How much time do you spend thinking about, and talking about, the shape of the future that your own organization will experience?
We asked some very simple questions like that in our October Future of Work Quick Poll. We opted for simplicity and a quick partial look at strategic planning, rather than any extensive, complex view.
26 of our newsletter readers were generous enough to respond, for which we are very grateful. We know that’s a very small sample, so we make no claims of statistical validity in what follows. However, the results are nevertheless indicative of a pattern we should all be uncomfortable about.
Our brief analysis of what the survey respondents told us shows that while some organizations take the future very seriously and devote significant time and energy to understanding its shape, many others do not spend anywhere nearly enough time thinking or talking about the future.
In the face of the uncertainties and pace of change we all know are affecting every organization, that’s real cause for concern.
First, an overview of the respondents. we had a very bimodal distribution of firms: 35% of the respondents work for organizations with over 5,000 employees, while another 35% are either self-employed or work with less than 10 other people. The other 30% were spread out between 10 and 500 employees.
Figure One: Size of Organizations 
The functional areas represented ranged across a wide spectrum:
- Owner/CEO/President (24%)
- Consulting/Coaching/Research (28%)
- Marketing/Sales (8%)
- Real Estate/Facilities Mgt. (8%)
- Other ( 20%)
The 24% who are senior business executives come almost exclusively from the smaller companies, while the Marketing/Sales and Real Estate/Facilities executives come from much larger organizations (those with more than 1000 employees).
Now, what did we discover about the way these organizations approach strategic planning and think about the future?
Almost three-fourths of all respondents (72%) do construct a formal long-range strategic plan. For large organizations, the number is 89%. In itself that is not surprising. However, 50% of all respondents update their plan once a year or less; a third (33%) update the plan quarterly or more often, which seems like the minimum time frame needed given the immense uncertainty in the current economy.
Figure Two: Frequency of Plan Update 
Now comes the really interesting part. We commented in the September article, “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow”:
In their classic text, Competing for the Future, [Gary] Hamel and [C.K.] Prahalad reported that most senior executives spend less than 40% of their time focused on the world outside their own organization, only about 30% thinking about the next three to five years, and no more than 20% of their time talking with their colleagues about the future to build a collective view. In other words, only about 2.4% of management time (40% x 30% x 20%) is focused on building a corporate view of the future (Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad, Competing for the Future, p. 4.).
This Quick Poll included three questions that enabled us to reproduce that kind of analysis for our sample. Here’s what we found:
- Average amount of time focused on the external world: 20%
- Average amount of time focused on the next 3-5 years: 15%
- Average amount of time in conversation with peers about the future: 19%
That translates into only 0.6% of management time being spent building a corporate view of the future (20% x 15% x 19%)--about 15 minutes a week. And that is only one-fourth the amount of corporate time focused on the future that Hamel and Prahalad found among senior executives way back in 1994.
0.6% is an appallingly low number! Faced with increased complexity, increased volatility, and increased uncertainty, how can any senior executive justify spending so little time sorting out the future?
Isn’t it time to begin thinking much more seriously about what lies ahead? Of course, as I have pointed out on numerous occasions, the future is less predictable now than at any time I can remember. But throwing your hands up and burying your head in the sand (apologies for the horribly mixed metaphors) is no way to deal with the future.
We’ll comment about this issue in more detail in future articles and blog posts, but the most obvious advice I can offer is to start right now to set aside more time in your already-overloaded week to scan the environment, to build scenarios (see “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow,” September, 2011), and to talk with your colleagues about the future every chance you get (“Don’t Stop Talking About Tomorrow,” October, 2011).
