Monday, June 14, 2021

Unfolding Future via Forecasting

Running a predictive organization means businesses can leverage information and technology as the game changer of the business, to predict and respond to the emergent business properties.

We live in a complex business environment with a high degree of unpredictability and ambiguity, the highly complex and dynamic system needs to be elaborated in a well-organized effort. The business leaders today need to see further than what all others see; seek input for future adjustments, and orchestrate dynamic competencies via managerial activities, and ensure the company capabilities fully support the strategy as well as improve the overall business agility and maturity.



Predict what will happen and take steps further, what should you do upon it: The challenges that organizations face today include the high velocity of changes, complexity, or uncertainties which could blur our vision and make the future unpredictable. The wrong direction will no doubt lead to the wrong destination. No wonder today’s business managers so easily feel lost and get stuck at the transactional activities only, without spending enough time on predicting future trends and pondering deeper about taking stepwise actions upon it. Without clear vision, change either turns to chaos, or for its own sake; and strategy will fail to achieve expected results.

Future is unfolded, we cannot predict anything beforehand but can imagine with many experiences involved in the present or in the past. In fact, to prepare for the change proactively, you have to look into an unknown future and attempt to define the business landscape with its opportunities and risks. Having the ability to predict certain trends or emerging properties by building accurate conceptual models that are based on the understanding of current affairs, coupled with their enhanced decision-making abilities, is important for, and helpful in influencing the future. With a clear vision and accurate forecast, business managers can navigate their organization toward the right direction smoothly and internalize the change effectively.

Forecast the skills and roles you need to navigate the changes driven by digital trends: People are the center of the organization, and the skill gap is one of the critical issues that cause the business stagnation and fail to reach their vision. Forward thinking companies forecast needed skills and roles, address their common and unique skills requirements and map that out through some skills/competency matrix within their organization. More specifically, they define the competencies required to achieve their organizational goals at a technical/functional/company level, behavioral and attitudinal, core competencies including values, the generic and foundation skills/training that affect all employees, management and leadership competencies.

Organizations identify the skill gaps and define the competencies required to achieve business goals. But often, they fail to grasp the root of the matter; leaders are allowed to complain generically about what they mean by skill and competency gaps and often they pick the symptom, not digging through the root causes. To keep their business growth, they should continue to identify talent, develop people with learning agility; they need to build a strong brand to attract the brightest talent. Then they either recruit the right talent or train their people to get ready for the upcoming changes accordingly.

Forecasting and brainstorming scenarios for failure in the future helps everyone be clear about what you don't want to happen and what can be done to avoid it: In business, every day is a risk, there are downward risks (loss of value) or upward risks (opportunity to create value); there are internal risks or external risks; some risks can be quantifiable; some can only be approximated. With risk and uncertainty comes a statistical probability of failure, eventually you will have a failure if you are in the business. Failure should not be an offence and actually, if there are not a few failures, then you are not trying hard enough. The point is to fail forward, leading to ultimate success.

The job of management is to help predict the possible failure scenario, and when a failure happens to turn it around as a team. To respond to the emergent business properties and manage risks effectively, make data more “visible” for shareholders, link information management to the multiple business domains within the enterprise and their business partners for decisions, prediction, and prevention, etc, leverage emerging properties for making reasonable adjustments.

Running a predictive organization means businesses can leverage information and technology as the game changer of the business, to predict and respond to the emergent business properties and make data more “visible” for shareholders, linking information management to the multiple business domains within the enterprise and their business partners, for improving business responsiveness and maturity.





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