The Hindu Business Line : From forecast to foresight

Foresight is a unique and highly valued human ability that is widely recognised as a major source of wisdom, competitive advantage, and cultural renewal in business operations.

This seemingly uncanny capacity of the captains of industry — the capacity to "foresee" and take pre-emptive actions — does indeed forestall disastrous outcomes. It is a quality worth cultivating by those who are often caught up in the immediacy of their daily routine.

The rapid rate of technological changes that continuously affect the business environment has increased the need for accurate foresight.

The big winners are those who can predict precisely the forthcoming changes. Only those entrepreneurs who are able to capitalise on the technical advantages flowing from such changes and harness adequate resources to produce new goods and services will be able to harvest sizable profits.

`Innocence of eye'

The ability to foresee, to be farsighted and see ahead, involves a regaining of what John Ruskin calls, "the innocence of the eye;" that almost childlike quality to see afresh "as a blind man would see if suddenly gifted with sight."

Such a penetrating vision derives from a rare state of conceptual naivety in which all prior mental fixtures are set aside, so that the visionary can experience things as they are, devoid of their functional character.

It is a combination of deep insight and unique understanding. An entrepreneur who can cultivate this fine art of intellectual adventurism will not only outwit his business rivals, but also eventually emerge as a perceptive philosopher par excellence in management.

One of the most significant features of modernity is its attitude to the dimension of time, in general, and the future, in particular. Nowhere is this tendency better displayed than in the field of corporate strategy.

Strategic planning is based on the principle that the future is created by man. It is in this context that action triggered by foresight — action that aims at influencing what will be — becomes relevant and essential.

Futuristic Focus

The purpose of foresight is not to provide recipes, nor specific remedies. Its function is to enhance the ability of an organisation to focus on a few futuristic scenarios, debate their different strengths, assess the associated risks, estimate possible advantages, evaluate the costs/investments involved, and finally arrive at a pragmatic action plan that can be implemented.

Successful leaders in business do not obtain leverage by being merely efficient in their current operations. They must anticipate forthcoming changes and be proactive in providing answers to all of them, well before their competition becomes wise to the situation. It is, hence, that companies must move from forecast to foresight in their strategic management.

(The author is a Chennai-based freelance writer.)

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