entrepreneurial customers, bring them together and take them through a structured process of thinking about the future, it's a wonderful generative way to start to develop that view of the future. And the last thing I want to say about this is we're in a time of great disruption and it's more important to have good questions as a leader than to try to have all the answers. I like that a lot. Before I have to let you go here, just want to ask you know, how can leaders approach the future as we alluded to the top of the show with more curiosity rather than fear given that again the last two years it's been a lot of fear based. Yeah, so that's a choice, right? You can notice like is my mode right now reactive or is it responsive? So number one, give yourself some time number to get curious and you know, a third thing is surround yourself with people who don't necessarily think like you talk to your kids, ask them what they're thinking about the future, talk with your youngest employees up and coming executives Rebecca really appreciate your insight Rebecca Ryan economist, professional futurist. Now we know what that is. And founder of next generation consulting